It’s no secret that my life has not been the easy this year. Between the existential shadow that Sophomore year casts on me, the paralyzing fear that sinks in whenever I’m reminded about my old man’s legal status (or lack thereof), my mental health has not been where I’ve needed her to be. I’ve been in a gnarly, uneven state in which I’m present and doing all that I should… but I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve left some part of myself behind.
I was fed up with crying. It wouldn’t make an order of deportation disappear. It would not grant me any relief for the imposter syndrome I was experiencing since having stepped onto this campus. I decided to stop crying. I did not bask in the negativity whose origin is still unknown. To roll it all up with mismatched socks and old High School T-shirts. To sleep for 14 hours and tell myself, “it’s normal; everyone is tired here”. Even lie to myself in the margins of my own journal, “Today was fine. I called home and things are getting better.” It worked, until it didn’t. And my god, it didn’t. I was present, but internally missing. My eyes stung dry and fell blind to the world around me.
And so I went to The Outer Space in Hamden. The whispers of cigarette smoke and a vague melancholy coated the wooden floors of The Ballroom. Except, this melancholy was not as aggressive as the wind and rain from outside. It was docile and inviting. It was nestled in a nostalgia, reminiscent of combined experiences with no cumulative title. Blind Pilot arrived on stage and infused the malleable airwaves with melodies and progressions, “to know just where you are and where you’re not.” We were all settled into positions within this metaphorical, communal hammock. And we listened. And we swayed. And we closed our eyes, softly raising our eyebrows as the notes rang through, “don’t you doubt, everybody’s seen some winter, don’t you just take the dark way out.” The soft strums of the lead guitar, warm xylophonic resonances, and melted intermingling of voices. It was an homage for nostalgic remembrance of events and feelings that we had turned our back on… or maybe have never experienced in the first place. Momentary displays of grief and sadness, sufficing enough room to process it without suffocating.
Perhaps it was the way the violet stage lights married into the curtain. Or maybe it was the cross section of my fingers meeting the warm hands and arms that enveloped me from either side.And so I cried. And it wasn’t tears of helplessness. Or fear. Or anger. Or of guilt. I felt present in escaping through the Oregonian band that played throughout my memory. My own life score. During my first kiss and my father’s hospitalization. On Saturday nights, acting as a foil to the Garifuna and Cumbia of that morning’s chore packed schedule. A childhood in which we had nothing, but where my parents made it feel like we had everything, the cross country road trip to college, the nights on roofs overlooking the Los Angeles cityscape, decompression after the election and subsequent protests in which my voice resulted shot and my hands numb.
I felt present. And while the world sometimes feels like it’s ending and while that night may not have changed anything back home, it’ll act as my flotation devices. I know that for at least each 3 minute and 52 second interval, I will be present.
E. Almendarez (SM’20)
