Halloween: one of the few holidays where you can dress up in [almost] anything and not be judged for it. As I’m deciding on a Halloween costume for festivities, I can’t help but reflect on the stark contrast between my feelings on Hallows’ Eve now versus when I was a kid. These days, it’s quickly becoming one of my top favorite holidays, but back then, not so much.

As a kid, I didn’t think too highly of Halloween. Often times I had trouble finding a costume I actually wanted, as opposed to choosing what was in-store, and I was quite particular. To make the holiday even better, I don’t like chocolate (that’s ‘weird’, trust me, I already know) which was the primary type of candy handed out in a neighborhood where a good number of people turned their lights off when you got within twenty feet of their house. This pessimistic feeling of dread surrounding Halloween as a kid was only amplified further by the helicopter-parent run parties at your elementary school, unless of course, your school decides to ‘cancel’ Halloween one year to cut down on costumes being an “educational distraction” while you were encouraged to instead wear orange or black as a ‘substitute’. Lastly, Halloween is especially fun when you hate scary things; that tends to happen when as a small child you were made to watch the Scream movie and subsequently told the crazed killer was going to break in through your bedroom window at night and stab you. Isn’t that lovely?

As an adult, though, I view Halloween in a much different moonlight. There are few things I find more entertaining than a night in the city, in costume, going from party to party or venue to venue, bonding (or creating rivalries) with anyone you happen upon wearing the same ensemble. In the Octobers as of late, I also find enjoyment and slightly less judgment in dotting the month with one of my favorite shows, Scream Queens (unrelated to the aforementioned film). In fact, even my hatred of scary things has dissipated as I noticed in the plethora of haunted houses I experienced over the weekend. Though I was told I must have been having too much fun as apparently it’s not commonplace to laugh in the presence of chainsaw-wielding clowns and being ‘buried alive’. Whoops. Though I still may not be a fan of chocolate (or candy corn for that matter, but does anyone actually love that stuff?), I’ve warmed up to the holiday increasingly over the years and can’t wait for another costume-clad, autumnal weekend.