It's been over a year since I first entered the blogosphere as a hapless teenager who thought of one day maybe sometime going to college and having a life, becoming an adult. But, looking back, I was still a kid.
Here's something they never tell you about growing up: it doesn't just happen. It can never just happen like it does in our collective imagination. Most of us assume that when they hand over a diploma or a college degree, we magically become attuned to the world around us -- at least, enough to function. But we're still just kids; but now we're kids with a piece of paper in our hands telling us we're adults.
Last year, I was a kid; today, I'm...what? An adult? I don't feel like I've gotten there, yet. I feel old, wizened, but never like I actually know much of anything. Sometimes the combination feels so bizarre I don't think I'll ever understand it.
New, and old, and ready to see. I suppose that's better than nothing -- and nothing is exactly what I would be if I had stayed the way I was.
So. Me.
I'm Celeste Victoria McLachlan; sometimes called the Witness, Celie...and, yes, Little Mouse. I'm nineteen years old, and an actress and journalist at heart. My best friend's name is Violet Marshall, and at the moment she's keeping an apartment safe for me in Ocean City, back home in Maryland. She stays there with her boyfriend, Riley.
Until recently I was living there with the two of them and with Avalesca Conquest, who, against all advice, left to find her own way, and Zeke Strahm, late of a certain police department in Massachusettes -- who has also since moved on.
Even here in safety, my teeth remain permanently on edge. And my rosary remains firmly around my neck.
I am Celeste Victoria. I'm a student at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts, and I am so ready to grow up.
