Zoe Berg

Converse-clad feet dragged on the ground. A wig itched my head. Holding a goodie bag weighed down with Twix, I walked the path of my last Halloween. It was chilly, a few years before climate change turned my Maryland suburb into a 60-degree October oasis. I was somewhere between 11 and 12. My breath still fogged in the air. At my side were the girls I would spend every Oct. 31 with for the next five years. They, too, were experiencing their last Halloween. We held hands, skipping from house to house, completely unaware of the finality of the familiar scene. 

From late preschool until seemingly eternal tweenagehood finally ended, Halloween meant a few things to me. It meant an unabashed celebration of my neurotic imagination, an opportunity to mold myself into every — and I do mean every — female character from “Harry Potter.” It meant wandering the streets without parents, pointing out the best decorations and ranking treat offerings based on taste, size and number we were allowed to snatch from metal mixing bowls. Assuming my parents let me ride my sugar high into the wee hours of the morning, it also meant another Nov. 1 birthday, slowly creeping towards an exciting epithet ending with “teen.” With every late night horror movie screening and high-stakes candy exchange on a friend’s bedroom floor, I became a year older. And each year, we told the story of my mom: 9 months pregnant, on bed rest, but unable to restrain herself from getting up for every trick-or-treater until she went into labor.

While Halloween felt intensely exciting and grown-up for me in this face-painted, glitter-strewn decade, there was an inherent innocence to it. It was about group costumes before they required complex maneuvers of friend group politics. It was about gorging on candy before calories itched at the back of our minds. It was about candid pictures taken by parents instead of posed, kissy-face digital camera flicks. 

Then, there was the last Halloween. Sometime after that, we realized that we were taller than the trick-or-treaters. Our voices were deeper. We no longer fit in. I gave my goodie bag to my little sister and went to find something new. 

Now, this holiday has a different meaning. No longer wear face paint and glitter, but eyeliner and corsets. No longer Halloween, but Halloweekend. Don’t get me wrong — I still look forward to it every year. But it’s undeniably altered by a sort of hazy, sepia-colored filter. Friends change, leaving each other out of nights they used to join with held hands. Birthdays bring inevitable tears, moving relentlessly forward towards a terrifying adulthood. As each Oct. 31 blurs into Nov. 1, I’m looking back at funhouse mirror reflections of myself. Each costume, each face, each picture, multiplied by nineteen, matured me to who I am now. I can still see the monkey costume of my first Halloween as a baby, my mom’s water breaking as she handed candy to one trick-or-treater after another. 

There, for me, lies the true scariness of Halloween. The only thing I’ll be frightened of this weekend is my 19th birthday approaching like a freight train, signaling another year of inevitable change. Fortunately, that’s also where the magic of Halloween is preserved. With late nights and held hands. With new traditions and new friends. With new last Halloweens.