The last time I went to Homecoming I had braces, a 4.0 GPA, and what I now believe to be a naïve hopefulness for the world. Freshman year was a time of optimism; the world was my oyster and Homecoming was my pearl. 

My biggest priority at the time was experimenting with how to get a date. I had my eyes set on one boy and grew dismayed when the dance was nearing and I still didn’t receive my poster with a clever pun and flowers. 

So intentionally, in front of him, I bitterly stated to a friend that if anybody asked me to the dance I would rip up his poster and take his gifts of food. Unbeknownst to me, he had plans to ask me with said poster and flowers. I don’t have to say what went wrong there… Clearly, during freshman year, rather than attracting dates like sugar, I repelled them like bug spray. 

 As Homecoming draws nearer this year, I’m faced with all the anxieties of a freshman and the pressures of an upperclassman. After all, homecoming is supposed to be a big deal.

As a junior who is considered to emanate “senior energy” by others, I’m supposed to have it all figured out—but I don’t. In fact, I have no idea what I’m doing. 

To freshman me’s excitement but current me’s dismay, I’m going with a date this year. It’s an exciting new development but is also just one more thing to add to the stress of going homecoming. As I write this two weeks before the dance, I’m fraught with whether or not I should let my date fulfill every teen girls’ dream of being asked with a poster and flowers, or if that expectation is severely outdated, and I have to ask him myself as the modern, twenty-first-century woman I am. 

And as for my outfit, last Homecoming (two years ago), I wore the last size two left of a dress I had settled on. Looking back at group pictures you can see my short sleeve tan line as I flashed my metal smile with one-inch, five-year-old heels that obviously weren’t mine.

Homecoming was just around the corner and I still didn’t know what I’m shopping for. Yes, I knew I was looking for a dress, but if I Googled “best Homecoming dresses in San Diego” or “cute tulle dresses,” I got online retailers all sold out of my size. 

In an attempt to find a unique dress, I resorted to looking through Teen Vogue’s list of “best Prom dress websites,” and eventually, in desperation, ended up on Yelp. I probably spent hours visiting each website they offered, adding dozens of  tabs to my Google search bar. 

As time was running out on my package arriving on time with free standard shipping, I settled on a mint slip dress from a store I vehemently said I wouldn’t be purchasing from to spare me from being called one of the most heinous insults in the English dictionary—basic. 

Most tragically, my make-up. Don’t even get me started with my makeup. I’ve been trying to learn how to apply mascara and minimal eyeliner these past few months, just for my little sister to say it looks severely asymmetrical and for a coworker to refer to me as a 12-year-old girl. 

Despite all my worries and the anxiety I felt, I’m trying to look at the prospects of Homecoming through a new lens. Yes, I’m still very anxious, and yes, I’m still stressed, but if I put on whatever dress I can conjure, paint on whatever makeup I can muster, and slap a large grin on my face, maybe I’ll make it through the night undetected as the impostor I am.

The long-awaited night is what I make it, and rather than viewing it as a beautiful pearl that bogs me down with anxiety and expectations, I choose to view it as a shrimp:

It’s puny and insignificant in the large ocean of my high school career, but I have the capacity to only enhance my experience with it. I can fry it, slather it with butter, and season it with spices; there are so many possibilities, but I won’t allow a bad time to be one of them.