Dorm Life Amid Disease

 

Key aspects of the current dorm life:
IDs, keys, and my wallet. 

I'll be the first to admit that I was terrified of dorm life. Sure, I had stayed away from home for a few days in the past, but a few days was a lot less than a few months. What would I eat every day? What if I couldn't find anything I liked to eat some days (after all, I'm a notoriously picky eater)? What if I got sick? What if, what if, what if? I chased this thought around for a long time over the summer, until I dreaded the moment when my head would hit the pillow and it would resurge. When the time came, I was extremely anxious, and after my parents left, I flopped down on my bed and cried. When the tears dried and I felt normal again, I set my room in order, hanging my posters and righting each wrong. Then I did it again, until I was satisfied. The next morning, I did it one more time. Then I gave up. 

All of that said, I'll also be the first to admit that I really don't know what to say on this topic. It's just life to me: weird and whimsical at times, but more often boring and hardly worth the effort of retelling than not. It's how I often feel with these blog posts. After all, I'm just another person, and not one with particularly powerful stories at that. I wake up, some days in the early morning for my classes and sometimes at noon when I'm free and need a good sleep to rejuvenate my energy. I walk five minutes up and around the block to Target at the beginning of each week to buy bread, lunch-meat, fruit, chips, and drinks. On Wednesdays and Fridays, I get Chick-Fil-A or Papa John's or McDonald's on my way in from class. The rest of the time I eat in my room. If I'm going home that weekend, I don't eat at all on Fridays, until whoever's picking me up arrives and we can grab a bite to eat together. 

Most of the time I take my laundry home with me, because I'm awkward doing it in my residence hall. I'm just as awkward taking my trash out at the end of the week. Sometimes I get brave and wave to people I know, but those are few and far between right now, and I'm usually more comfortable with AirPods in my ears and music swaddling me. When I get bored, I'll cart my laptop and my yellow legal pad outside and work on personal writing projects or homework until my back aches from the colorful chairs in the courtyard. Every now and then, friends will stop by and chat. I call home, and I call my girlfriend. I'm convinced this pandemic has driven up the number of drivers, because horns and sirens blare deep into the night. Other times, the quiet is constricting. 

All of that is to say...I'm living. I wear masks getting food and taking out trash and buying groceries; I sanitize when I get back in for the day; I spend a lot of time inside on Zoom calls; I have worries that my roommate could get COVID and throw us both into quarantine; and I only see the folks in my residence hall. Things are different, yes, but I guess I'm in a weird spot because I have nothing with which to compare my experience. I'm living, though. And I guess that has to be enough sometimes.