Hypengyophobia.

I'm sitting here figuring out what I'm going to do for the next 4 hours before photo, and this house is so empty, and I remember when it wasn't like this on campus. There would at least be people coming in and out between classes, half-heard conversations on cell phones, or random knocks on my door when I had skipped a class and Becky had something that she wanted to tell me and only me. I remember how I used to would never be up at this hour if I didn't have to be, and how my dorm windows were covered with navy curtains. The first time I put them up, Becky swore they were black, and in the following weeks, continued to ask me if I was depressed. Now, I have a great big window, and haven't the money to buy blinds, so the sun wakes me up these days.

How is it possible that I have this feeling deep in my pores, this feeling that I've graduated when I haven't even begun this Senior year? Maybe because I've graduated from the typical Union student. I live off campus now, I'm engaged, and I'm a Senior. I think of the future, and pieces of it are exciting, but more of it is scaring me each day. The closer it gets, the more apprehensive I become. It isn't so much a cold feet of getting married. It's cold feet from life. And marriage is a part of this ticking ally, so it's naturally one of the things that I think about often.

I woke up this morning and ate 3 reeses and 2 pull and peel twizzlers from the candy bowl downstairs. I do that often, eat candy for breakfast. I love the way chocolate tastes in the morning. Tasting it as the first taste of the day is one of my favorite things. I only do it every once in awhile, so that it doesn't become routine and so it doesn't lose its appeal. But I have this anxiety that certain things like that are going to fade away from me. I was so much more of an individual when I was in high school. I'm so much less of what I once was. I think college did that, although I don't know if I can blame one thing. College has seemed to have beaten me into conformity, whether I've fought against it or not. So marriage, this next obvious milestone, is it too going to take other things from me, like chocolate in the mornings and watching reruns of the same halloween shows I have taped on a VHS my mother made for me 15 years ago? Will he even like Halloween as much as me?

College was just another high school for me. I had just become confortable with being myself around my Junior year. I wore a childs size batman shirt with a cape on the back, and wore it with confidence. In fact, most of my wardrobe came from the little boys section of goodwill. I had spurts of gothic and punk attire, and I mixed them up until what I had for clothes was anything but ordinary. But then, when I realized I was going to college, I told mom I needed "grownup clothes." So, we bought heels and suit jackets (because that's what they wore in the movies when the kids went to NYU) but tested the waters first to see if I should wear them. What I found was that not many people stood out from the crowd. Most just blended in. At my high school, many people stood out, and it was accepted that you stood out. So, to avoid being too different, t-shirts and jeans was what I wore at Union. Isn't it funny that I chose to stand out back then because it was accepted? Maybe I'm a true poser. I just know that where before I got saved I wanted to be rejected from society, when I got saved, I wanted to be a part of it. And that's actually backward too, isn't it?

This whole history of shapeshifting sometimes has me wondering who I am. I could say that I'm a gothic at heart, but I wouldn't want to wear gothic clothes everyday. I could say I'm just a casual person, but then I would want to wear heels. It's all indecision. And I wonder how much of my "fashion" history was due to what others thought was cool. I was gothic more with my goth boyfriend, punk more with my punk boyfriend. And it scares me and makes me think that now, I'm not necessarily trying to impress anyone, so is this me? Boring, me? But I know that I want to dress differently, and I have this individual side trying to come out, but it's stifled, for whatever reason I still don't know.

And this, of course, is all rambling and digression.

The sum of this is that I am finding myself a bit depressed and worried these days. I'm worried that all of my life's dreams will slip away from me. I'm worried I'll become cookie-cutter and blend in like I have all these years. I'm worried he'll one day wake up and realize we're not as similar as we thought we were, and the little things that I hold dearest he will find unnecessary and silly. Because they are little. Some of them most people don't even know about. Like that I love Halloween so much, that each year I don't get to trick or treat, I actually get really upset. That I will stay on the couch for the whole week before watching nothing but my VHS tape and Halloween specials on t.v. I seriously LOVE Halloween.

Or that I have to have something hot almost every night when it starts to get cold. Hot chocolate is my favorite, but I also like Chai. But my favorite hot chocolate is what my mom used to make, cinnamon hot chocolate. That's what makes me really happy.

We will come together and have favorites from our pasts, and what if the other person can't give that favorite to them? What if I can never make his grandmother's spaghetti like she makes it? What if he doesn't like my Halloween specials? It's all unecessary anxiety, of course. But it just things that you think about when you know that in 9 months, your life will be joined with another's.

We were all sitting around the table in the kitchen trying to name our fish. I sat back, and for the first time since I've lived here, I felt like I hadn't graduated from a typical Union student. The house was loud and full. It reminded me of my sophomore year, what I will currently recall as the best year of my college existance. All-nighters in the photo house, and countless hours in the blazing hot DMS lab. Woods haunted with white t-shirted men, and caravans to various cities for punk concerts.
All of that seems like there's no time for it anymore. I'm working to save up for my life after this place, and what free time I have, I need to spend thinking of grownup things. I hate that there's no time to have pointless fun anymore. The fun must be well-intentioned and thought out. I hope I'm wrong. I really do.


This is why characters like Peter Pan and Pippi Longstocking are created from adult minds. We all try to get back to those days.

I just didn't know that my efforts would come so soon.