This year the space I'm living [sleeping occasionally] in could be featured in a Better Homes & Gardens magazine. With two porches, painted shutters, tons of natural light, chic furniture, granite countertops, and both an avocado and orange tree, it's visually lovely. The handsome furnishings and even the selection of the house is all the work of my two more aesthetically-gifted roommates (enter my room and the focal-point is an upside-down cardboard box serving as 'bedside table'). Without really paying more than I was last year, I'm getting a far more (visually) luxurious experience, though it feels dissonant. I'm in college, where is the charming, haphazard, faux-derelict living experience I was guaranteed? Peer into the kitchen sink and you're unlikely to see anything more than the brush used to scrub the dishes already stacked neatly on the drying rack. I'm too young for this. I walk out onto the painted porch in a floor-length, microfiber robe to get the mail, and for a moment I'm enjoying retirement as I wave to the elderly couple reading the paper on their own porch across the street.
Freshman year I lived in a walk-in-closet-sized box with old carpet, the loudest bathroom fan you've ever been jerked from sleep by, a living-tetris of clunky furniture, audibly vinyl twin-sized mattresses, and perpetually alternating conversation, laughter, and communion.
Sophomore year I lived in a significantly larger box, plus it had an almost entirely functioning kitchen and a comfortable, stained couch, but the old carpet, roaring fan, loud little mattresses, and laughter were still present.
This year the bathroom fan and my mattress are both whisper quiet. In fact, the mattress is a full-sized foam mattress, it's the biggest and perhaps most comfortable mattress I've ever had and it's afforded me the worst sleep yet.
Over a mile from the building I called home for two years, and equally as far from the laughter and conversation that precursed my falling asleep every night, sinking deeply into a pure-foam mattress instead of into sleep, I consider how hell's clouds are in fact even fluffier and brighter than heaven's, not that it matters. Like the fan and the mattress, outside my head the whole room is whisper quiet.
I feel like the lesson here is misplaced, I'm a music major for goodness' sake. I'm not expecting an extravagant living situation at any point in my life, graduation-forward. I've never regarded monetary yieldings over relationships with friends, not even close. I've never assumed that or even cared whether I'd end up with any significant financial wealth. So while maybe this whole situation would have been of use to someone who did define wealth as such, why me? What had I, in my superior humility, to gain from exile?
So confident in my ability to be alone, I'd forgotten that it's the privilege to practice solitude intentionally that makes it so pleasurable. I'd chosen this arrangement, selected the situation myself, and ignorantly entered into what I thought would be at best an adventure and at worst peacefully secluded. What I've learned is that seclusion is peaceful, given the presence of accessible alternatives, which I'd blindly signed away on a 12-month lease. And even beyond my inability to distinguish independence from loneliness, I'd forgotten how desperately I need community. How critically I (we) need to be as willing to accept as we are to give, and trust that our contributions aren't all that validate our belonging.
My self-initiated-turned-binding seclusion forced me to recognize the unrealistic levels of independence I'd thought I'd achieved, and determine what kind of friend I might be when I'm desperate, when I need as much, if not more, than I have to give......
