I can’t remember my blog
password. That has been my excuse for
not writing for quite some time. Never
mind the fact that ideas and subjects and thoughts have been racing through my
head, dying to come out. I can’t
remember my blog password. Oh well.
And when it’s been so long since
the last entry, I have struggled with how
on earth can I pack all that in to a unified paragraph or two. I can’t. So I’ll just do what the
professionals suggest. Just start. Somewhere.
Anywhere. Just go.
I’ve been teaching a class at a university.
It’s my first time at a giant four-year public school. The campus is constantly buzzing with
activity. (Unless it’s raining.) Fraternity pledging. Sorority bake sales. Weekend by The Hills blaring from some
microscopic iPod (boom boxes are long gone). Existentialism –Paris in the
Spring sign-ups. Skaters. Cyclists. I even saw a kid on a unicycle. And this
probably goes without mentioning, but everyone, everyone is looking at their
phone.
I suppose it should be exciting to
be in an objective place of observation.
After all, I am not a student. I
am not a full of wonder Freshman. I am
not a twenty year old who has settled into life on a college campus. I am a 42
year old mother of three who has a couple of decades between herself and her own
four-year university experience.
But it’s a strange phenomenon that
is happening this semester, every time I walk across campus to my classroom. At
first, I even dared to consider that what I was flooded with was a James
Taylor-esque sweet nostalgia for my collegiate days of yore. But I know.
Even when I was at my own giant four-year public school I was never any
of those things. Not really. Sweet, I do
not recollect. It’s a sensation I have never been able to name. Certainly
couldn’t name it as a twenty year old.
Lonely would imply that it was almost fixable; that I just needed
friends around me. Melancholy is far too
The Smiths and nearly romantic. Empty makes it sound I felt nothing at all
during those days. But I felt a
lot. I was not numb.
I still can’t name it.
I’ve even tried to ignore the
feeling over the last month or so.
Blamed it on being busy. Pegged it
for being overwhelmed by teaching, and three kids, and a new dog, and wanting
to sleep, and wanting to breathe for just a second before I get asked one more
question, or get slammed by one more demand outside of myself. Those discomforts are very real, but that’s
not it. That’s not the cloud that is
hovering over me; haunting me.
It’s an ache. It’s an ache that I feel for that girl. That twenty year old girl who hurt so much from
something that had no name.
And it comes in flashes.
Winter. Junior year. It was exam week and you’re sick. Not with the flu or strep or even a bad, bad
cold. It’s the kind of sick that happens
when you haven’t slept in a while. Like
really slept. Skunk beer comatose doesn’t
count. It’s the kind of sick that happens when you’ve smoked too much and it’s
been cold and raining and you refuse to take the bus that stops outside your
apartment and dumps you off at campus. You
can’t get on that bus because you’re afraid. Of what? The bus might move before
you sit down and you’ll fall down. You
might forget where to get off the bus and you will be on the bus for the rest
of your life, not knowing when or how to get off. You don’t ever take that
bus. So you walk. Two miles to
campus. And now you’re there. And it’s raining. And it’s cold. And you’re sick. And you have one more exam. For which class? Not really sure. But you can’t muster the energy to walk that
two miles back home. In the rain and the cold.
And you do not take that bus. So
you walk to the Student Rec Center and you find the energy to climb onto the
Stairmaster beside the other girls that are there every day. Just like you. But you figure they are not at all like
you. They probably go to class. They probably laugh. They probably don’t smoke a pack a day. And
they definitely don’t drink a case of beer that they purchased from the gas
station beside their apartment complex. They probably eat. And like it. You feel better while you’re on
the Stairmaster. The mix tape your brother made is perfect for the Holidays and
exam time. Snoop Dogg’s Gin and
Juice blends into Steely Dan’s Don’t
Take Me Alive giving way to Run-D.M.C.’s
Christmas in Hollis is the perfect
precursor to Sting’s Gabriel’s Message. You
get off the Stairmaster and you feel sick again. It’s raining harder and the two mile walk back
home seems beyond dreadful. And you’re
pretty sure you have a fever now. You
find yourself in a coffee shop. But not
really a coffee shop. Not like a
Starbucks because there wasn’t a Starbucks then. You don’t remember the name of the place, but
you do know it’s beside the record store.
You’re in the coffee shop by yourself and acutely aware that you are by
yourself. You get a hot cranberry juice
and try to do the calorie math. Stairmaster
calories burned minus cranberry juice. But you have a fever and you are sick
and you almost don’t care. You think you study for a while, but really you fell
asleep. It’s safe to assume that you walked back home. In the cold and rain.
Your
grades were really good that semester.
For the last time.
I have been feeling, and I have been
beating it off. Those flashes. Those aches.
Back on campus. I have felt like
her again.
beautiful. but what is the word....bewildered? I think you need to make up a new word, Andrea. Thank you for this. reading, it, I felt 'it' too.
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