The Road Often Travelled

If you, Reader, have been so fortunate as to attend a university and live in a dormitory, you know exactly of what I speak when I say these words: your dorm hallway. 

Each floor in a dormitory boasts its own unique spirit: a special energy that characterises the culture of the communal space and dictates how its residents will interact, while still conforming to the overarching nature of the dorm as a whole. No two hallways are exactly alike, but each share the same core elements, and if you close your eyes, I am sure the repressed memory of your own freshman housing will come back to you with no trouble at all.

Do you see it? You are in an elevator that smells faintly of weed, Diet Coke, and a dentist’s office, the corners of which are always covered with an inexplicably permanent layer of dust. The elevator doors shimmy open, or conversely, perhaps you have decided this already-emotionally taxing year is the one in which you will aim to push yourself physically as well as mentally, and in an effort to keep with your new fitness goals you have taken the stairs (which, of course, are equally as loathsome as the aforementioned elevator. Dormitory stairs are always just barely steep enough to climb, so that the process of dragging your sleep-deprived, ramen-stuffed body to the laundry room is a more exhausting endeavor than you care to admit. These stairs are further slightly sticky, and are lined by railings lacking in paint and walls adorned with mysterious indentions, all tokens from the late-night extravaganzas of freshmen classes of old). But, whatever means you took to get to this place – elevator or stairs – you have arrived at your hallway.

You know this hallway nearly better than the home in which you were raised, and yet it is an enigmatic force which you will never be able to fully comprehend or capture. The ceilings are low and feel suffocating, the walls seem to be closer together than they truly are. The blue carpet is rough and stiff laid over the concrete foundation, and somehow is both dirty and sterile. Such features are accentuated by severe angles juxtaposed against some lone inhabitant’s futile attempt to decorate their door with Walmart stickers and a whiteboard, which, despite instructing passer-bys to, “leave a positive message!” has been crudely defaced in a charmless study of human anatomy. Wilting construction paper flowers identify each room as belonging to two residents (whose relationship is probably strained), cut out the night before move-in by an RA who either demanded to be worshipped, or winked and looked the other way when you came home late at night clutching a water bottle that was not filled with water. Cold door handles stare at you as you pass by under the shocking fluorescent lights, just barely made liveable by the sunlight pouring in from the one window at the end of the hall. Somewhere out of sight, keys jangle, a door opens and closes, a voice speaks indistinctly. You are not alone, but you are completely in your own world. 

Walking down a dorm hallway to one’s room is an affair not often enough discussed. In the act, there is a sense of eternal dread and yet total hope. There is the pain in knowing that if you allow your feet to stop before you reach your door, you may never get there. And yet still, there is an undercurrent of excitement, a sense giddiness at being in college, in boring evening plans made memorable because of with whom you will be sharing them, of total love for what is happening around you contrasted by sheer exhaustion and a tugging feeling that begs you to get in your car and spend just one weekend letting your mother cook for you an edible dinner and wash your sheets in a machine that does not require quarters. 

I don’t know what exactly is college. I don’t know exactly how I feel about it. Since I have arrived here, I feel like I don’t know a lot more than I do know. I feel as if I was older as a sixteen year-old than I am at nineteen. At the very least, when I was sixteen driving my friends around town was a sign of preeminence – now it just means I have to spend more money on gas. 

I am surrounded by people, and yet sometimes I feel so isolated. I adore my new friends, but I am plagued by the discomfort that comes with trying to make profound connections while figuring out who I am, who I want to be, and what I am doing. I am openly in a war against myself as I avoid vulnerability, despite knowing I will not grow in any way without embracing a sense of openness. I second-guess myself, I stumble around, I worry about how everything in my life fits together. I agonize over each choice, knowing there is a line between genuinely pushing myself out of my comfort zone, going through the motions of growth so as to protect myself (but not gaining any new experiences or insights in the process), and finding the balance between stretching and resting. I begin each day with a great plan to conquer my weaknesses and throw myself into my work, and I end the day exhausted having given maybe two thoughts to my ever-growing to-do list. I am constantly looking at what others are doing in an attempt to gage my own process, but this only serves to confuse, dishearten, or frustrate me. I am trying to keep an eye on the future, stay present in the moment, and learn from the past, simultaneously. I am unable to comprehend the fact that in four years I will be a real adult. I feel disconnected from my high school friends, and this reality creates an uncomfortable distance which is entirely new and terrifying. I miss my family every day, despite knowing that I am supposed to find them revolting and irritating – which they are, some days. But most days I find their company rather pleasant.

All these aspects of my life are countered by some of the most wonderful moments and journeys I have ever experienced. Friends who I can not imagine living without, despite knowing them for mere months. People for whom I would do absolutely anything, and from whom I learn constantly. Days of frustration and confusion that inspire a single moment of brilliant success – the process to which is so nuanced and intense I can not help but love it. New mindsets and self-discoveries and a daily commitment to failing. Midnight giggles in the hair-covered community bathrooms, an unshakable bond formed over the mutual hatred of dining halls, pints of ice cream bought at Target and eaten while watching The Princess Diaries in the basement study room, long drives on country roads with the windows rolled down and misty rain falling on our hair and dampening our clothes, professors who are terrifying as they radiate tremendous skill and confidence, but whom I can not help but trust implicitly. One million tiny moments that spark magic and bond hearts.

God only knows what I am doing. I wake up every day knowing very little to be absolutely true: that I am an exceptionally lucky girl to have such wonderful friends and family, that I am pursuing the greatest art known to man and the craft which has consumed the operation of my entire being, and that sometimes roads – often travelled or not – just kind of hurt. But there is no pain from which I will not grow, no matter how marginally, and this is a journey which has no definite “end point”. Roads are intended to serve as means of transportation from Point A to Point B, but when I look back on my admittedly short life, I rarely remember which of my plans worked out in my favor, or how many of my goals I achieved with soaring success. What I remember clearly are the obstacles in my path, the things I learned and people I met along the way, how each individual step was a journey in and of itself that built on the last and continues to build up to this moment. The road often travelled is not a check-off on the way to an end result, but an unending process of growth and betterment and failure that continues to stretch before me. It is not an easy path, it is not even always very fun, but it is one we all walk every day, and each morning it presents the opportunity try again, to fail, to grow, to love, to explore, maybe to feel terrible and maybe to feel indestructible – or, in my case, what is usually some mixture of both. 

I am taking the road often travelled in my own time and my own way, in the hope that as I walk I will encounter one million failures and live into fact that this experience – college, being nineteen, feeling confused, making new friends, and everything else – is the beginning of a great many journeys, and I can’t wait to meet them as they come.

Love,

Lettie Anne

Photo from Pinterest.