loneliness

howdy --

I’m reviewing Tyler, the Creator’s album, Flower Boy, for the review project, which means I’ve had to listen to the album a lot of times through. One of my favorite songs on the record is “911/Mr. Lonely” and I’ve been listening to it pretty much on repeat lately. In the song, Tyler has a line where he just repeats “I can’t even lie, I been lonely as fuck”. And this got me thinking. College is really lonely sometimes. Back in high school I craved alone time because if I wasn’t with friends at school, I was around my teammates at track practice or around my co-workers at the restaurant. All I wanted when I got home was to be alone but that was often difficult because I was the only kid left in the house and my parents wanted to spend time with me before I moved out for college. I wouldn’t call myself a strict extrovert or introvert because I enjoy being around people and being by myself but now I’ve found my situation reversed. I don’t know that many people in my classes and it feels hard to find people to be around sometimes. Of course I have my close friends right down the hall and my roommate and other friends but it can be exhausting to seek out people. My best friend came down with the flu and had to go home a couple days ago to recover and without her, I’ve noticed that I’ve just been spending a lot of time alone. Last semester I would make an effort to find people to get dinner with or to get a study room together and do homework in the evenings, but recently I’ve found myself being so tired all the time that I just go back to my room after class and get dinner with maybe one or two other people or just go alone, and then spend the rest of the night in my room. Weekends are different, but still, I just don’t see that many people during the week and it gets really lonely occasionally. I understand that I have kind of put myself in this situation by not making an effort to reach out to people but I feel like college in general can just be lonely and no one acknowledges it. It feels like everyone is going around acting like we’re all having the time of our lives constantly and, yeah, school is hard but everything else is going just fine. Not to say that I haven’t had a great experience so far and made fantastic memories with people that have come to be my closest friends, but it’s been rough too and I just want to be able to talk about that every once in a while without feeling like I’m the only one that feels lonely sometimes. I didn’t really mean for this to be such a downer but hey, it be like that sometimes. So if anyone is actually reading this and also gets lonely sometimes, I like long walks down to the river and bubble tea, you know where to find me.

Love,

Maya