Open Book: Anticipation

The Distant Future Has Arrived, And It’s Sweet

By Anya Nitczynski

For the GPHN

I left a dreary, slushy, and cold Denver behind for spring break on a plane bound for New York City. Six years of anticipation in the making, the flight began the annual pilgrimage that junior Denver School of the Arts theatre majors take to The Big Apple.

I had been looking forward to the trip since middle school, and up until the moment we boarded the flight it didn’t feel real. Every time I’d thought about it, it seemed millennia away. But it did finally happen and it was an absolute blast. These days, the distant future haze seems to be lifting and the things I’ve imagined as decades away seem to come to fruition more and more frequently.

I came home to a bright, sunny, and blooming Denver. Spring has arrived, a bittersweet reminder that the school year is soon ending. My senior year looms large and I am forced to confront the reality of my friends who are currently seniors who will soon move away for college. It’s a Pandora’s box of emotions, from pride to loss to borderline resentment. Two days after coming home, I turned 17. The next age I will turn is 18 – an age so far in the hazy future that it actually sounds like a joke to me.

The naked eye may not see how all of these landmarks — my trip, the changing seasons, my birthday — are connected or how they managed to sneak up on me. In my clothed eyes, though, each of these arrive all too quickly and joins the others, a sort of humming tune about growing up that is difficult to push to the back of my mind. The song isn’t necessarily bad or scary or sad, though. In fact, it’s a little catchy. I just didn’t expect to hear it so soon and so often.

I doubt anyone ever feels truly right being the age they are, and I imagine anyone 10 years older than me would tell me I don’t know the half of it about growing up, just as I would tell someone 10 years younger than me.

It’s turning out that whenever something from what I thought would be in the distant future happens the following week is, excitement. Even with the hardest landmarks to face (i.e. my friends moving away) I find myself stressing the final syllable in the word “bittersweet” a whole lot more than the first two.

Anya Nitczynski is a junior at Denver School of the Arts. Her column appears monthly in these pages.