Hello, I am an 18 year old high school graduate. I graduated this summer and I’ve been having a lot of time to reminisce over things after graduating. I got my first job 2 days after graduating and have been working consistently for 3 months now as an installer. I don’t wanna drag this message out but if you’re still in school reading this I just want to talk about a couple of things that I wish I knew before my school journey ended. Listening to music while installing have kept me thinking about things and people that’s been a part of my life. Girls I was interested in, things I have been wanting to pursue, but I was always too shy to be honest with myself and most importantly them. I have an amazing girlfriend today and I love her so much, but I can’t seem stop thinking about people in the past. Maybe it’s because I’m so intrigued in what could have been, from my own conclusion I have just come to realization that I live in regret at this moment. How different my life could have been or how different things could have been if I just had the gut to express them. I know this can sound a bit selfish and ridiculous considering I’m only 18 and I have a bunch of time to make things of myself but not expressing myself will be another mistake I will think about in the future. I have to get things of my head because I just keep overthinking them. The depression isn’t getting better and me realizing what life is after high school has made me fall even deeper into it. If your reading this and you’re still in school, don’t get scared, I’m pretty comfortable with my lifestyle, the only thing keeping me like this is overthinking. I’m a really bad explainer so if you haven’t gotten the message yet, all I was wanting to say is don’t be afraid to express yourself. Tell the girl you like that you like her. Tell your friends that you appreciate them. Try the thing you’ve always wanted to try. Say what you mean, even if you’re scared of how people might react. Because when school ends, you suddenly realize how many opportunities you had to say or do something, and how many of them you let pass because you were too scared, shy, or worried about what other people would think. I’m not saying this because I have everything figured out. I’m saying it because I’m 18, I’ve just finished school, and I already have things I wish I had done differently. Maybe some of the things I regret wouldn’t have worked out anyway. Maybe telling those people how I felt would have changed nothing. But at least I would have known. And I think knowing is better than spending years wondering what if? So if you’re still in school, enjoy it. Talk to people. Make memories. Take chances. Be honest with yourself and with the people around you. You don’t realize how quickly that chapter of your life is going to end until it already has. And if you’re like me and you’re already out of school, don’t let regret convince you that it’s too late. It isn’t. We’re still young, and there’s still so much life ahead of us. Maybe the point isn’t to stop thinking about the past, but to learn from it and make sure we don’t spend the future wishing we had done the same things again. I don’t really know what the point of writing all of this was. I guess I just needed to get it out of my head. Maybe someone reading this will relate to it, or maybe it’ll mean absolutely nothing to you. Either way, if you take one thing from this, let it be that, don’t let fear make decisions for you. You might regret what you didn’t do a lot longer than you regret what you did.