College. All the movies were a lie. Sure, I spent the first two weeks doing homework in the library with stacks of books open in front of me. But the movies didn’t also show the hours upon hours I spent starring at the ceiling because living alone felt like being lost in a sea of four thousand faces.
Dale was the only one at Coleridge College I knew, but he got a job in the music building and seemed to spend every waking moment there. I knew that I liked him , though. He could go on for hours about his band experiences or his dream of becoming a professional musician. He played percussion and violin but wanted to be a first chair violinist in some orchestra. He didn’t seem to care which. All in all, Dale was an awkward long-haired college kid who had probably had a rough go at it in high school for being a band geek and wanted another shot at being someone social.
The first two weeks had felt like a race where someone was running behind me with a cattle prod, and any time I slowed down, they prodded my ass. I already felt like I was too far behind and should just give up.
Not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, I went in as an undecided major and just took the general education requirements the college required.
Freshman Comp was a bore, but I enjoyed reading Emerson’s Self-Reliance and our class discussions. Intro to Sociology made me feel as though the class was scrolling through a Facebook wall and picking social topics to talk about. Feminism. Institutional racism. It was all there, and I couldn’t help feel frustrated at not knowing where I fit as a white male. The professor seemed to have a good heart, though. She really wanted us to understand and spent time at the end of each class taking questions.
Biology, Algebra, and History were all morning classes and faded into one long monotonous blur.
Besides trying to find all the classes on first and second days, the hardest part had been learning how to study the large textbooks. You couldn’t know all the information or you felt like you were drinking a gallon of water in one sitting. It was just too much. I had to gauge which information was best to study and which wasn’t.
This has been trial and error, of course. On the first test in biology, I had stayed up late studying the study guide generously given to us by professor Smith. Everyone seemed to dislike the guy because he spoke to his class as if he were a drill sergeant and had a military buzz. He had been in the military, but his generosity in giving us a study guide had seemed unparalleled.
Yet when I walked into his classroom, in the basement under the basketball gym, and was handed an exam, I realized my mistake. Some of the questions were word-for-word from the study guide, but the majority of them came from the rest of the material I hadn’t studied. I barely made a B.
Monica had called every night. Her senior year was about to start, so she was beginning to feel excited and was less melancholy about my absence. I missed her, deeply. It was a hard feeling to express. The only sense of home I had felt in my whole life had been with her, and suddenly, it was gone.
She was already talking about the out-fits her and her friends had bought or were going to buy for the first week of school. She talked about conditioning for the dance team and throwing fundraisers for uniforms. All of this was happening and it was without me.
I spent a lot of time burying my head under my pillow and counting the days it would be until the weekend when I’d get to see her.
One night, we FaceTimed, and I lost it. Tears were streaming down my face before I even knew I was crying. Monica tried to comfort me.
“You will be okay. It will get easier. We will be okay. It has to get easier,” She said, again and again.
I wanted to listen to her. I wanted to know what she was saying was true. I just couldn’t see it. I was sick for home. I was sick for her. I didn’t want to study the wrong material or be with a hundred people I had never met in my life. I wanted to be with her.
I had her tell me about her day. Just her being happy made me feel better.
She had gotten to take her mom lunch, at work. She went shopping, for the third time, for school supplies. It was a good day.
Hours had past, and I knew she had to go.
“Love you. We will see each other soon.” She said, making a heart with her hands and raising it closer to the camera.
The screen went black.
Only if it were easier, I thought to myself.
“I’ll be okay. It will get easier. Monica and I will be okay. It has to get easier,” I tell myself.
