There was a time in my life when writing columns was my favorite thing to do. It was my personal coping mechanism to let the words exude out of me in a well-constructed yet slightly overused metaphor. 

My eyes would graze the staff story calendar aching for my column week to arrive, and when it finally did, I could practically see the stress lift from my tense shoulders. Not only because columns are the shortest word count I have to meet, but because it was the simplest way for me to explain how I was feeling without the world having to ask. 

I didn’t actually have to let any words slip from my brain and fall out of my mouth in order to share, and even the slightly too-personal of thoughts were well discussed in a heap of words on the screen that was never too revealing. 

The slightest chance that the right person happened to read it, and now know even just a fraction of my inner monologue made all the hours I spent picking apart each conversion I had with myself and each thought I chose not to share aloud worth it.  

But now, I would rather fill the calendar with reviews and lifestyle stories. I would rather go on double the number of interviews for features and profiles than confront my emotions in the form of a column. 

While speaking my thoughts and disputes through my voice to my parents or my best friend is effective, I can still conceal my inner perspective as I please and simply weep about the problem at hand, rather than the anxieties that are actually weighing me down. 

But when I am writing, I am overwhelmed in a specific type of way that speaking doesn’t even compare to. Like a ball of yarn being dropped off a cliff, I just unravel, and when I start to tangle, I just search for new words to describe the same feeling until eventually, I am just a string strung out and exhausted. 

And while this used to be beneficial to get my inner thoughts out of me and onto paper, and although the end result made me feel lighter, now, I want to hide my feelings and keep them within for fear the wrong person might read them and misinterpret the things that are so dear to me. 

My feelings about senior year and the variety of memories that have happened within the first few weeks. My unpopular opinions and personal issues. I have now deemed them all too much for anyone to handle but me. I grasp on to them because confrontation—such as a column—of their content is what I am more afraid of.

Somewhere between the ages of 14 and 17, my words got filtered through, and now I am simply stuck dodging these columns rather than awaiting their arrival as I once did. 

Never did I ever think I would find myself wishing to be an underclassman again; however, in this case, I hope to get her back eventually.