Teen Voices provides first-person insight into the thoughts and lives of local teenagers.

Goodbye. (good-bi) interj. Used to express an acknowledgment of parting. Or, one of my least favorite words in the entire world. I hate goodbye. Its such an ugly word but so powerful. Everyone says it every day to people they are going to see again, but right now it feels like goodbye means parting forever.

Whenever I bring this up with an adult, they say that part of growing up is learning how to say goodbye. Yeah, okay. I just dont feel like doing that. Sorry. I want to keep hoping that goodbye doesnt mean forever. I want to keep hoping that someday, maybe, Ill see you again.

I dont want to grow up. Sure, legally Im an adult and can buy lottery tickets and stuff, thats all great, but growing up? Sounds hard and painful and unnecessary. Wheres my Neverland?

And now I am faced with the toughest goodbye so far, the goodbye that comes with going off to college, leaving behind my friends and family for something new and unknown. It breaks my heart a little bit.

I dont understand how people can just come into your life and then leave it. I dont understand how I can do the same. Im leaving. And I guess I just dont get how you have to let people go in order to grow.

It feels like if you say goodbye, the time you had with that person or those people didnt mean anything. Like, whats the point if it only ends? The learning experience? Thats what I keep hearing. Blah blah blah. I want to keep learning with these people.

I desperately want to go back to the place when I had all the time in the world, but I need to move forward and that leaves me somewhere in the middle, hovering and lost.

Deep down, I know that it hurts more to cling onto something when its time to let go. But I just dont accept that. Maybe let go is the wrong way to put it. Move on. Thats what I mean. So, yeah, maybe it will hurt. But I am bringing my past with me to my future.

And no, Im not talking about bringing it with me in my heart or in the form of fond memories or any of that sap.

Nope. I mean literally. So all you people that I care about? Yeah, I hope you know that were stuck with each other. Forever.

I mean, Ill be back. Im going to see these people again. I refuse to let it be the end. Because, you know, I hear they have these new things called telephones. And computers. So through talking, texting, and Facebooking (yes, I think Facebooking has now become an actual word), my friends and I will be able to bug each other constantly.

Oh no. I can just see it now. Me, on my computer holed up in my dorm room during all my spare time, on Facebook while everyone else at school is making new friends. I dont want to lose my friends, but I dont want to miss out on making new friends either.

Balance, I guess, is what I need.

It will be different, when we all come back for breaks. Well have all experienced new things without each other, but I have a feeling that well come back and be OK. Maybe it will be better than it was. Maybe it will be worse. Who knows?

What I know now is that Im going to spend all the time I possibly can with my friends, pretending everything is normal and nothing will change. Thinking about it is too hard.

Theres something so final about it. Goodbye. If goodbye means forever, then I really have no interest in saying it. So, later to Bend. Later to friends, family, my old life. Goodbye to people I finally realized that I need to say it to. And hello to a slightly more grown-up me.