The Scary Part

I know it's terribly rude of me to disappear for a long time and give no huge-long post about what I've been doing,

but that post will come immediately after this one.

Right now I'm facing a very real and raw emotion. In an hour or so my family will be piling into our car and driving across town to our favorite Mexican restaurant Mi Casa, which coincidentally is everyone else in Corbin's favorite Mexican restaurant. I'm not joking, either- wherever you go in town, at whatever event or place, at least 3 people will be wearing a Mi Casa T-shirt.

But that statistic is not the base of my very real and raw emotion.

The fact is, we are taking my German exchange student Winni there for a good-bye dinner of sorts because on Tuesday we'll be plopping her on a jet plane and there's a very probable chance I'll never see her again. And when I think about that, I think about Winni packing her bags up and leaving a barren and empty room that will more than likely never be quite as clean as it was before she settled in months ago. There will always be some sort of note or picture frame or nail polish stain on the carpet that she'll never think about but exists nonetheless.

I think about that, and then I think about myself in a month doing the same type of packing, a full blown 'living' type of packing, versus the less-vital 'visiting' packing. I was rushed with this overwhelming feeling, or rather, a messy blended up chunky fruit cocktail of every feeling I could possibly shove into my chest, that scoured away a lot of the dreamy visions and surreal expectations of my future and left me with a realistic insight.

No one will be there to tell me that I was right in making a hard decision. I won't have anyone to ask me how my day went- there won't be anyone for me to be 100% comfortable around and vent to about how difficult it is to always keep my chin up for this first two or three weeks of school. But these things aren't even the scariest part.

This isn't going to be my house anymore.

From now on, I'm a visitor when I come home. At Christmas I'll be plopping down on mom's couch. Sleeping in my old room. In a way I'll be homeless- temporarily living in a dorm room for a year, and then moving into a new temporary dorm room, all the while knowing that the dorm-room swapping is also in itself temporary.

It's logical that my feeling this suddenly and strongly is a release of all those feelings I should have felt when I graduated. You know, "Oh this is it! I'm an adult! This is the end! Everything's different!" except now I'm lacking all the other gown-clad and teary eyed teenagers around me to hug me and giggle/squeal with me about how exciting and scary the future is. All I really have is a blank computer screen to try and connect with, and my Dell moved out of his parent's house a long time ago. He's a little unsympathetic.

I hate if this post is anyone's first read on this blog, because I'm so excited and happy about what college and the future has in store that 90% of my day I have a semi-conscious slap-stick grin on my face, and the other 10% my foot is wiggling with excitement (also semi-consciously).

But I have to be honest, and honestly, Growing Up Sucks.