Day 7222 | Day 7243 | Day 7284
Put it into first. Let the clutch out slowly. Give it a little gas when it starts to catch.
Last week I was packing up my car with the few possessions I take to college: my computer, my books, my chair, and duffels full of the clothes I've been wearing for the past six years. I was told once that I am like those cartoon characters who open up their closet and have about a dozen copies of the same outfit. For me it's blue jeans, a blue hoodie, and tennis shoes. I'd just learned how to drive stick the week before since my previous car had been annexed by my brother. That left me with the 14 year old stick shift. I tried to ignore the door panels which were rusted through in some spots, revealing the internal workings of the locks and power windows. Though I was fairly confident I knew what I was doing, I drove miles out of my way to avoid the hills between my house and the interstate. Even that did little to settle my nerves. Having a panic attack while driving an unfamiliar car at high speeds is fairly unpleasant.
Driving the car wasn't the cause of my anxiety though: it was the prospect of returning to school. I spent most of my sophomore year in a deep depression but had regained a fair amount of good humor when I left at the end of the semester. Going back brought up all kinds of worries about falling back into the mental grooves I had formed the previous year; worries that are a long way away from being alleviated. On top of that, I was and am having identity issues where I'm unsure of who I am on a basic level that most people take for granted. Though these questions about who I am have been latent since I was in elementary school, they have intensified in the past few months to a point where I may be incapable of ignoring them in the near future.
All of these come at a time when I'm increasingly unable to count on my friends. No one wants to be around a person who constantly complains without taking action against it and two years of my navel-gazing has understandably worn my friends' patience thin. When I attempt to tell my concerns to the few people I confide in, the conversation usually lasts about 10 minutes before a frustrated outburst on their part brings it to an end. The safety net which I had counted on saving me from falling into my old habits seems to have become frayed with overuse and I'm no longer confident in its ability to arrest the emotional momentum of a downward spiral. The fact that I expected this situation to arise eventually does little to blunt the feelings of abandonment.
If it starts to buck, put the clutch back in quick or else you'll stall out.
I expected to grow out of the nervousness of the first day of school at some point. That feeling like all your vital organs are trying to compact themselves into the center of your chest, as far away from the outside world as possible. The ripples of panic (for they aren't large enough to be called waves) as you pretend to nonchalantly walk past the same room a third, fourth, fifth time to make sure it's the right one. All the faces rotating up towards you as you walk through the door and being certain (so certain) that if you pick a seat in the very back and slouch just low enough, you might actually escape the attention of others.
It never works, of course, especially in the smaller seminar classes with the inevitably banal icebreakers: "Hello, my name is RO, I'm an economics major and...uuuuh...I like sleeping." The other students giggle as I return to my seat, that nervous kind of laugh people make to fill empty moments, knowing that soon they'll be the ones being cooked by the eyes of their classmates like a slab of chicken defrosting in a microwave.
Every year I tell myself that it'll be different this time.
Leave it in gear and remember to pull the emergency brake when you park.
The rift which separates me from the rest of my peers continues to grow wider. It mostly stems from my genuine dislike of going places and doing things. It's not a fear exactly, I simply derive very little pleasure from traditional social activities. I have never found the appeal of 'hanging out with friends' or of going to parties. I have no extracurriculars and I do not text. While my normal social anxieties are a factor in this dislike, I believe it runs deeper than simple fear of social situations. Not that it's impossible that it is just fear. It's fairly routine for me to forgo eating for a day or two after running out of food rather than endure the trials of going to the grocery store and dealing with the other customers and cashiers. Every once in a while I forget the magnitude of my discomfort and convince myself that I'm missing out on something by not doing these things. And every once in a while I go out and rediscover that I'm not.
Yet because I eschew the defining social interactions of my generation (perhaps of all generations) I find myself unable to form relationships of any intimacy. When you're alone, you tend not to notice being lonely, it's only when you're surrounded by others that it begins to become apparent. Just as they are unable to provide me with the situations I need to feel comfortable, so am I incapable of providing them theirs. And so I sit on my side and they sit on theirs as the rift slowly spreads between us.