First Day of Cuddling

I am 18 years old (at least for the next eleven days), and I feel like this is a milestone in any aspiring adult's life. I am officially considered an adult in the eyes of the government. I can die for my country, I can smoke cigarettes, I can buy all of the kinky lust-infused pornographic content that my puny little not-fully-grown-and-all-too-sexually-repressed mind can imagine. But most importantly to me, right at this moment, here and now, is this:

I can sign my social security card.

So here I am, sitting in the lounge of my dorm floor (which, I'm also realizing, I probably haven't actually made a blog post about in all of the time that I've been here), staring at my social security card with a pen in my hand that I stole from a church somewhere (just in case my homosexuality was not enough to ensure my place in hell, I figure stealing a pen will do the job with finality), and for some reason I cannot muster up the nerve to sign my name on that goddamn line. (Pardon my French--no, wait, I don't know how to speak French. Silly idioms).

 F@$#%^er.

Part of that is my usual helping of social awkwardness: anything that has any ounce of finality to it causes my brain to scream out with all of the expletives that apply and several that don't. My irrational side tells me that maybe I'll do it wrong, there's no taking it back, if my hand slips then I'll be down one social security card and I'll be, as they say, fucked from here to eternity. (That darn French again. Someday I'll get a handle on it). Or a million other things will go wrong--I'll press down to hard and rip the paper, I'll sneeze when I'm writing and the pen will go everywhere, the friction of my pen against the paper will cause the card to burst into flames that will travel up my arm and onto the table and spread to everyone in the room, killing them all in a glorious yet fatal Hollywood-style explosion the kind that mankind had ever seen--and my brain makes its case for why I should just put my pen down and pretend that the card is just as valid without my signature. But even when I manage to ignore my brain telling me that the end is nigh, I still can't get around the feeling that I'm not ready yet.

"Burn I say. BURN."

I realized today that I have this habit of creating "rites of passage" out of nowhere. My graduation from high school? Rite of passage. My last debate tournament? Rite of passage. Signing my social security card, even though it makes no sense whatsoever and has no significance in my life other than me putting a pen down onto the paper (and potentially lighting the world aflame)? Rite of passage (somehow). My brain twists every experience into something significant for my life. Except not everything has some sort of significance. Today I went to the first day of a new book club (don't judge me, they were giving out free pizza). Will that change my life? Maybe, I dunno. Will the world burst into flames and/or musical numbers because of it? Probably not.

Conclusion, my brain needs to take a chill pill. You might say it needs some brain freeze, amiright?

Pictured: A perpetual state of brain freeze.

Ice puns aside, though, I tend to overthink things. It's like a storm going on inside of my head, and all of the different arguments are brawling with each other to escape the storm but none of them are really fast enough so they get swept away. Or something along those lines.

This may sound like a sudden revelation, but it isn't really. I mean, this entire blog is built around the idea that each post is about the first day of something, but that's kind of misleading. In fact, I already discovered this about myself over winter break, when I was at home and thinking about all of the funtimes that were to come with my newest semester and first day in classes that are in my actual major and--aw, to tell with it. Nothing that big was changing, and my rational mind knew it. So my rational mind fought back, and as I was packing my suitcase, I slipped a stuffed dog into it.

His name is Paunch, and I've been cuddling with him nightly.

I figure it's a good bit of rebellion against the irrational voices in my head: do something irrational enough that even my irrational mind didn't see it coming. Plus, it's just childish enough to convince my brain that I'm regressing instead of progression in my development (at least as far as maturity goes), so I think that counts as double points. Level up!

Bowser, digivolve to... SKULLGREYBOWSER. 

Paunch doesn't judge me for my childish tendency to look at every new day as a turning point in my life. Paunch just cuddles. And he's good at cuddling, too. He's a great cuddler. Paunch understands me. Shut up.

But in all seriousness, I'm not really sure what possessed me to think hey, I'm in college, now's a good time to pick up that old habit of sleeping with stuffed animals that I kicked when I was 7 but whatever it was, I pat that little maniacal genius on the back.

I kind of just wanted to use this picture again. Feel free to draw some sort of meaning from it.

I've actually started getting more sleep. I don't know why, but it helps me relax. And college produces a lot of unnecessary stress. I'll be the first to admit it: I'm an English major, I don't really deserve to have stress. But the lack of work-related stress gives way to life-related and insecurity-related stress, enough so that my work suffers and everything morphs into work-related stress in a cycle that I'm sure was invented by college administrators so that they could take our money for two years before we drop out and make room for a new group of unsuspecting young freshies.

So if it helps you to explain my behavior, let's just say that I've picked up my new 'sleeping-with-the-dogs' habit due to my irrational thought processes that are tied to my lack of sleep, all stemming from my inability to see normal days as anything other than monumental. 

I figure if I keep taking giant leaps backwards like this, I'll be able to sign my card in about four years. Maybe faster if I can work up the nerve to wear a diaper, but I doubt the likelihood of that particular one. Until then, I'll just stare at my card, pen in my hand, sobbing uncontrollably. Or maybe I'll just throw a party to celebrate the placing of the signature. I think I like that one better.