I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.
Maya Angelou
To be honest, each one of us learn very quickly about our social standing. Not by checking campus notices or your roll number like we do for other stuff, but rather through the way others look at you when they’re forming groups. Yes, you are invited into the group but primarily as a spare chair, a substitute for someone else; you are just there to fill the space of the group and not cause a disturbance with your presence. Even though you sit across from the people notoriously known as ‘friends’ or something like that, you fear this hidden rule saying not to be too needy, not to be too emotional, and not to bring down the mood. You begin to edit yourself, as you are in the group, trimming your opinions, hiding your sadness, and dulling your excitement; however, being “too needy” can lead to you becoming invisible very quickly. And it hurts to be ‘invisible’ when everyone sees you.
The worst loneliness is not being comfortable with yourself.
Mark Twain
You accept this as part of becoming an adult. You accept or maybe at some point gaslight yourself that everyone is busy, and you can’t expect anything deep in a hallway or sincere in a cafeteria, and you do not expect loyalty from someone because you have borrowed a pen and charged a cellphone from them. But at night, when the rest of the hostel gets quiet and people are expected to be sleeping, the truth hits you; you are reminded of all those conversations that you know lead to your feeling optional, and you are reminded of all the times that you are replaying those conversations with a hope, in your mind, to remember exactly when you started feeling that way. You begin to think about whether you might be talking too little or too much, or whether you bored others, or if you forgot to read or receive a memo that everybody else did.
And then with time, you yourself stop initiating stuff, not because you don’t care or are too nonchalant about it, but because rejection-by-delay hurts more than silence. Slowly you start learning to wait without expecting people to show up.
We are not wounded by the things we don’t have, but by the things we were made to believe we were unworthy of.
Alain de Botton
This strange feeling of disdain you feel is not stated outright. Rather than excluding you by saying so directly to your face, they permit you to exist in a space where they will seek your assistance (in terms of notes, listener and support) but forget about your existence when something good happens for everyone. You are now someone who can be depended on because being dependable feels like an abundant form of wealth. Therefore, you try your best to be as kind and supportive as possible, hoping the consistency will make you feel secure and enable you to stay forever (or maybe get you promoted in the unsaid hierarchy of friendship). The thing you must recognize, however, is that there is a limit on how much you will be tolerated; you will reach that limit when you ask someone for help, show signs of fatigue, or admit that you are not okay; so you keep it to yourself, and carry the emotional pain with you like a secret, afraid that admitting the pain exists will prove to you that you only belong when you are easy to deal with.
True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.
Brené Brown
Eventually, you arrive at a place where your heart breaks; you no longer want to be chosen, but you have given up becoming emotionally invested in any situation once you leave it physically. You tell yourself that being alone is a blessing, that being independent makes you better, that needing less means you’re on a higher level of existence than those around you; but inside, you know that this is not freedom, it’s armour. The college experience ends, but you will take with you the habit of limiting your needs, grieving your relationships before they happen, and assuming no one would miss you if you were not there. The hardest part of the whole experience is that you were never selected first, and sometimes you still ache from the knowledge of that fact.
Discover more stories on Her Campus at MUJ. More articles by me coming soon at Vaibhav Chaudhary at HCMUJ; he who watches the world and its miracles closely, noticing what slips between moments, between the infinite realities.