I am lonely. I sigh as the thought crosses my mind yet again. It’s another Thursday night and I’m sitting on a stranger’s bed in a stranger’s room full of strangers drinking and dancing to EDM. I wish I was with you instead. There’s a paper cup in my hand and someone notices it’s half empty now so they pour more of the strong-smelling alcohol into it again. I smile at them and mouth a thank you just as they melt back into the mass of moving bodies. I try not to let my sadness show up on my face as I put the cup to my lips to take a sip. I am lonely. The girl who asked me to come to this party with her is suddenly in front of me and she is asking me to dance with her. She is so beautiful that my heart has a reason to beat again so I finish my drink in one gulp and let her pull me to my feet.
I am not one for dorm parties, you know that. My brain won’t stay quiet even when I’ve poured possibly spiked alcohol into my bloodstream. But I am lonely. And I won’t survive here in Ashoka without distracting myself from this loneliness. I need distractions; sometimes the readings and assignments are not enough. Her hands are on my waist now but all I can think about is how I wish I could feel like I was part of this crowd and not just in it. I try to shut out the voices in my head and instead, focus on how pretty her hair looks in the dim lighting, with its bright blue streaks.
The distractions only last a while though. Before you know it, it’s 12:30 and there are dozens of people waiting to sign out. I wonder if any of these people ever felt like they were too ill-fitted to their bodies to exist in peace. I feel it nearly every day. Except when I’m with you. Can you blame a drowning person for loving the one who pulled them out of the water?
After the party, I remember smoking on the bleachers with the blue-haired girl and we were telling each other about our heartbreaks and how difficult it is to rip someone out of your heart without pulling yourself apart. She tells me she got high for the first time here. I tell her I kissed you for the first time here. Those two feelings are not as different as they seem.
This is the first time we have gone without talking for so long. The voices in my mind keep telling me this is the beginning of how it ends. But what if there was nothing to begin with? Here in Ashoka, we don’t define love and so, where I saw a garden, you saw a wilting flower and neither of us told the other what we were seeing. I am lonely. I have never been sure of much in my life and I don’t feel ready to be an adult just yet, and I was never sure that you would stay with me but I was always sure that you would keep coming back each time you left. And you did, just as the waves come back to the shore, so why does this time feel different?
Distractions. I realise I have been so engrossed in my readings for tomorrow that I forgot to have lunch. My body and my mind are at war and I tell myself there are just twenty pages left. I order food to my room but that just means I missed a chance to have lunch with other people. When my thoughts become too unbearably loud, I like to surround myself with the voices of others. I am lonely.
I haven’t seen you in nearly a week now and another Thursday comes around, and I’m worried about whether you’re eating properly. I almost text you again but I don’t. I look up as I hear someone say my name and it’s another friend that I’m unsure of calling a friend because here in Ashoka, we don’t define love. We talk and vent about our day and he asks me if I want to grab drinks. I smile with an ‘of course’. I am lonely. But I have found a distraction.
I say hi to a dozen other people as we make our way into the crowded Aroma. Too many familiar faces and yet I am lonely. The girl with the blue hair hugs me, half-drunk, and tells me I look pretty. The guy I kissed two weeks ago looks up and smiles when we pass by his table. And then I hear someone call out your name and I have to convince myself to not turn around to see if it’s you because… come on, too many people have your name.
But I feel my phone buzzing and I give in to hope because it’s your name that flashes on the screen. “Turn around.” I read those two words half a dozen times. I take a breath and can’t help but think of the Orpheus and Eurydice painting by Kratzenstein Stub that my friend had once shown me. I continue to stare at the text on my phone and take another deep breath. If I turn around, will you disappear again? But I am lonely. And I know you are lonely and I know we promised to be each other’s occasional constant. So I turn around anyway, knowing I will regret it, just as Orpheus must have regretted his choice. But ten years later, I will not remember the ways you taught me pain, I will only remember the ways you showed me love and as I get up and walk towards you, I tell myself that this is what it’s meant to be like. I will make mistakes and I will fail miserably to be an adult and somehow, I hope that will make me into one. I am lonely, constantly, but for just a moment I’m here with you and I’m not. I think I will just keep looking for these moments when the loneliness is absent temporarily and I will string those moments together and call it life.