September 24, 2012. The capacity for not feeling lonely
can carry a very real price, that of feeling nothing at all. – Doug Coupland
I left for Tanzania this day last
year. We slept in a long hotel room, sheets clean and duvet molded to my
anxious body. A rerun of a reality TV show ran in the armoire, and I remember a
light sleep, a tender hug in the white bed.
I lie in an ivory bed again,
electronic music from a sleek computer, an economics textbook with bold
markings and graphs and relatable jokes interspersed to keep me from wavering.
My roommate Skypes or studies outside on the unscratched window seat, glossy
wood reflecting dark circles. On my walls, I tack paintings from a local
artist, the wood crooked and the paint sloppy, a Thai prayer with Chinese
script floating vertically under a thin Buddha, waxed paintings of a Maasai
warrior in lavender twilight, a lashed and slender and rouged women draped in
French jewels.
I leave the lights overhead dark, and
instead surround myself in yellow glow, in non-fluorescents peeking from pale
shades.
Thousands of friends, of acquaintances
brushed against in a Latin class, of that boy from summer camp, fill my screen,
spreading ideas and opinions and political affiliations and life changes. Words
and photos and stories topping another, competing, and overflowing, ceaseless.
I sit in a grey blanket, the warmth
draped across bare shoulders, across sunburnt shoulders.
I am alone, still. Music shifts
through playlists, though minor violins and through aching piano chords, and I
hear words seeping under the door, of people friendlier than me, more
pockmarked and smarter too, and I search for loneliness, for quotes or blogs or
other nineteen year old girls with melancholy dispositions and soft white skin.
My mom read an article before I moved
into my new dorm of regrets, of things to do in four years of brick buildings
and white columns and blonde boys, of thumping bass shocking a dirty living
room floor, of red cups strewn, of nights alone.
I start anew, the cracked and damaged
wall repainted, no longer stained with Indian curry and hung with red felt prep
school banners.
I yearn to make this school mine, to
make the paths and churches and domes dear, to paint my story in the walls and
crevices of this school.
