Lately I’ve been dreaming about college. Dorm rooms and moving, packing up boxes and splitting them open. Odd, because college was 10 years ago now. Odd, because I don’t feel 10 years older.
I changed a lot during college. Who hasn’t? We go from being dependent on parents, living under strict rules and family dynamics to being independent, living in dorm rooms with strangers, taking classes with peers from all over the world, discovering the freedom of alcohol and tailgates and entering a world where previous rules seem to fade away.
Growing up, I don’t think I knew who I really was—as a twin, I was known as half of a whole,–always compared. Who was the smallest, the smartest, the prettiest. People comment on their opinions without realizing the consequences it has on a young girl. My sister and I attended the same private school from kindergarten through senior year. We grew up with the same boys we learned cursive with, shared lunch with the same girls we shared our first crushes with. It was a small town where everyone knows you, where if you’re smart at something or adept at some sport you have a name. You’re someone. And then, in college, I entered this world where no one knew me as a twin, as a part; I could create whatever story I wanted. I stumbled at first. I latched onto a boy—that boy from high school that I thought was the answer to all my insecurity. The one that finally made me feel like my own person. He was a year younger than me, so college meant the forced break up of our relationship, though in hindsight I think for him it was a way out. I held back on living because I couldn’t see life without him, even though I knew deep down that he had no intention of following through with his promises. I was entertainment, a game, something he could easily toss aside and pick back up whenever he wanted. And to his credit, it was because I allowed him that.
But after I found alcohol, he took a backseat. I had finally found the solution to all my embarrassment, my low self-esteem, the timidity that I hated about myself. With alcohol, I became the life of the party, someone who could easily start a conversation with anyone, even with the cute D1 baseball player at Vanderbilt, a school notorious for its baseball program. In my eyes, I was finally a catch. I was invincible; nights were magical—the elixir of alcohol mixing with my newfound freedom, living as as independent, an adult, someone detached from all the labels I had grown up with. The live music of Broadway became the background soundtrack to my new life. I catapulted up onto stages, singing into the microphones with a voice over-sold with cheap liquor. I took shots from strangers, never questioning who was handing me my drink, as long as it numbed whatever noise was chattering in my head. I strutted with purpose in heels I had no balance for, my dress riding up, my lipstick fading with the stars. At the time I still had the wherewithal to make it home safely, somehow—there were nights I’d trek the lonely stretch from Broadway all the way back to campus, some boy blowing up my phone. I’d collapse in my bed with my shoes still on, makeup running down my face, my dreams mixing with whatever had happened that night. Sometimes I’d wake up with remorse, but more often I’d shake off the night and convince myself this was normal. That all college girls flirted with danger, that this was my right, my coming of age.
Sometimes I look back on those years with shame, embarrassment, self-loathing. Living an entitled, privileged life, self-absorbed, the world at my fingertips, taking what I had for granted, using those around me as pawns in my game. I didn’t ever do it intentionally, but with time comes knowledge and the loss of ignorant bliss. I may have been numbing my own little traumas, but the childhood cards I were dealt were a winning hand. I’ve learned a lot about self-forgiveness, self-love—all the ingredients necessary before you can become a force for the greater good—but there is still a part of me that wants to scream out—none of this makes sense! There’s no clear justification for the road I took, the line I crossed, how I chose poor coping mechanisms to deal with whatever pain came into my life. There’s been times I’ve longed for a scapegoat—something from my past to blame for the ways I’ve unleashed destruction on those around me. One thing I do know, however, is that staying stuck in the past helps no one. I can choose to move on and learn and grow, or I can choose to wallow in my mistakes—the choice is always mine to make.
In sobriety there is almost a re-birth. A re-experiencing of all the human emotions, because for years and years there was the numbing, the shoving away, sweeping under the rug. All at once you re-learn what grief is—the sting of it enveloping your chest, freezing your movements, the shock and the lump in your throat. You relearn joy—the lightness, the feeling of floating, the way you perceive things as if seeing them for the first time. You re-experience anger and irritation, loneliness and freedom, confidence and pride. Sometimes the emotions feel like too much, like you just need to press pause on the world so you can process things one at a time. Too often they come in floods—when it rains, it pours. And you have a choice to make—to experience the pouring in all its glory, or to pick up and numb again.
Sometimes I want to numb again. I want to feel the way I felt in college. The nonchalance, the way I could brush off one night full of debauchery as if it was nothing, reinvent myself as a new week dawned, create whatever story I wanted to sell to the world. Sometimes I want to re-live Tuesdays in a crowded Sports-bar haggling the Joe strumming guitar because in my inebriated state I believed I could steal the show. Sometimes I want to feel that sequined top again, the way it hung on my bloated body, youth doing its job of hiding those imperfections, because when you’re twenty those choices haven’t yet caught up. I want to feel some stranger’s arms around me, be persuaded that I was the prettiest girl in the room, letting his lines lure me in, blunting the heartbreak of high school and what I thought was love. Sometimes I want to feel the wind on my face as I climbed the fence into the baseball stadium at midnight, running the bases with the boy I stole, our hearts beating too fast from rum and cokes. Sometimes I want to feel that rebellion, before it became a prison, before it threatened everything I’d worked so hard to have.
Maybe right now it’s enough to reflect on the memories, to realize their impact on the person I am today. Maybe right now it’s enough to accept time for what it is, lines for what they are and how they get crossed and blurred and the consequences I learn to live with when that happens.
Maybe it’s enough to write about and share, knowing that there’s a lesson to be learned in all of this living. Maybe it’s enough to just be where I am right now.