I've noticed a bit of pattern with myself recently. The last few things I've written for Odyssey have been a bit more...heavy and even a bit emotionally draining. I think that's because those are so much easier for me to write because I can stop thinking.

I didn't start writing for Odyssey because I wanted views, the official Facebook page to share it or something else that seems ridiculous to me. I started writing for Odyssey simply because I enjoy writing. I don't have to think when I'm writing. I don't have to cater it to a professor or an academic or a peer. It honestly feels more like I'm writing to myself than anyone else, and that's the feeling that makes writing so easy and therapeutic. I can just put down whatever comes to mind without interruption from anybody else who has their own two cents they want to contribute or "life-changing" advice they want to give me. If they want to say anything at all, they have to listen to my piece first. Knowing that is liberating.

I'm used to being talked over and ignored. I'm not exactly the loudest voice in the hen house here. The fact that, for once, my words come first before anyone else's is really all I need to make any of this worthwhile. It's what makes it easy to talk about the heavy stuff, the stuff that weighs on my chest and makes it hard to breathe, the stuff that lasts beyond the nightmares to haunt the waking world.

But even when it's easy, it's draining. Talking about the heavy stuff. Sometimes you just need a day where you put on those rose-tinted glasses and pretend everything is okay.

So, for the sake of a break and the art of pretending, here goes nothing.

A new semester has started. It's the first week of classes, surrounded by new and old faces, and you introduce yourself to new professors. It almost feels like I never left. If it wasn't for the snow and slightly rearranged room, I might have even believed I never had.

Everything in my room had been exactly the way it had been left, right down to my messy bed and chaotic closet. The other people on my floor were just as friendly and open as they had been, and the smiles that lit up their faces as they greeted people they hadn't seen since leaving was infectious. It makes you feel light and airy, like marshmallows or sponge cake.

Those smiles painted with pure happiness; I want to feel that as much as possible for as long as possible. I want to let that feeling be the glue that brings all my broken pieces back together again to become something beautiful and extraordinary so that there's no more pretending required in order to say "I'm okay."