"To everything there is a season."
These are the wise words my best friend said as we sat talking in the kitchen until the wee hours of the night. I live for these midnight conversations. Life is full of heavy things to carry, and every once in a while, it's good to lay everything on the table.
In fact, the biggest mistake we often make is the assumption that we have to carry everything on our own. Sometimes you just need to sit on the kitchen counter and talk with your best friend. About anything. About everything.
I call my best friend "Mom." My mom and I don't always see completely eye to eye (honestly, can anyone say they do?), but at the end of the day, she is there for me like no one else.
She loves me wholly and completely. There is not a doubt in my mind that whether it is making me coffee the morning of a big test or donating a kidney, my mother would do anything for me.
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So when many of your closest friends leave for college in the same week, your brother hasn't been home in six or seven months, and it just feels like everything in your life is changing, what do you do? Well, if you're anything like me, you sit down "Sixteen Candles"-style and have a heart-to-heart with the madre. And she lets you in on a little secret:
Everything is changing. Everything is always changing. Life wouldn't be interesting if everything always stayed the same.
Life is made up of many seasons — beautiful seasons that you will look back on fondly, not-so-great seasons we all try our best to forget (like seventh grade, the bad perm, or really any time a Taylor Swift revenge song can be used to describe your emotions).
People will change. They will come and go. They will leave for great adventures and come back renewed, enlightened, and thinner (possibly due to the parasites they contracted). Sometimes they will go on great adventures and forget to come back, but the ones that matter most will never forget.
We spend so much of our lives worrying about getting from A to B, we must force ourselves to remember, to stop and reflect, to know who we are and who we want to become — no matter how young or old.
So hop up on that counter (literally or metaphorically, whichever you prefer) and spill your beans, because mothers, by trade, are excellent listeners.
Madison Conte is a junior at Mayo High School. To respond to an opinion column, send an email to life@postbulletin.com.
