365 Days (Part 1) | ✓

21. Smoke, Fog, and Haze

22. Smoke, Fog, and Haze: Write about not being able to see ahead of you.

What's next?

I find myself uttering those problematic words more often than I answer them.

What's next for me? What's will happen? Where will I go? Where should I go? What will I do?

I was thinking about the only answer I can currently supply to these questions, and I was wondering if it was bad. See, the only reply I can give to these nagging thoughts is, I don't know. I don't know what the future will hold. I don't know what my next step will be.

I am in my senior year of High School, and as any senior can testify to, the one question all adults seem obligated to ask us is, "What will you do next?" Usually this is phrased in relation to which college we will be attending, or if we will go to college at all.

My answer, as I mentioned, is "I don't know."

I try to hedge around the question. I use the word "might" frequently and allude to college and local schools and common jobs and degrees. Never have I been able to give a direct answer to this question, and I feel ashamed of it.

Should I be ashamed to be stumbling blindly toward the misty haze that is my future? Not necessarily. I should be ashamed if I was content to drift aimlessly forward with neither thought nor will... but that is not what I am doing. I am earnestly seeking out the wisest choices in regard to my future, and there is no reason to be embarrassed that those choices elude me for a while.

It is a strange place to be in, on the cusp of adulthood. It is precarious, worrisome, dangerous, thrilling, and hopeful. I do not know what will happen, only that something will happen, and that is scary and comforting at the same time.

There is a consciousness that my life as I know it is ending, and a new variation of it is soon to begin. It is odd: This realization makes me cling to my childhood, but I am already dreaming about adulthood.

I step forward cautiously, because the futue is mist and smoke, evee disorienting even the most familiar traveler, and hiding lovely and terrifying surprises.