What if you could buy thoughts...like in a Thought Catalog?

Thought Catalogue is a website where writers blog about non-fictional things anywhere from what they did that day or why the Middle East cannot seem to get along. Though in most of the pieces I have read the various bloggers are reflecting on different aspects of their life. Today I read an article in which the author was suddenly hit by the realization that, now in his pre-graduate years, he is an adult who doesn’t care much for the small town he grew up in and the friends he had while he was there. He expressed that he had once loved the place and the people, wishing that they could all stay there in that time and never leave one another. Now, we all know that such a wish is impossible and reflects the mind of a child who is afraid of leaving the comfort of what he knows and who is unable to picture a future reality.

While I’m sure not everyone has felt the same way as that child, I sure have felt that way before and to some extent I feel that way now. While I was eager to be off on my own at college my senior year of high school was great. I had a good job, I made good grades, I had amazing friends, and, although there were the bad things, I was really very happy. I was afraid of leaving the comfort provided by the people whom I loved and who loved me back in exchange for the big scary unknown that is, well, completely unknown. It was so unknown that just like the child mentioned above I couldn’t fathom what the real future would hold. I couldn’t imagine it or see it. You know how sometimes if you’re thinking of something you haven’t experienced yet but you have pictures in your head of what it could be like (even though those expectations never come true)? Well instead of having a picture of life after high school would look like, I had what looked like a cloud—completely blank. Don’t misunderstand, I could hardly wait to leave my small town and venture into the unknown despite my fear, but my readiness to leave didn’t erase or eclipse the fear. I dealt with that fear by planning as much as I could for what I could plan, my dorm room and more specifically my bedding. I stressed out so much over that bedding because I had to see and touch what I was anxious over. I couldn’t let myself be anxious over a big, white cloud-sheet thingy that was the epitome of intangible.

Although people have and may still say I am driven, I don’t have a lighthouse that I am running to or that is directing me. I do not know where I am going. In the comfort of my friendships and life, here and at Oglethorpe, I can’t see the future and, although I am eager for it, I almost don’t want it to come.

I’m so excited for it to come or, rather, for me to go there…wherever there is.