I haven’t graduated. At least not for another 365 days.

Yet as the deluge of Year Twelves weaved into a solemn line, with tears brimming and arms shaking, it felt almost ominous — an overcast sky crackling and electrified. I watched their fingers grasp their teachers — outstretched arms ready for an embrace, their wide eyes sweeping over a place that would no longer be quotidian. As they trudged out of the gymnasium, I could feel a palpable cloud of emotions trail behind: love, nostalgia, sadness, longing, and bittersweet regret. And that was their goodbye.

I can’t say I know what it’s like to say goodbye. I’ve done it over and over and over, yet the myriad of memories resurfaces in a blur. A silent ache. A naïve grin. A hazy fog that permeates every moment.

But I remember the repulsive wave of anger and fear that envelops, the agony of revelation — that it is the end — in the slew of goodbyes in my life: the terrifying abandonment of childhood, the grief of losing a loved one, even the vanishing of the ubiquitous.

The torment of each moment was characterised by an unnerving, abrupt halt: that even a moment like graduating from high school would feel flabbergasting, despite being inevitable since our first steps in Year Seven. That even in death we are paralysed by its outcome; who would have known?

Rewinding just mere minutes, the Colour Day lip dub played. A mirage of converging colours orchestrated the beauty of a moment, capturing the idiosyncrasies of every Year Twelve. From sheepish smiles to bewildered expressions, it was a snapshot of the ephemeral nature of our existence.

Just moments ago I would not have believed that school life could even have such a picturesque quality. The library was always, to me, just another reminder of the copious tests that lay ahead. The canteen reinforced the paucity of choices; it was either a cheese twist, a cookie, or nothing. The classrooms substantiated the chilling sense of school as incarceration, diminishing freedom from plain view.

Having to witness the goodbyes revealed the hidden, evanescent sparks of school life. It’s funny that it’s only during a goodbye that everything seems surreal — every quirk of plebeian life magnified under the microscope of the mind, reviewed, processed, appreciated. That the seemingly endless hours of learning had been wasted on complaining about the enervating eighty minutes of yet another period. That we would sniffle and cry when we graduate, when we would never again have to endure those torturous eighty-minute periods.

I haven’t faced death. At least, not at the time of writing.

But what I do know now, hopefully having gained a sprinkle of sagacity, is that my clock is ticking. It’s five minutes to the bell, my friends are giggling about the New York Times’s Wordle, my hunger hormones are coursing through my veins, and my heart is aching. For the first time in a long time, I’ve come to realise how precious these moments will become. In just days the only debris of high school will be my kaleidoscope of memories.

So I scrutinise the classroom and all its familiar faces: the poster of Big Brother Watching, the comfort of the tissue box, and my favourite English teacher. Tomorrow might not be a promise, and nothing lives forever, but the goodbyes accentuate the meaningfulness of my life.

These eighty minutes will dissipate eventually into a graduation assembly, and soon it will be over. In the vanishing of reality, we can only count on the gentle humming in the mind, the shuffling of memories like a playlist.