A couple weekends ago, while all my friends were going out, exploring the campus, enjoying the beautiful weather that’s hit Gambier lately (and totally for sure not at all doing anything that involved illegal substances or provocative behaviors), I was sick, and pretty confined to the less-than-200 square feet that make up my dorm room. My only company were my childhood teddy bear, a bottle of Gatorade, a couple dozen tissues, and an entire season and a half of Shameless. It’s safe to say that it was pretty gross, and I very much missed my mom.
By Sunday, I hadn’t been outside in days, and my roommate still wasn’t back from her out-of-town Quizbowl competition, and I swear I thought I might literally go insane. I missed my friends and the Gund Gallery and not having a constant headache. I’d been short-tempered with everyone, on edge, and all I wanted to do was sleep all day. I didn’t feel anything like my typical cheerful, excitable self, and I absolutely needed to do something about it.
So, I got out of bed, and I picked up a pair of shoes that I’d kicked off and left on the carpet, and I put them in my closet. Then, I grabbed another pair of shoes, and the shirt I’d worn the day before, and a book that’d fallen off the desk, and I put those away too.
An important detail to probably mention about myself is that I’m tragically disorganized. I really do mean tragically. Somehow my desks always end up piled up with papers, my bed is seldom made, I can never find my keys, and my backpack is always filled with an abundance of things that I carry around “just in case” and then hardly ever use, creating more clutter than convenience. No matter how many different boxes and drawers and folders I use, I just can’t seem to be able to keep things neat. This particular weekend of course was no different—I’d even say things were even messier than usual, if that was possible. But for some reason this time, just tidying up wasn’t going to do it for me. I changed my sheets and took my trash out twice and reshelved very, very many books. I opened up the blinds to let the natural light in. When I was finally done, I jumped up onto my made-for-once bed, opened up Spotify, and actually had a chance to read??? A real book??? Just cause I wanted to??? (It was awesome.)
A few days later, I took it a step farther. I went into Mount Vernon with a new friend, signed up for a membership at Pat Catan’s (a craft store chain I didn’t know even existed until last week), and bought a bouquet (or a whole bunch of bouquets) of fake flowers in all different colors. We got back to campus and took each bouquet apart stem by stem, and then hot glued them together to make chains of different flower buds. I finally took down my excess of string lights from the holidays and hung them from my walls and doorways, and a week later I still haven’t gotten used to how much I love the way they look. It’s especially awesome because of how easy they were to make.In recent weeks, and I think in general with post-holiday-season wintertime, it’s really easy to start to feel super discouraged super quickly. You see sunlight less and your friends less, and it’s so much harder to motivate yourself to want to go outside for anything. And even though you know days are shorter, they somehow also feel sooooooo long (and then again, not long enough). And there’s been so much going on for me lately that I’ve felt an absolute need to find somewhere to retreat to a lot more often. In college, your dorm room kind of becomes your safest space. And with the need to utilize that space so much lately, I’ve also realized how important it is to not only respect that space but more importantly turn it into somewhere where you can always feel comfortable and happy.
Even though they aren’t real plants, having flowers in my room has improved my mood in so many more ways than I could have expected them too. And fluorescent lights always seem to stress me out, so I’ve done my best to rely on natural light when possible, or on lamps when I need to. I’ve started to listen to music more often while I’m in my room, too, which is something that never fails to make me happier, whether I’m feeling as low as possible or don’t even think I could feel happier. I’ve absolutely recognized my room as so much more than just the place I come back to at the end of the night to sleep in, and in making the effort to make it bright and my own, I’ve honestly been able to also focus better on positivity in every other aspect of my life, as well. Image credits: Annmarie Morrison, Caitlyn Haas