Until now, I have spent the past two and a half months of summer blissfully unaware of the fact that two and a half months were going by. I did just write something a few weeks ago about my feelings about summer being halfway over, but even then it seemed like more of a formality. I was able to state summer was halfway over, but I didn't actually feel it. I knew what was happening, but the time wasn't there yet so I selectively chose not to think about it.
And now, it's August. Not even August 1, it's August 4, and when this comes out it'll be August 8. In other words, a few weeks until it's officially back-to-school time.
Any other year, I wouldn't have cared that much. It's fun to get back to your college friends, and get back into that work hard/play hard routine, and do other college things like Netflix for seven hours in a row and drink rose from Solo cups on Friday nights while prank-calling boys (does anyone else do that?) like the classy and mature group of young people we are.
Even now, I'm excited to get back into the swing of things. Having a schedule, becoming drunk best friends with the random girl in your English class in the lacrosse house's bathroom, that kind of thing. But this is the last year I can feel this way, this sense of calamity and predictability about what's coming up.
When it was far enough away, like yesterday, I could see myself walking/strutting down the streets of NYC or Boston next year like the confident, sophisticated post-grad female that I am, Ray-Bans and a genuine smile because all I can think about it how post-grad life isn't that bad! I would go to Happy Hour with my fun colleagues and I could also see myself getting a miniature, fluffy dog with my apartment-mate or something.
But it feels too real now. Too soon, too imaginable. Maybe it was my dad's comment last night, "You know you're not living at home after college, right?" that is causing panic. I don't know.
Either way, the fear of change I always knew I had, but that only really emerges under rare circumstances like when Starbucks got rid of their red holiday cup, is bubbling up and causing a lot of post-grad images of myself as a jobless, no-plan, no-fluffy-dog girl living at home with debt and a negative attitude.
It's easier to look at the future when technically I still have a year until I have to actually face this future. I'll get back to you then about how things are going.
