Limitless ascendance

He ducked under the half-closed garage door and hugged me. “This might be the last time,” he whispered. I felt some kind of nostalgic desperation: I did not want it to be. He told me I had done good, and left. As I watched him walk away, I was hit with an indescribable emotion.

I brushed it away. I had more important things to worry about.

Three months later, the feeling returned. I was enjoying gelato with my fellow editors during a break in the middle of a journalism convention in Seattle.

It hit me again during the last song at prom. My friends and I gathered in a circle, hugging one another, singing our hearts out.

And later, after my friends and I had just finished our AP Statistics exam — we drove back from Crystal Springs, blasting “Talk Too Much” by COIN.

Most notably, two weeks ago, after I had watched our school’s production of “Chicago,” I dropped my friend home. She told me she had gotten off the waitlist for her dream school. Soon we were talking about when we had met. How neither of us remembered the first moment. And I wondered to myself if — back in fifth grade, the moment I met her — whether I could possibly have imagined how much our lives would change. And the feeling came again, as I lay my head on hers. Soft music played in the background, and I cried as we whispered how much we would miss one another. And for once, I could almost describe how I felt: limitless ascendance. What a contradictory feeling: it would last forever, but at the same time, remain painfully finite. I could feel the time pass, practically see it. Yet, somehow, it felt like the world was immeasurable.

And I knew then that a part of my soul would remain in that moment forever.

In my journal that night, I wrote:

“It was like I was there but not really. Like I was witnessing these events happen in an out-of-body sort of way. Like I was not real but simply perceiving the events — as if I had died, and I was playing all the moments that meant the most to me, knowing that, in an instant, I might not exist anymore.

“I know I will look back. I will remember these moments. I will feel them again. I will try desperately to go back to where I was, and I will fail.”

It happens more often now. During the last robotics event, after we got our senior posters, and I looked at the other two seniors I had worked with for the past three years:

“I wish I could explain it. I’ve always been good at verbalizing and expressing my emotions. Or at least that’s what people tell me. But I can’t seem to describe this emotion. I could write in circles for hours, paint for decades, chip and sculpt at it until my hands start bleeding and I won’t even get close. Isn’t that the beauty of art? Isn’t it just a desperate attempt to recreate a fleeting moment?

“It’s the same feeling every time. Something infinite, yet, it vanishes right in front of your eyes.

“I uttered goodbye and drove home. What else could I do? If I could freeze time and wallow in its melancholic bliss forever, I would. But I cannot. So I opt for a goodbye, a wave and an unspoken universal truth that we all know about goodbyes.”

As I graduate, I know it’ll happen more often. Perhaps as my name is called to the stage and my family cheers. Perhaps as the bus for graduation night drives back at 2 a.m. Or perhaps again, four years later, when I graduate from college. Perhaps it will occur in every goodbye I will need to say for the rest of my life.

Or maybe I will never feel this again. Maybe it is a culmination of my current experiences and childish desperation to hold onto a moment slowly slipping through my hands.

Ellen Li is a recent graduate of Aragon High School in San Mateo. Student News appears in the weekend edition. You can email Student News at news@smdailyjournal.com.