One year later

Last month marked one year of living back at home after 5 years of being on my own. I was a little bit afraid that I would hate it, and all signs pointed that way when I returned in with 5 years' worth of accumulated junk and only one place to put it all: my old room, which had since been painted shocking green and redecorated like Loompaland. My mother doesn't have a lot of patience with extra anything sitting around her house, and I couldn't even convince her to let me keep my favorite mugs in the cabinet. But I somehow managed to work it out, and as it turned out she needed me there more than I could have known, as she and my father were about to go through a fairly difficult divorce process.
A new habit that I've picked up since living back at home has been an irrational fear of the dark, which has never really bothered me before. I have a hard time falling asleep because leaves falling from the trees outside are, to my ears, identical to the sound of a large man with crazy eyes jimmying our door open with a crowbar. I hate turning all the lights off at night, because I know that as soon as I do it will signal to the gang of Axe Murderers/Devil Worshipers/Chupecabras/Clowns waiting in our backyard that everyone is going to bed and NOW is the time to strike. I never felt like this when I lived in an apartment.
I have always walked around in a pearly cloud of happy memories of one specific apartment I used to live in with my friend Angela, somewhere we only lived for a year but never actually wanted to leave. If that makes sense. Just the other day Angela told me that the girl currently living in that same apartment had left her door unlocked while running down to the store. When she came back, a man jumped out of the closet, held a knife to her throat and tried to rape her. Fortunately, she got free and the man fled, but it happened in MY APARTMENT. Even though I haven't lived there in 3 years and it is on the opposite side of town, since hearing that I now turn a movie on before falling asleep. My favorite is Braveheart, because an intruder outside the window will hear it and think twice about entering a house full of medieval Scottish clansmen shouting like that. It worked in Home Alone didn't it?
A year later, though I have dealt with some pretty sappy nostalgia where my apartment-living days were concerned, there has only been the odd impulse to move back out. I have chosen not to because I graduate in a couple of months and I honestly don't know where I'll be after that. The biggest temptation comes from my old longtime roomie, Angela, who would love moving back in with me as much as I would love to move back in with her, but at this stage in my life I don't know if Senior Citizen Alyse can handle the antics that would ensue. Antics that made us famous in three and a half counties. Represent.