I was intoxicated by the feeling in the air, faint wisps of pizza and beer filling my being.
It was a graduate program alright, but the campus itself reeked of undergrad shenanigans. Most people find it gaudy, but I love the community atmosphere of a uni campus. It’s a sexually incestuous band of merry vagabonds, topped off with general studies classes that force a modicum of higher thinking that is generally expressed in smoke filled dorm rooms. Well, at least a chemically induced impulse to think outside the box.
Logging more hours than I care to think about on the road to the university, my mood was stabilized for the first time since my undergrad experience. I wasn’t obsessed with loss, depressive cyclic thoughts, and lingering day dreams of a tunnel that had less light everyday. Instead, I found people who spoke in the same vocabulary as my undergraduate discipline! I felt alive.
My introverted nature attempted to separate me from the crowd, but no one in my selected department would allow it for long. I felt included, loved, and part of something bigger than myself. Which really brings me to my true point.
Before I left on my trip to see the school, I remember a conversation with my best friend the day before:
“I just feel so lonely.”
“Yeah…”
“Like we’re just living life without really living.”
“You are in your mid twenties. Fucking–yes, you’re going to feel alone, yes it’s going to feel pointless. We all feel that way.”
“Especially the artsy types, right?”
“We’re predestined to be overly dramatic, so yeah, but it’s really a bullshit excuse we tell ourselves so that we can continually be comfortably uncomfortable. If we say it’s out of our control, it’s an easier resolve to be miserable. It’s disillusionment we create. If we really wanted to be happy, we would go out there and make new friends, but somehow being miserable makes us feel…better?”
“I’m depressed. Unemployed–was unemployed. I lost the last person I truly loved by proposing to her. I live at home with my parents…”
“You’re overly educated and miserable trying to get more education on top of the too much you already have. Oh, and you’re romantically DOA, caught up on a woman that does not give two shits about your existence. Top it off with the mid twenties parent thing…Welcome to being a walking cliche.”
“Is it a club? Do we get jackets?”
“Looking into it..”
“Do you think life gets better than this?”
“It does when we finally come up with an escape plan. I don’t mean suicide. I mean some plan to actually work toward happiness, rather than just excuses. I do it too. One day.”
“I guess. I miss feeling like I was part of a family.”
“Then maybe you should work toward that, if that makes you feel less depressed. There are always people willing to shoot the shit with you if you just take a moment to say hello, and if you aren’t a total dick.”
When I came back from the trip, my exhaustion caused a major crash in my mood. I stepped out of the car, limping slowly to the door of my house. The long car ride back had deflated the high I was on. Now it was back to my part time job, depression…etc.
I just need to feel one more burst. I hope my friend is right, that it does just take an escape plan. Maybe just a more solidified plan.