discontent

Today I reached a point where the number of Friday nights I've spent in the middle ground at Rhodes has gotten way too high. Despite the number of times I have come here on desperate Friday nights, they fail to repeat any patterns. The middle ground on friday nights here is always different week to week. The energy in the place shifts with the pairs, or solo persons, working here on their latest assignment from the professor. People vary in their misery or eagerness to learn but I keep thinking to myself that I don't really know what is going on for the other people around. Anyway, each and every time I've spent evenings in here on weekends I have felt out of place because I am not content. I know there is somewhere better out there in the world where I would have more fun or experience more beauty. I want to be there where it is better and not here where it is constrained. I want a lot more out of life than the experiences I have on this campus, though I love this campus. I'm held tight into a group of college students and because of it people in the real work will make assumptions about me that I am intelligent and driven. The people here are so similar and so different; I'll never understand.

Eating dinner earlier, I saw Darren. He came into the room with his tray of food and sat down at a table to my right. I was sitting at a table of seven or so men checking in with them because of volleyball at 7:00 p.m. That was in less than a half-hour and I wanted to touch base with their group knowing I would see them soon and need to play volleyball with them. I didn't want to feel like an outsider, even though I'm thinking lately that is what I will always be. I knew Darren had sat at a table near my and was eating by himself, but I didn't dare look at him. If I did, I would show my weakness, a pain that is so real. When I stood up to leave, he stood up and walked out before I had a chance to. As I walked out of the rat, I saw him walking down the darkened path of the sidewalk with his black hood over his head. A small figure, seemingly needy, not needing me at all.

Later, after I had lost my keys, I walked over to Robb where he lives and stood outside the door for a while waiting for someone to exit the building so I could get in. Usually I have my fob to get into buildings but I lost my keys a few hours earlier so I was stuck out in the cold rainy and creepy darkness, feeling like I was doing something wrong. I had made brief eye contact with someone sitting in the darkened social room right next to the door, but I was afraid of what they would think of me. We are supposed to have fobs to use for entering buildings and since I didn't, I didn't feel like I deserved to get into the all male dorm where Darren lives. Besides, I feared that it was Darren sitting there in the dark watching t.v. by himself in the social room. I did not feel safe there and I could not deal with what could happen if I got into the building and found him. He might not even look at me.

I once thought that my feminine appearance and slight attractiveness would be enough to entertain a guy. Since then I've developed a sort of self-esteem around my personality and not around my appearance so much. When I sat once with Darren talking to the side of his deep, deep face, neither of those pieces of me were enough to get him to look at me. I was not a human being. I do not think it was me who was feeling that way; I know it was Darren who does not feel alive. I still felt it all the same . . .