Breathing in the LiBeration of graduation

BY AUSTYN PERRONE

PEERS, FACULTY, AND EVERYONE ELSE who showed up for some reason; Dana Hills High School, Graduation Day, 2023.

It is crazy to be here, honestly, because I think like most of you, it was hard to just imagine being here. From the struggles each one of us faced in the pandemic, to the individual struggles that we all, in our ways, had to face daily, it was hard to foresee a future in which everything was OK.

In my freshman year, I thought I was so cool and that I had everything laid out. I was planning to be a math teacher, I was going to marry my freshman-year love, and we would be together forever, and I was going to be a valedictorian.

If you couldn’t tell already, obviously, none of it worked out like that.

It’s alright, though; blue looks better on me anyways. The real point is my view on life completely changed so many times over high school even though every single time I thought I had it set. When COVID hit at the beginning of high school, all of us lost our minds. I mean, come on, was whipped coffee really that good?

After, in that transition from sophomore to junior year, when it all started to settle, I started realizing how unsure I was of everything and how many times I thought I knew what I was doing, and then it completely changed soon after.

I began to realize that it was hard for me to imagine a future, no longer because I was unsure of the world, but because I was unsure of myself and the constant change life brings.

I don’t want to claim that I know or love myself 100%, or that I am sure of what I’m going to be doing, or that I’m going to rob a bank in 2029—please do not quote that, because, truly, you never know.

I wouldn’t be honest if I claimed to know any of that, even what is going to happen today, to us. After all the caps go up, where are you and I going?

After years of family issues, mental health struggles, endings of relationships and friendships, and feeling uncomfortable with my identity, I am here. We are here. Graduation Day, 2023. After years of whatever we went through, that constant change never kept us from going forward, from getting here.

Right now, here, speaking to the graduating Class of 2023, some of the coolest and most outspoken people I have ever met, I want to claim that I will never know anything in comparison to the larger world and universe.

And, I think in all honesty, there is no other way I’d want it to be. Life changes, and you grow, more than you probably thought you wanted to. Allowing yourself space to find what fits you, in your life, now, and in the future, is most important.

Don’t hold yourself down to one particular idea, don’t beat yourself up over who you used to be, and do not limit your possibilities. James Baldwin, a civil rights activist and famous writer, once said, “You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life; you won’t live any life at all.”

You have to create the life you need for yourself in the present moment. You have to adjust. Because, God knows, we, the Class of 2023, through COVID, mental health struggles, protests, bullying, school work, and somehow killer clowns in 2016, that through it all, we will never be the same.

We reserve the right to change, to grow. Now, breathe in that breath of fresh air. That is the liberation of graduation.

Congratulations; I’m proud of all of us. Thank you.