At Rise

I don’t claim to know anything about life. But I do know that whenever you make a plan, it’s safest to assume that every power in the universe will suddenly conspire to do everything possible to ensure that your plan falls magnificently apart. As I sat in my brand new dorm room just a handful of hours into my first semester of college, this was all I could think.

The room was eerily quiet; in fact, the entire dorm seemed to be empty. My roommate Justine had gone out to dinner with her parents, and I had yet to spend more than a few seconds chatting with any of the other freshmen I had met. As for my parents, my father had managed to spend just under three hours helping Aunt Patty and I carry my belongings to the fifth floor of Johnson Hall. After that, he was back on his way to Blacksburg, where he evidently had lots of planning to do before the semester began at his college. My mother was nowhere to be found, although it was safe to assume she was somewhere doting on her new boyfriend. Her excuse, if she called, would be some sob story about how hard it is to find a job and how she just doesn’t have the money to drive all the way to Richmond for me.

I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. The room was mostly filled with brand new things, purchased just for this new phase in my life. I couldn’t bear to bring much from my childhood home, which I had moved out of three months earlier to join my mom and aunt in Richmond. I kept compulsively arranging and rearranging the books and movies stacked on the bookshelf Justine and I were sharing. I moved a stuffed kitten from the desk to the dresser and back at least five times. I even fiddled with the lavender and black letters over my desk that spelled out VICTORIA, a going away present from Justine’s mom.

So this was college. Fantastic.

I stood at the window for a while, watching downtown Richmond move below me. We were lucky to have a room with giant picture windows, a feature that almost made up for how tiny the room was. The sky was still bright and the trees still bore their summer colors. Cars flew by and people milled around outside the dormitories that lined the street. I turned away from the window and tapped my iPod on, setting it to a playlist entitled “There’s No Home For You Here”. It was a giant slap in the face that I knew I didn’t really deserve; this wasn’t some exile, some self-chosen isolation. I was not alone here. I had my aunt, my best friend, and when she felt like giving me the time, my mother was not too far away. But it was a fresh start. A full academic scholarship and a chance to see who I was out on my own. An adventure in a new land. An undiscovered country.