Thinking about my future used to consist of me closing my eyes, imagining an ‘after college’ life that I could only dream of.  Living in my apartment or with a significant other outside of Memphis, this place I once hated.  Writing, because writing is the end-all, be-all.  Writing is what I am.  My future would be filled with happiness and love.  My future would be perfection because I would be the person I have always wanted to be.

I am not going to New York or California.  I am not going to spend my summer huddled in a perfectly-sized apartment by the beach, knocking out the next great American novel.  After the end of this week winds down I will be left with palms open to the sky, attempting to catch answers to the extreme multitude of questions I am asking.

I am at a loss of who I am or what I am supposed to be doing.  I long to travel and escape, but I also long to stay and wrap myself in the comforts found in my old, familiar life.  The world is huge and terrifying, and I am just one person.  I am just me, and the future has become the present.

By no means am I disappointed with my life or the decisions I have made.  I would never seek to turn back and change anything that I have done.  Everything, even my glorious, horrible mistakes, has helped me become the person I am.  Or, that is, the person I am becoming.  Whoever that is.

This is my life at a crossroads.  Finishing college in a few months, either continuing a job or claiming a new one, moving into a new house.  In the lack of the structure of University life, I am already feeling antsy. 

College defines who we are.  I am a college student, I am a sorority girl, I am, I am.  Now, as new graduates, we must seek to define ourselves out of college as we are pushed into the future – into a world we thought we knew or think we know.  And so we feign our maturity and preparedness, walking wide-eyed into these new, open spaces.