"It’s getting late, It’s time to go, The paper moon is fading slow. But the night keeps moving on and it takes you in and brings you home."

I am dumbfounded that I’m returning to Mizzou tomorrow (or today since its quite early in the morning). Extremely excited and ready, but still sort of in shock that by tomorrow afternoon I will be in the Midwest, not to return home for almost four months. How can I be curled up in my enormous bed in my big, beautiful bedroom one night and then the next be sharing one of 125 rooms in a huge sorority house on a college campus in Missouri?

It isn’t the change that bothers me. I enjoy change, I find the desperate urge to spice things up every once and awhile, it keeps everything interesting. And I’m ecstatic to be going back to Mizzou and having a huge change of pace and environment. The issue I’ve discovered is not that I dislike change, but that I despise transitions. Change, overall is just fine and peachy; it’s that specific moment of undergoing the change that insights a melancholy within me.

Yes, I want to go back to school, but as I was doing laundry in my basement while watching TV and eating a flavor ice I was suddenly so sad about having to leave my home. I LIKE being able to do my laundry and leave it in piles all over my basement floor. I like that I’m in my house and I can just go about my business without having to worry about a roommate. I was upset about having to leave the comforts of home. Yet once I get out there I know I won’t even realize what I’m missing. And the same holds true on the other hand; the day before I’m coming home from school I get a little sad that I’m leaving my routine and independent living to come home to a noisy household, I dread not being able to come and go as I please without explaining myself. It’s that moment of actual transition that really irks me because once I’m back in point A or B, I don’t want to be anywhere but where I am.

It’s true for something not quite so drastic as moving between home and college, night and day for instant. I always got kind of depressed around 5pm. I would be finishing up homework, could hear my mom making dinner in the kitchen and my father would come home from work and I knew the day was essentially over, especially if it was winter because by that time it was pitch black out. I love night time, and once it hit 7, I was happy and fine. Its just the time where one thing is ending but the other has yet to begin that bogs me down. Obviously the same is true for the morning. I hate getting out of bed. Hate it. But once I finally get up, shower and dress, I’m ready for the day that awaits me. But those few, sacred moments where I snuggle between the sheets as I smack the snooze button really just suck.

You can probably infer that I’m in that state of transition as I write this. It’s the night before I leave, everything is packed and all the loose ends tied up. Yet I’m not there yet. I still have to get up, deal with the nonsense that is the airport, fly and get to school. Once I’m finally there and moving in I’ll be in heaven once again. I just hate the in-between, I hate being in the state of change. I’d rather have undergone change, or be approaching it than actually experiencing it.

I don’t have anything insightful to really add here, it’s as simple as black and white (none of that “in-between gray” shit, obviously I’m not in the mood). I haven’t fully left my Jersey state of mind but I’m still miles away from my fun, college being. I’m moving in between my two lives and while I love each and squeeze as much as I can out of them while I’m there, the short time spent stuck in between the two places me in this awful state of limbo. I’m still holding onto the previous life, sad to be leaving it, and the next one I’ve yet to fully reach. The excitement of one and sadness of the other seem to cancel each other out and I’m left with this hollow sort of feeling. Sigh. It will be gone oh-so-soon once I move into 503 Kentucky Boulevard and begin life in my new home. But until then, I’m undergoing a sort of identity crisis… no longer the jersey girl safe at home and not yet the crazy college (still JERSEY) girl. (What can I say? You can take the girl out of Jersey, but you can’t take the Jersey out of the girl…) The only perk to this transition is that most of it is spent in an airport with an ample supply of Starbucks and magazines.

I’m sure I’ll update tomorrow with a much more Mizzou-inspired blog post, but for now I can grapple for the anticipated excitement and try to ignore the little breaking of my heart, and just say MIZ--- ZOU! RAWR! <3