Freshmen year of college…what can I say about it?

It was an adventure.

It was a freaking emotional roller-coaster ride!

Let me start from the beginning: the first semester.

While unpacking and bringing some of my old life into a new one, I have to admit that I cried. While hanging my clothes in the closet, folding my shirts and pants in the drawers, filling up my desk with five-subject notebooks and Paper Mate pens, I was still in the middle of a free fall. I hadn’t landed on the idea that I was going to be alone.

The thought hadn’t hit me yet.

On the whole car ride there, I was having an anxiety attack in my head.

I don’t want to do this.

I’m not ready for this.

I am not ready for this to become the rest of my life!

I’m not ready to… grow up.

I felt like I was beyond unprepared.

Even while I was unpacking (and skipping the orientation ceremonies) the realization that I had graduated high school, had gotten into college, and would have to be living by myself hadn’t sunk in until my mom and I were standing in the doorway of the place I was supposed to call "home" for the rest of the year. I didn’t cry when she hugged me goodbye, or when she told me to take care of myself, I just hugged her back with a lump already building up in the back of my throat.

I always thought I’d be ready to leave it behind, to leave the small old town full of gossip, that I’d be ecstatic! I thought I was ready to leave my childhood behind, to leave myself behind.

I was wrong.

I was wrong when I watched my mother walk down the hallway.

I was wrong when I closed the door behind me.

I was wrong when I sat on my new, strange bed that smelled nothing like home.

I was wrong when I silently cried, crisscrossed on my bed, wanting to run across the room that felt like a cell, fly through the door and call out, “Mom!”

I gripped the sheets of my bed, stopping myself from running out.

For the rest of the night, I watched "Game of Thrones," trying to think of the bright sides to living on my own -- and trust me, I came up with a few.

1. Privacy. 2. Freedom. 3. Peace and much needed freaking quiet. 4. No curfews. 5. No more parents nagging me about chores. 6. More privacy.

Yet, as I watched Daenerys become the Mother of Dragons, I decided to become the master of my own fate. I decided that in order to become an author that wrote worlds made of stardust and myths, I had to survive my reality first. If I wasn’t able to destroy my monsters in the real world, how could I ever write about them in my work? I tried to think of my situation -- my fear -- as a blank page, a blank slate. I can fill it up with as many words as I want, I can choose who I want to be here, I can grow and forge myself into the heroines I always wanted to write about, but could never become. Maybe it was watching "Game of Thrones" that gave me a little courage, but I realized that I could be brave in my own way by starting this new chapter called "College." Instead of creating characters made of steel who had courage singing in their veins, maybe I could learn to be them.

Maybe it was time I grew up.

After confronting the scary aspect of living on my own, I had a new monster of anxiety to defend myself against, classes. It doesn’t matter if you’re in middle school, high school or college, walking into a new classroom full of strangers staring at you is still terrifying. So, you bet that a day before classes started, I made sure I knew where every single one of my classes were so that I wouldn’t be late (nothing scarier than showing up late to the class and interrupting the lecture of the person who holds your GPA in the palms of their hands) and could avoid the heart attack of walking into a classroom full of people who were actually on time. After the first week of classes, I was used to getting to class on time, and was getting used to my new classmates.

However, the workload was a different story.

It was a completely new shift.

Some professors spoke way too fast for my pen, and I ended up typing my notes on my laptop instead. Every time I brought my notebook to class, it would be filled with scribbles and words even I couldn't understand because I was writing at the speed of light. Some professors try to fit a week's worth of a normal high school’s lesson into one hour. I had to handle that same kind of teaching style for every professor, and it was a bit of an…adjustment to say the least. I was so used to being spoon-fed the notes for my high school classes, I was unequipped for the reality check that was thrown my way when writing my own. My notebook was a hurricane of words and incomplete sentences, and it looked like I wrote in another language that was far from English.

Also, if you thought my notes were a mess, don’t even get me started on the mountains of homework that was assigned, but was never graded. That's the bad thing about college -- if you don't do the homework, even if it’s not graded, you will fall behind. Then there's always that nagging, guilty feeling at the pit of your stomach of leaving homework unfinished, waiting until the last minute, and it stayed with me for the rest of the semester. It was why I spent most of my sleepless nights in the library or in the study lounge down the hall from my room, and actually forgot to eat. (Oh yeah, and I hadn't watched Game of Thrones since my first night in my room, so that was another hell I had to endure for the next three months.) Even if I was finished and a little ahead of one class, I still had a pile of work left to do for another. I was never finished! I never had a moment of peace! Plus, I had signed up for some clubs...I literally did. Not. Sleep. I might as well have been a vampire.

Yet, despite the nightmares of failing, of thinking I wasn't going to make it until dinner, let alone January, I made some friends during the semester. I found friends that read the same books I did and thank God watched "Game of Thrones!" I found some friends who had similar interests and some who didn't, but we grew closer despite our differences. It was like I had a second family, they made college feel like a second home. It no longer felt like a scary chapter of my life, but an adventure that I didn't have to undertake on my own.

I grew out of my Peter Pan complex that first half of the year. I learned that everyone has to grow up eventually, and time stops for no one, not even for me. I learned to manage my time more wisely, and to become more independent from my family. I had to learn to rely on myself instead of others, and although I had to do some things on my own, it didn't mean I was alone. The first semester of my freshman year in college was more than just an experience; it was also a lesson. I knew that I had to grow up, and that my story, my life, is only beginning.