today walking through the university of michigan campus i realized that i wanted to go back to oberlin. this was after weeks of sometimes not wanting it, just wanting to keep spending all my money on comet coffee and rope yoga and employee meal sandwiches too big to fit into your belly in the 20 minutes of break time. but i kept seeing the people i wanted to see where they weren't, like displaced ghosts, and i wanted wilder bowl so bad i almost just let myself want it, instead of changing my mind a minute later just so i could not have what i wanted, or at least not want what i have.

this month i am experimenting with acting in grown-up ways i always considered perpetually too grown up to ever act- my winter term project is an unofficial delving into romance based off of richard linklater films and my own misguided worst nightmares, as i've always felt an aversion to happiness. i feel half twelve and half thirty, and don't know whether to wait for a collapse straight out of middle school hallways, or for sprawling pipe dream realizations of front porches and kitchen counters. sometimes i do not feel old enough for myself, don't trust myself saying grown-up things to someone and don't trust them believing what was said. when are we old enough to know what we want and mean it? or maybe it's the opposite, when are we old enough to stop knowing what we want. or worse, we say we know what we want, not knowing when we're old enough to trust our horrible young selves.