There is a certain gravity that stirs on college campuses. The potential to at any moment fall wildly into an unforeseen circumstance. Each of us, like a pointed arrow pulled back on a bow waiting for release, for the weekend, for some new and romantic and absurd story to tell. When I leave campus, I feel that gravity weaken — sometimes I’m sad to see it dissipate, but other times I feel a sense of calmness and relief.
When on campus, I am always half here and half in the many versions of tonight. I crave for the random amusement found only past 2 am. I spend hours doing nothing but poetically waiting for a star to fall, for something, anything to happen. Waiting to be who I am on a Friday night, commanding an elevated surface in Sig Nu or waking up in random beds as if traveling countries.
I forget how to be with that Sunday-morning self. How to sit, heels-crossed, on the common room couch and breathe. How to stop ruinously obsessing over all the things I may or may not have done during black-hole periods of the night. How to stop being an arrow and how to become a person who walks where she wants to go rather than waiting to be shot in any direction.
Stop waiting for the extraordinary. If the naked parties and new friends, the threesomes and good highs come, enjoy the trip of a fucking lifetime. But don’t lose yourself or your sense of self in the gravity. Learn how to be surrounded by yourself.
As I come back to school this semester, I find myself missing the mundane: encouraging Canvas notifications, Blue State runs and brunch, lying on my bed by myself, the vanilla bean scent of my suite, the regularity and intimacy of the Pierson College staff. I’m rebuilding a relationship with myself and the daylight hours. I am thankful not only for a lustrous riot of of half-faded experiences, but also for the blissful mundanity of Yale life and what a privilege it is to live.