night one

This is what I wrote the first night here at Pretentious Liberal Arts College.

The steady beat of coordinated fun is being hammered through these windows. This is truly awful. Palms up I fed that mouth, it's breath was too warm and the smell of paper was too much for me, the weight of brick and the lawns that never grew. And now I'm in a dorm room at midnight and I don't know what I'm trying to get from this night, it's too loud and I want it to end because the fact that there are so many voices screaming along to songs I don't want to hear and each shrill shred of this desperate enthusiasm is wrapped in a language I digest in the form of raw loneliness. I am alone if this is what it means to be a college freshman, if it is an eager reach towards a drink and towards a new life simply because one's parents are no longer there. The gestures in which alcohol has been offered have been for the most part patronizing but I am not above accepting because fuck it I'd rather be more drunk than not tonight. I am in a position that looks like straddling, and it's awkward: I could not fully participate in this pathetic fanfare if I wanted to, I could not actually care. I keep being thrown against ideas of what I am as this college freshman and in trying not to feed my inborn cynicism, elitism, and insecurity I find myself beginning to contort my body into positions that make me hate myself even more. I don't get far, I just consider it and then imagine what I'd actually feel like if I were to actually put myself down there among my newfound peers, and then just spend the evening drinking by myself and reading comic books.

I had a really good time this morning during my initial walk of shame through campus. I still had the will to be a complete jerk, and I had an audience against which I could toss my jokes, even if it was my parents. The novelty slowly faded, however, and I have tasted rock bottom, at least until tomorrow. It's that interesting mix of a high horse and horse shit. Any notions of myself developed independently are giving way to those that are more like a rubbing taken against those around me. I think it's probably the way I felt in high school, like in some ways I'm smarter or more interesting or something, but also really ugly. I'm not used to feeling like the only girl who does not wake up in the morning and polish themselves with the pages of an Urban Outfitters catalog. And thus I feel greasy and smelly and hairy, and all those things are true of me but all of a sudden I feel bad about it. That's fucked up.

The drive up was not nearly as painful as I expected. The more people I said goodbye to the easier it got. At some point in Northern California I fell asleep and woke up and realized, “Hey, I've been here before.” My parents had stopped for coffee directly across the street from the catch-out spot in Dunsmuir. So I went down there and dipped my feet in the river and found the shit I had written under the bridge last summer. I did break out into tears more than a few times. I couldn't get that stupid fucking Gaslight Anthem song out of my head. It's still wrenching to think about them saying “These nights are still ours” when they aren't anymore. And yeah, “I still love the way you smile; I still love the ocean.”