a work in progress. using writing as a way to process emotions i struggle with, not to be good, or even palatable.
will be mentions of self harm and sexual violence.
I moved here in the winter. In the silence swallowed by snow and wind. My neighbors were footsteps down the hall. The occasional face I found in passing was of a young professional. I suppose some mirror of myself; everyone here was moved by the same goals and ambition. But I saw men with wool coats and fine-framed glasses, leather boots out of budget for a twenty-three-year-old student. Under the veil of hungering snow my puffy down felt like poverty. If only to shroud myself in murky blues, grey, black, beige, the delicate stenciling of checkers and houndstooth, maybe some cheeky mustard or mauve. Bland, streamlined. Wasn’t this the quiet display of wealth and status? The best way to distinguish my neighbor's idealized socioeconomic class, how he viewed himself in society, seemed to come down to the quality of his clothes and the time he spent on his hair.
Against my best wishes, I wanted to fit in. I wanted to exist among the ranks of the graduate-elite. The Best and The Brightest who had immaculate LinkedIn profiles and sharp remarks, who packed themselves lunches and went to the gym. They did Important Work with the tenured faculty and looked impressive doing it. Unfortunately, I did not know how to do my hair, and I was petrified of spending money.
My neighbors continued on in the creaks and moans of my building. Sometimes I saw them on the bus ride home from campus, and I closed my eyes.
The weather was getting to me, it ignited flares of depression or something akin. My nails grew in with some horizontal grooves and I was sure I was dying. I wanted to try getting out of my head. I had just ended a relationship and was starting to convince myself that I was a self-obsessed narcissist with a penchant for self-pity. I realized I was incapable of conceptualizing that other people had lives and problems and worries and troubles unrelated to myself, and when I found out about such matters it was greatly distressing. Part of me thought this was incorrect, as I knew other people had issues—I could sympathize, I could cry for other people’s pain—but at the same time I felt that I must be seeing the entire world through a thick lens of myself. Whenever I silently criticized my friends for being self-centered, I wondered where all of my blind spots must be. I wondered if they were glaringly obvious, if they perhaps coated and defined my entire person, but I was embarrassingly unaware. This thought made me feel scared, and I hoped that if I truly was absorbed by self-indulgent vanity and oblivious to it, it would wear off as I got older. All young people are expected to be a little self-centered, no? Youth is a time where you must figure out your identity and opinions and place in the order of things—this requires an inward focus…these were words I learned in a psychology class and told myself in order to feel better.
I lived in a sort of industrial dead-zone between wider campus and the city. Within walking distance I had many places to slip on ice, get hit by cars, smoke, or fall down dead, as wall as an grocer with unpredictable hours, a liquor store, and a CVS. It was basically all I needed, I could take the bus elsewhere, but I did long for a coffee shop in which I could while away the hours and get drunk off of the fumes of burnt coffee. A perpetually-open tab in the back of my mind was an altar where I prayed for an espresso press, but I became woozy when prices were over $50 and choices were greater than two.
That morning I had neglected going somewhere I was really supposed to be. I was getting eerily good at this. So I was avoiding opening my email to see messages from people 1. upset or 2. seriously concerned about my well being. It was not fun dealing with those of the first type, but the better I got at convincing myself that I was a terrible person, the more they aligned with my worldview, and the better they served a purpose as kindling. Dealing with the second type was another matter altogether, as they made me feel real psychological dread. I did not like thinking about other people thinking about me, and I especially did not like thinking about causing them worry. A brief flash in the pan of annoyance or frustration… sure, they’ll get over it, but to have a stranger fret over me? It made me want to vomit. It made me want to cut myself and have unsafe sex with violent men. It was too much to think about. I didn’t like checking my email.
Instead I crawled out of bed around noon and made a fresh pot of coffee. I pulled the leftovers out of the fridge and stabbed at them a bit without heating anything up. Fixing a plate sounded like too much work so I tucked it all away again, the jars of condiments and pickles tinkling like fairy bells as the fridge door slammed shut. I poured a mug of coffee and tried to tune the radio to the news station. It was half static no matter what it was set to; it had been acting up ever since I moved. After frustrating myself for a while, I thought about my coffee getting cold, and I sat on the couch in silence.
It was perpetually silent.
The mornings were the worst, right when I woke up. The mornings were the time that I opened my eyes in bed and was met by the cold white light of the sun through my window and all the thoughts rushed in to meet me. All the thoughts about how I was already late for everything, somehow, and it would probably be for the best if I killed myself. At the very least, I should drop out of college. If not that, then seriously, I should find a way to get violently raped right now. After cycling for a bit on the nature of my person, the only way to get rid of the feelings would be to feel nothing at all, so I’d sleep some more, and it would be noon, and I’d get out of bed feeling cracked open like a nut. Like all the life had been driven out at some point, and now I was here again, standing in front of my bathroom mirror like it so happened every morning, and I didn’t know what the hell to do with myself.