This summer was so nice and toasty. The warm embrace of the sun, complemented by colorfully (high) musings on the weekends. A nice beer buzz while I studied for my chem test out at the pool. God, I could tell it was to be a glorious 3 months of empty thoughts.

One sunny suburban day, I went to Walmart to grab a few things... and as I leave, a man pulls me aside and tells me that I am being arrested for shoplifting. That's fair, I suppose. As I walked towards my doom, my life's dreams spiraled tauntingly, further away from my mental grasp. A torturous whirwind of jail, court, community service, corrections classes, and probation all sprung up out of the air and centered itself on my shoulders... compounding slowly into this bigass ominous weight that made my life seem like a greyscale dead-end road.

I was in jail - and all I could think about was the shit at my house. They were going to find all of it. Also, med school is not happening. You are a criminal. Just drop out of college, now. Reverberating over and over for 16 hours in cold, solitary confinement.

And before I even remembered I had parents, I came back to an empty home at 4am with the help of a friend. I sat on the couch just waiting for them. Where were they were looking? Days passed and life resumed, but with a funk that I couldn't shake off.

I didn't know what to do with all of the stolen merchandise - there was this creeping suspicion that a private investigator had been following me in hopes of getting the rights to a search warrant. But you see, the paranoia came down in showers as the ordeal progressed in smaller steps. Before court, I knew that I could be sentenced to a year in jail. Before I went to my probation officer,  I feared my drug screen would show all of the crazy chemicals I smoked into my body. Then what was to become of me? Oh my God, then the community service was just a daunting insurmountable task - that I knew would spill over into the academic year, but how the fuck was I going to handle community service in college? Wait, how was I going to travel to my probation officer from college?!?! But wait - I still need to think about the drug screen. Shit and I have that chem test tomorrow. Fuck what if the cops bust through my door tonight and find all this shrink-wrapped merchanidse strewn about my bedroom floor...

But then I went to court and all I got was a slap on the wrist.

My probation officer didn't require a drug screen.

I finished my 40 hours of community service working 4 nights in a row.

This is going to come clean off my record.

And I just finished chem with an A-

The new academic year starts in a few weeks and all of this behind me. Still, it feels like there's something to worry about. The madness is over. I've managed it all away. Yet my mind is tugging violently so it can run through nothing but open space. I am so anxious. WHY?!

Also, I am never shoplifting again. I now lead the life of a clean and virtuous college student.