Dear UCLA,
I am a long way from home. Home is 2,016 miles away. Home is 30 hours by car and four by plane. A prairie of loss, growth, worry and spirit stand between me and home. Though I fear I have left myself 2,016 miles away, will you still accept me?
These bearded palm trees are not the white oaks I grew up with. The sky was never so blue back home. There were no oceans or mountains or deserts; only flat strips of land and fields of corn and disconcerting religious billboards. Here is Los Angeles: the beacon of my teenage romanticization! Yet, my first impression of the city was something jarring.
UCLA, you stand as a niche in this sprawling concrete landscape. You tell me to dig my toes into your skeleton. You crack open the doors of Royce Hall, Kerckhoff Coffee House and Pauley Pavilion. “Give it time,” you say. “You’ll be happy here.” But for how long, I wonder.
There are days when I liken myself to this mealy B-Plate apple, this chewed-up food, this wasted potential. Days when I think I’ve left my face at home. Everybody can see my fleshy insides, my puckered organs and my outline. I am only skin. Stitched, traced, hammered together. I am average girl who wanted so badly to be special, so how does she feel now? She doesn’t want any awards or promotions. She wants to be a child in her childhood home.
What of the college nights when I’m sitting with a group of people, playing board games or swapping stories, feeling so full, my skin tingling, unreal and plastic to the touch, numb from the elation of belonging? And I’m in this room with these people, all of us sleepy but unwilling to go to bed, because there is no place we’d rather be, no people we’d rather be with, nothing we’d rather be doing.
My cheeks have never felt this stroke of numbness before because I’ve only now discovered the greatness of acceptance. I’m so loved, and I’ve never had to fight for it! I’m loved because I’m a person with thoughts, and these thoughts are heard. I can’t feel my face, and it’s glorious.
I love the liminal moments of dorm life: I walk into the communal bathroom at nine pm, and it’s just a girl and me standing at the sink, her hair curled and eyeliner rigidly drawn as she brushes her teeth. I must stare at her funny and she must notice my stare. “It’s good luck to brush your teeth before frat parties,” she says, though it is difficult to understand her exact words, with the toothbrush and all. “That makes sense,” I reply, though I have no clue what she means.
I think often about that girl. About all the people-moments of college. This city is scary and this stage of life is strange, but when else would I learn about frat-party superstitions? UCLA is larger than life — at times everybody feels like a stranger — but there is a thread of closeness between us all. Everybody is a bit lost but lost with motivation. I listen to your dreams, you listen to mine and someday we will see each other again in the real world.
The hypnotic skies and city lights are lovely, as are my professors and dining halls and dorms, but what would I be without the people around me? Home is winded walks uphill among frenzied students and squirrels. Home is 34.07° N, 118.45° W. Home is where love is given and reciprocated. I think, then, I am exactly where I am meant to be.
With love,
Amelia