It looks like a coin toss. The copper is spinning, its face about to drop, and you don’t know what side to bet on.

When you think about your future, this is what the inside of your head looks like. You’re convinced the year will either go really well or really bad. Your thoughts like to go to the extremes, so you see the transition to college as being either beautiful or tragic. No in-betweens. Like a coin toss, these prospects seem exact and out of your hands.

I can’t convince you that it isn’t as simple as a straight coin toss—still, the future can’t help but take the murky shape of a slippery and crooked thing. But I can give you this: you picked up a habit from a friend in high school, and it’ll prove useful. Every time she came across pennies that were tails up, she would flip them over to their lucky side and leave them there for someone else to find. I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet, but you do the same thing.

Parts of the year are going to bring hurt like you expect them to. Your classes will get to be too much, your family will ask for more than you can give and your thoughts will swarm so fiercely they trap you inside your own head. It’ll take a lot of therapy and Ben & Jerry’s to get through, and you’re going to upgrade from the pint-sized to the half-gallon sized at least once. 

The rest of that year, though? It’ll be gorgeous. You’ll find a community of people that, when you come back to it, make your room at home feel smaller because they won’t be there to fill it with love and laughter. In your classes, you’ll finally get to focus on what you love to do. You’ll learn more about who you are, what’s important to you and how needed self-care is. 

The truth is that the coin will fall somewhere in the middle; the year is going to be a mixed bag. But, you’ll get through it. You’ll realize that your life isn’t one left to luck or chance. It’s one that can be changed. You can get help when you need it. Confide in people you trust. Open your heart to your outlets, old ones like writing and new ones like yoga. You may not be able to dictate what happens to you, but you can choose how you react to it.

You’ll be okay, and so will I. Because when that coin stops spinning—when it finally lands—and it dares to be on the wrong side of destiny, you’re going to flip that sucker. Just like your past, present and future has taught you to.