collegiate diversion

I put down my well-dressed toothbrush and left it in the communal bathroom. I wanted to record this somewhere.

Here is me, freaking out. Dry-heaving over the toilet, staring at my eyes and watching them get more bloodshot when my skin turns pale, then green. When I move, my clothes release the sweet perfume I put on my bra days ago. And I stare at my reflection, and how sick I look.

I really beat down hard on myself. I am so happy, now. I like my college, now. But happiness doesn’t necessarily mean I’m okay. There are still so many things that don’t justify the happiness, that may even get in the way of what is me.

Where is me?

My stress. My collegiate need for diversion and distraction.

I am so hard on myself, when I don’t understand the material I love. Communications, journalism, media, it’s all easy. I wonder if maybe that’s why I chose this major, for all the wrong reasons.

Prof asked us the other day to raise our hands if we were attracted to this program because of the lacking MATH requirement: shamefully, I raised. So did many others.

whoops.

I smiled though, in the mirror, in the face of my mental-destructive practice. Stupid, stupid, clueless, unaware silly girl. You do not understand McPhail. You fucking fail.

And I smiled, because I remembered my boyfriend in 8th grade, walking to my bedroom, turning out the lights and holding hands in the dark. He would always say “your room smells so good, your distinctive smell.”

I smelled home on me tonight, while I thought about the possible sour chicken I ate in my room on study break. Through the mask of dank collegeness and academic-fraud, there was me.

Why do I lose sight of that girl so much? I am too critical.

And I thought a lot about the ways I should be injured since the weekend, and I am, believe me. But I’m pretty certain I won’t feel the pangs of that brief sexual-whatever-it-was until mid-next week, when I’m in a hotel. In his city. And he won’t return my calls.

But for now it seems so convenient. Everything is sour chicken stank during midterms week. Everything is masking what I am when I’m at college.

Why did I need a distraction to realize that?

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