“What the hell does that even mean?” I growled. A woman’s voice was echoing in my head, though
I couldn’t remember her words at the time, only the vague image of a messy room. I looked around,
taking stock of where I was. This room was brightly lit, with laminated posters shining on the
walls. The only one I remember is a picture of a plant growing out of a crack in the sidewalk, with
the word “Persevere” written in bold text below it. Across the expanse of cheap wooden desk sat
a woman who was older than I was, but still fairly young. She looked at me with concern and
crossed her arms, as one does when they encounter a tough problem.
“It just means that I, we have to check in to see if first year students are happy, with their
majors…” she said, trailing off as if she might have more to say.
“First year student? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a senior.”
“Oh,” she shuffled some papers around. “Did I call the wrong person? Katelyn Smith? I
did call for a Katelyn Smith, didn’t I?”
I was confused. I quickly began to put the pieces together: first year, major, office full of
cheesy posters. I was not at my high school, but at a college; not only was I at a college, but I was,
somehow, in college, enrolled in it. Unless there had been a mistake. There must have been a
mistake. I needed to get out of there to process what was going on.
“Right, my major; yes, it’s fine. No troubles here, just getting used to, to being in college
at the moment.” As these words left my mouth, I impulsively shot up out of my seat.
As I headed towards the door, she shakily blurted out, “Sorry, there’s just a few more things
we—”
“Right, um, please just put me down as whatever you need. Whatever is easiest for you.”
Before she could respond, I was out the door. There were bored looking students in the lobby for
a moment, then a flight of stairs, then a pair of easily persuaded swinging doors.
My head was swimming. My thoughts became a pool, mixing and precipitating into
nothing satisfying or useful. I plunged my arms in, elbows deep, trying to grab hold of something.
How could I be in college? I had nearly a year before graduation. I grabbed handfuls of
information, but everything quickly slipped out of my grasp (as liquids do) and fell back into the
pool. I haven’t finished high school! I wasn’t even set on going to college! I’ve never been set on
anything! I began plunging into the pool and grasping more rapidly. This only made the waters
more chaotic—frothy and unreadable, my thoughts sat in the wake. I just want to go home, I
thought; I need to be alone in my room.
“Where do I even go…?” I spoke and heard echoed back at me. I was in the middle of an
empty, circular courtyard. I was the first germ in that expansive petri dish, implanted there against
my will, far away from my colony.
“I don’t—I just don’t want to be here.” This time, no echo. My words were quickly
swallowed by hundreds of students (or so it felt) coming from the infinite corners of that circle. I
began to panic. I needed to leave before I became part of that rapidly growing culture. I reached
into the outer portion of my backpack, as if I’d done it dozens of times. My hand quickly landed
on a keychain, which read College View Apartments. Attached was a key which said H22. I typed
the apartment in my phone’s map just before I was overwhelmed by students, then started walking.
I was relieved to have gotten away from the crowd; this part of campus was nearly empty.I had a short chance on my walk to evaluate my new surroundings, where I assumed I must now
live. I thought: my home town blooms with fuzzily branched oak trees shaking their hands above
all walkways; above the walkways of this campus juts more walkways of glistening metal, which
adjoin off-white, monotonous concrete classrooms. This view was disheartening, and made me
long for my colorful room all the more.
I approached the building, which was one of many groupings of apartments in a seemingly
mid-grade, made-for-college complex. It was an uninspired, washed out pastel yellow. The
management may have been aiming for a south-of-the-border sort of look, though they came up
incredibly short. I placed the key in the door and turned the knob with trepidation. Why did I feel
like I was committing a crime? Oh, right… Because for all I knew maybe I was committing a
crime.
I opened the door to a living room which was furnished with couches on the right, placed
in a semi-circle in front of an entertainment center, likely designed to promote interaction between
roommates. I quickly scurried past these and met an unkempt, cramped kitchen, adorned with the
usual piling dishes and unsatisfyingly small countertops seen in more honest depictions of college.
The surface of the white counters was painted in places with lovely yellows and reds—condiment
stains or not, these were the only colors to catch the eye in that otherwise cookie-cutter apartment.
I still didn’t know where my room would be, or if I even had one, but since the cramped
kitchen funneled unmistakably into an even more claustrophobic hallway, I trudged deeper into
the depths. To the right, at the end of the first short hall, there was a closed door.
I grew nervous suddenly. I hadn’t considered how the different combinations of door
statuses (open or closed, to the power of how many doors there are, or is it the other way around?)
would leave me vulnerable in new, exciting ways. What if they’re all closed, do I try them or just
leave? Where would I go if I left? Which would I try first? I decided to wave these minute fears
away for the time being.
But just as I set these anxieties to simmer, new ones boiled over. Upon turning myself to
the left at the dead end of this first section of hall, I caught the glimmer of a mirror. This sent me
down a new spiral which I hadn’t expected. (Relative to all else that Life has seen fit to throw at
me, it’s quite funny to me now how much distress a sideways glance at a mirror can bring.)
A thought rang out without my permission: I don’t even know what I look like, do I?
Another thought met its challenge in a surprisingly snarky tone: How much different could you
even look? Then, from seemingly the same place as the first questioning thought came another in
meagre reassurance: Right, right, I’m still me… Yet inwardly that voice dropped out and spiraled
down a hole of self-doubt, in a way which couldn’t even find an internal voice. Yet a new voice
felt the need to narrate some of this spiral, I suppose for posterity’s sake, or to toy with me.
“It must be at least two years since you remember seeing yourself,” it said.
“I know that,” said another voice.
“You picked a college. You weren’t even set on going to college. You don’t even know
what major you chose. You haven’t the slightest clue what it could be. If all that changed, what
hope can you have for your looks? Is that even worthy of concern? Are you even worthy of
concern?” These thoughts picked and picked at fears which didn’t need to be articulated. I needed
to end this and move on.
“That’s enough,” I spoke aloud, clearly so lost that I was not concerned with any
inhabitants of this apartment hearing me. I suddenly turned the corner towards the mirror and
started walking, expecting the worst. Yet I did not see myself. The mirror ahead of me was
positioned at a forty-five degree angle, which reflected the main walk of the hall, likely to ensure
that no one runs into each other when turning corners. I shuffled down the hall, passing a second
closed door, and happened upon a final door which was cracked open slightly.
I entered, bracing myself to find a stranger in it, or worse: for all my things to be in it,
which would confirm that this was all real, that this was my life now. The room was neat, creepily
neat—far too perfect for me. I’ve always resisted organization and generally insisted on keeping
important things in piles (which were quite dynamic, as the most necessary elements stayed near
the top, and those with little use withered beneath in crushed obscurity). Yet, to my
disappointment, there was the picture of me and my mother on the desk.
Another aspect of my room, if it could even have been considered that, that weighed on me
was its stark white walls. They were undecorated, and I found no posters in my sparse belongings.
There was nothing beautiful to take in, and I found this quite draining. I could have gone out and
bought some decorations, but instead, I hid in that room for days, mostly sleeping. I think my brain
was exhausted from the overload of sensations I experienced in that state. Even days later, when I
closed my eyes I could see the dancing afterglow of static. I also had bouts of tinnitus and
occasional vertigo. Sleep helped when it became too much.
I didn’t dream much, but when I did, it was always of storm clouds, buzzing and crawling
with so many sparks that it resembled that purgatory from which I had just escaped. The clouds
passed with unnatural speed, yet I was always frustrated in them never exposing a spot of sky, not
even for a moment. What was strange about this dream was that I wasn’t really experiencing it
from my own first-person viewpoint. Nor was I experiencing it from that odd sort of semiomniscient, third-person viewpoint that your dreaming brain can slip you in and out of. It was like
I wasn’t really there, like I was that spot of sky anxiously begging to be revealed amidst the storm.
I wondered if this—being inexplicably older and in college—was also a dream, one that I
would finally gasp awakened from in my lively, paint-splattered room. Yet I always awoke in that
dim and pale apartment bedroom. I still hold out hope that I am in fact still dreaming the most
convoluted and arduous dream ever dreamt.
I told myself I would leave once I had done some thinking, straightened out what I had
experienced between the party and now. This was of little use, so I looked briefly online for
answers instead. Of course, no credible sources seemed to describe what I experienced (my
experience is admittedly more incredible than credible). Amnesia doesn’t work, because I
remember something, the unexplainable part: that horrible nightmare. A fugue state doesn’t fit
either, as I haven’t quite taken on a new identity. My unconscious actions were normal. They
would be considered the normal things for me to do, and no psychologist or loved one would find
anything amiss in them.
Eventually, I decided to face the world. This was a peace offering to what I assumed was
my new life, or just a new segment of it met unexpectedly soon.
I’ve always been quite stoical. Though I’ve never read more than what was required of us
in high school—segments of this or that Ancient Greek man, born either of squalor or immense
power—I felt that I intuitively understood the gist: focus on what you can control, which may only
be your attitude to a given situation. So basically, think your way out of despondency.
I reasoned: I shouldn’t spend my time just sleeping, which is tempting; and when I’m
awake, I shouldn’t spend all my time wallowing, which is even more tempting. What could I really
have missed? The ending of high school, the last summer of nostalgic brightness and sentimental
goodbyes shown in coming of age stories, those didn’t apply to me: I’m a real person (though
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.some of my details have become far-fetched, I’ll admit). I figured I must make the most of this
“new beginning” and “take life by the reins” or some other cliché. I had a chance to make myself
anew—or not quite anew, since I wanted to be me, just more of me, maybe with a few friends and
a few actual memories. Of course, memories were the thing most tentative, since I had just lost at
least a year’s worth. But I wasn’t allowing myself to focus on that.
So, I headed towards the main campus, intending to get to know this new town.
I walked past the jungle of concrete pavilions and metal walkways and eventually found
something much more pleasant. A large lawn, students lying on the grass under a few imported
banyan trees. They all looked so loose and free (the students, not the banyans; those were kind of
stuck there). The pair of young women laughing at something on a phone; the group of students
splayed out in a loose circle, lazily rolling a ball to each other; the three students dressed in mostly
red, intensely taking turns reading passages aloud. They all seemed so uninhibited, soaking up
youth or whatever else drives them. The energy felt different than it did in my hometown, and with
the air each breath brought with it a hopeful feeling.
I figured that I might as well attend a class, since I must be paying for them. But not one
of my classes, not yet… I hadn’t fully accepted that I had classes I needed to be dealing with
(which I guess isn’t too different from many students’ freshman experience).
I approached the door of a building in what seemed to be the main plaza of campus. Peeking
in, my suspicions were confirmed in the form of bodies in seats, though no lecturer was up front
quite yet. I slipped inside and sat down in the second to last row (for fear of attracting attention in
the way that kids sitting in the back in television shows did). The projector was displaying some
technical subject that my brain took no interest in committing to memory. After a moment I
realized that two boys behind me were engaged in a heated argument.
“Not a word? What do you mean it’s not a word? Did you not understand it?” the one in
my left ear asked in an indignant tone.
“I looked it up, it’s not in the dictionary” said the one to my right. He sounded confident.
“To me, if you can understand it, it’s a word. I don’t really give a shit whether it’s in the
dictionary.”
“Well you should.”
The student began a monotonous, low hum. “Oh great Lords Of The Dictionary—”
“Shut up” the one on my right said, elongating “up” until it became just a crackle deep in
his throat.
“Great lords of the dictionary, hear our prayer,” the left boy’s voice was growing more like
a cartoon preacher with each word. “Please bless this word, so the blessed among us may be
blessed upon saying it in thine honor, aye-men.” I was enjoying this argument; it really added to
my image of what college is like, in the moment.
“You can’t just go making up words whenever you want.”
“Why not?”
“There has to be objectivity in these sorts of things. If you could just make up words
whenever you wanted, then everything would fall to chaos,” said the right.
“Chaos? Don’t you think that’s maybe, slightly, just a little bit of a ridiculous thing to say?”
asked the left.
“No, I don’t; you just have to follow it to its logical end. Sure, if you make up a word or
two, that’s okay; but if everyone did it, then no one would get anything done. Everyone would be
constantly translating each other,” said the right.
“Well, of course if someone is intending to be perfectly understood, then they have to be
careful with what words they choose. That’s the beauty of it: when you don’t need, or want, to be
fully understood, you can bend words to your liking.”
“Don’t want to be understood? Hello? What would be the use in that?”
“Sometimes it’s just more interesting. Like art, you know? Haven’t you ever read a poem?
To mystify, to transmit meaning at a deeper level than plain definitions can. If words were concrete
and never changed, then we’d have already run out of every way to say everything. Dictionaries
can only ever catch up to language, they never innovate… Or maybe—”
“But you still need to be understood—”
“Or maybe,” the left one was giggling trying to get it out.
“No matter how creative you think you are, you still need to be understood.”
“Or, maybe, when I’m arguing with pedantic nerds and I don’t feel like continuing, I can
just use all my words wrong, and that’ll stump you,” he said. I could practically hear the corners
of his lips crank back to expose his teeth. I smiled a bit too, and maybe his friend noticed, because
he tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and met his eyes, which barreled into me intensely
beneath his crossed brow.
“Well, are you hearing this guy?” he asked. I looked down, to avert myself from his stare,
then I looked over to his friend, who sat looking casual (possibly on purpose).
The one who asked me the question noticed where my eyes went, looked at his friend, then
threw his hands up and said: “Oh, well I should have known!”
“Known what? What was the word?” I asked, unsuspecting and amused, happy to be
talking to someone.
“Well if you think the word matters, then you’re probably on my side,” said the one now
on my right. I smiled and looked down.
“I guess I am. I do like the thought that I can use English in a personal way, even though
so many other people use it, if that makes sense,” I said.
“Exactly,” said the one on my right, more cocky than ever.
“Exactly,” parroted the one on my left, looking up and away from us. “Exactly what I
thought. I knew before I even asked.”
“Oh come on, don’t be rude,” said the one on my right.
The one on the left turned to him and continued. “You know what I mean!” He turned to
me again. “No offense or anything,” now back to his friend, “but I could tell by just looking at her
that she’d agree with your artsy words don’t mean anything bullshit.” He might have gone on, but
I didn’t hear any more of it.
The squealing moan and rough clatter of my surroundings melting, or perhaps more accurately
being ground into a fine, unrecognizable dust, stopped being ear-splitting and settled into the
background, as it had before. The array of colors in the room bleached and became a strobe of
phosphorescent white which slices through deep, void-filled black (something different in quality
from a black that is a void, that seems to hold nothing). The contrast instantly strained my eyes
and made me a bit nauseous, but these feelings soon passed, as they had before. And, as it had
before, my body became lifelessly detached from its place in the world.
Though the first time I had no capacity for it, being too shocked and weakened by the
bombardment of sensations, this time I was able to do a little thinking. Well, maybe I wasn’t ready
for full thoughts: these were more recollections. I vaguely wondered if this had happened to me
before that party. Was there any evidence that I ever lost any time or experienced anything like
that which now lit up my senses? After a mindless pause, I was confronted with a memory.
I remembered what was likely the last time I truly played with the other school children.
We were playing this game in a big circle. I don’t really understand the point of it, but I’m sure at
the time it made perfect sense to us. There was a large crowd, in a circular sort of proto mosh pit.
Everyone in the group would chant the first part together, which was an alternating phrase.
“My mother says…” then “my father says…” the children on the periphery would repeat.
The children diving into the circle completed the phrase with what I assume was whatever
command they could think of on the spot.
“My mother says to grow up strong,” one would shout, trying to steady their words while
flying across the circle, only stopping when received by the children on the other side. The rhythm
of the game (children’s games must have a rhythm) was quarter notes on each word, as if it were
written in standard time. As most children said six or seven words, creating syllables as necessary
to fit, there was a rest at the end to allow the next set of brave children to ready their phrases and
their bodies for the bliss of motion.
“My father says don’t talk too loud.”
“My mother says please brush your hair.”
I hadn’t thought I wanted to plunge into the middle. I was too timid, too afraid of running
into somebody, maybe worried about not being able to think of anything to say. Yet the longer I
was part of the circle, the more the allure grew. So much energy, everyone was building up, then
letting loose after a long day of straining to remember the twelfth letter of the alphabet. And the
children who launched into the middle, look at how much fun they had! They got to really feel
their limbs flop about gracelessly, to lose their sense of space and time for just a moment. Why
shouldn’t I feel that too? I’m just like them, I must have thought to myself.
“My father says don’t run too fast.” I should go next.
“My mother says I can’t talk back.” This time, for sure. My feet felt ten times their weight,
my shoes sticky.
“My father says make lots of cash.”
“My mother says just be your-self.”
Finally, I bounded forward. All I got out was the beginning. “My father says—”Suddenly,
I crashed into another child making their run at the same time.
“My mother says,” I heard on one side of me, then he ran into me, then on the opposite
side, “follow the rules.”
I was staggered in the center, too confused to know which direction to go to escape, too
confused to know any direction would have worked. I felt surrounded; I was surrounded. I was
tumbling in the rough wake of children, unable to find my footing. Even with my eyes closed, all
I could hear was their chants all around me. As kids flew by, their gusting wind mixed with their
phrases.
“My father says re-spect your elders.” Tears smudged my vision; the children became
runny blots of colored ink, taller and more significant than their true forms.
“My mother says good girls don’t yell.”
It all became too much. I lost consciousness after half a minute. I awoke to a concerned
nurse asking me some questions about how I felt. I had always assumed I passed out, yet going
over it again, while I was in that state, I began to have my doubts. This upsetting memory led me
to another one, of a comforting person.*
From reliving the experience of being tossed about amongst that crowd of children, I then
shifted into watching a scene that from a distance didn’t look much different. A singular flowing
body diving into and out of a shouting crowd, though for her there would be no distress or
passing out. She was my one real friend in those years; her name was Sam.
Throughout elementary school, we would meet up at recess. I can still picture it in a vivid
sort of way that no other parts of my childhood evoke. The sun sat so high that there were
practically no shadows; there was no obscuring yourself, even under outstretched trees. On those
afternoons, she would make me promise her silly things. “Promise me you won’t look away from
that butterfly standing on the growing grass until it flies away.” “Promise me you’ll hide behind
that curtain of palm fronds until I tell you the coast is clear.” I would always oblige her, no matter
the request. I knew her promises would never hurt me, in the way other promises like “promise
you won’t get mad” or “promise me you won’t wear that in public” might.
She would glow in the sun, sometimes reflecting it, sometimes eclipsing it at whim. She
would make time flash by with her energy, those longed for thirty minutes. She was unlike the
other children, with her large eyes and dancing form. I knew she didn’t see things as they did. I
never felt myself tossed around carelessly when we played. I felt that there were no hard lines
drawn between us, nor anything taken for granted. We played together and I felt free in that way
one can only feel as a child.
But she would often spend the first ten minutes of recess amongst the other children, doing
whatever they did. I’d spend that time just watching her carefree shape, bouncing between the
petty mobs which were almost always homogenous in gender, age, bus stop, whatever other little
divisions they could come up with. I’d catch just a little of their resistance.
“Why even try?” “You’ll just lose.” “You’re too this-or-that,” they might shout in the midst
of whatever battle they created for themselves that day. She never floundered, though I shrunk for
her whenever I caught any of these jabs.
Afterwards, she would stride over to whichever tree I tried hard to obscure myself behind.
“Hey!” she would say daily through a smile. “Why didn’t you join?” Just that question
nearly brings me to tears in retrospect. I don’t know if she knew I would never join. Maybe she
did and simply wouldn’t show it, or maybe she truly didn’t; maybe she saw me anew each day. I
don’t need to know the answer.
“Hello…” I would stammer, in awe of how dry she was, despite the heat and the running
and the pressure exerted by those cruel children. She would drop down gracefully next to me and
pull a book out of her waistband. (I don’t know exactly how she didn’t lose it in the middle of
play, but that was just the sort of person she was.)
I specifically remembered one afternoon when I had finally needed to ask it, the question
that burned in me every recess. How could she stand joining those groups, how could she stand
facing their little remarks? Didn’t it make her feel bad that they thought she was weak, a weak girl,
or the opposite as they would sometimes switch to—a tomboy? Didn’t she fear all that they said
she was?
She just smiled, never taking her eyes off the page she was about to flip, which was made
somewhat transparent by the high sun, and said, “I can be whatever they want me to be. I just want
to have a little fun.” She said it like it was nothing and went on reading.
Within that state, as I recalled her words so vividly, the senseless scene of noise and
nothingness trembled resoundingly. I felt the warmth of a smooth fire as I held her words in my
mind for a while. Then the first cool breeze of fall refreshingly swept over me, pushing the warmth
to my other side. These comforting temperatures danced around my once benumbed body.* And
so I sat in that entrancing little diversion, which was not seemingly relevant to the problem at hand
then, just as it isn’t really now.
This peaceful moment, if there ever could be anything considered peace in this chaotic
mess, was shattered by a voice. The voice was not Sam’s, and it was not in my mind.