A Goodbye to Innocence — Summary

Dear year twelve, A second doesn’t fly without thinking of the future; the years that might go as fast as this one surely did. Life doesn’t exist without a thought of my aging life now on a highway, speeding. My pads first used at a sleepover during my friends party. My new bras, growing numbers, but not as fast as my shoe size. There was a month I cut my wrist out of anger, wanting pain that could be sorted through my mind. Months later I admitted to my mother. She looked as if she’d seen death, I wished I’d seen it too. The time my heart got stabbed. I could feel the blood on the cafeteria’s floor along with my heavy tears. His expression on my mania that wasn’t an average crush. When I kissed someone I didn’t exactly like just to get away from the pain. My jokes have become less and less innocent and clean. My mouth has become more and more full of sin. I remember when my mother slapped me by accident, I swore to myself that my response was a mistake, too. I wouldn’t admit to her, though. The faces of my friends when I told them I was also thinking of dating girls looked different than I earlier planned. But tell me a man with chivalry. I’ve begun to think the faces of shock were always hidden in their heads when I spoke to them, burdened of a friendship we still have. And my life’s begun to lose value too much ahead of time, tied to the ground until the last strand will break and I’ll fly away into insanity. Sometimes I think that my friends are my only weight. So I must say goodbye to innocence that I have gathered and slowly lost. It’s not been my happiest farewell.

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Written as a letter to "year twelve," the speaker looks back on a year when childhood seemed to slip away. She lists moments one by one: her first period, new bras, a cruel crush, a kiss meant only to escape pain, and a time she hurt herself and later told her mother. Small, ordinary changes sit right beside painful ones, which shows how tangled growing up can feel.

The speaker sounds regretful, tired, and a little scared. Time is a highway with her "speeding" along it, and she feels her life losing value "too much ahead of time." Her friends are the one thing that keeps her grounded, the "only weight" holding her to the earth. The mood is heavy but honest. She isn't dramatic about the loss, only plain about it, and the last line, "It's not been my happiest farewell," leaves the goodbye bittersweet rather than neatly resolved.

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