on the flood

Something strange happens when you really cry for the first time in years. You can feel the ghosts of all the stupid boy-crazed, skinned knee, dead rabbit, friend-fight tears stuck to your cheeks like a pair of wet jeans. Those tears felt real enough at the time, but were only cracks in the dam that holds the lake behind  your eyes. When the dam breaks, the lake spills so fast and strong that it misses your face completely, dropping straight to the valley of your chest and into the basin of your belly button. The pressure from the dam shakes your entire body and the only stillness lies in the milliseconds between rapid heartbeats. When you don't really cry for years, the lake grows, and the spill can make you wish you had built an arc. But when the water stops flowing, there is a sense of cleanliness, like the dust the accumulated on the backs of your eyes has been washed away. It will take time to adjust to the clean lens, and you might not see a rainbow with every salty blink, but it's a start.

It has been a really tough year in the best way possible. I have spent the past three weeks in a complete slump feeling like the stupidest most inadequate person on campus and maybe even the greater Providence area for no particular reason. While the low self-esteem aspect of my newfound stupidity sucks... IT IS ALSO AWESOME!!! 

It feels like the beginning of TMS all over again. Fieldston was easy. I got into every program I applied to and made honors grades writings papers named after Hannah Montana songs (literally... I wrote an essay called "Odysseus: Nobody's Perfect"). I can't do that here. I have to work my butt off to get good grades. I don't have my reputation as a star student or a hard worker excuse any lack of effort. I am surrounded by smart people who scare the crap out of me and inspire me to do better. 

I got wait listed for two student groups I applied to and it was the best slap in the face I could have gotten because the hubris little high schooler in me wrote the applications in one hour. I got a 75 on a bio test. I tried to convince someone that if it was 4pm in Los Angeles it would be 1pm in Ohio (twice) because I was so tired from studying that that made perfect sense in my mind. 

All that being said, I think I'm doing this whole freshman year thing right. I'm not failing school. I currently have 3 A's and a B. I love my friends. I'm pretty sure they love me too (either that or they are great actors/ part of some government experiment). I'm simultaneously exhausted and the most awake I have ever been. So screw feeling stupid because anyone who doesn't feel stupid is probably too full of their own 5-syllable intellectual bullshit to realize how truly liberating it is to feel dumb... how deciding not to be pre-med opens up a world filled with sarcophaguses and sphinxes... how burning toast in the dining hall is a great way to meet new people (occasionally and accidentally)... how trying to fashion a mouse trap out of lacrosse sticks and glue might be the only correct way to bond with your roommates (note to Alden, put mice in dorms)... and so much more.

So alas, another Char rant. Please respond to this email with something about you/ TMS life/ something so I don't feel like a completely self-obsessed college student having an existential crisis about timezones. 

I am finally putting my money where my mouth is (sort of). Here is a picture of a sunrise, not necessarily where I live, but still a sunrise I captured on camera. It's over the rainforests of northern Belize. 


Elliot