Lilly

I leave the watch party at a quarter to midnight. It’s not much of a party anymore. I tell my friends that I’m going to bed, sit in darkness for five minutes, then rejoin them in the hallway. We sit cross-legged and stare into space for hours. I tell myself that I won’t cry, that I will be strong, stoic in the face of the unknown. My face burns with the effort. I never let out a sob, but the tears run hot down my face as we all listen to each other, baring our fears until we’re all talked out and silence falls again, no one daring to check their phones, trying to salvage comfort simply in coexisting. Safe for the moment.

The next day is intense. My breath never catches, but the silent tears return when I walk into my linear algebra class and realize that my professor is wearing the same clothes he left in the night before, his eyes dark and weary and deep set. “Are you guys OK with not talking about math today?” he says, and there is a hitch in his voice. We let him talk, tell us about his family, because we can see that he needs this as much as we do. When I hand in my finished exam to my geology instructor halfway through the period, unable to focus on it for even a second longer, I see in his eyes nothing but regret for putting us through this after what was, for many, a sleepless night. And while my astronomy professor is almost visibly holding himself back, doing his best to give us something ordinary to cling to, he is the first to leave the room after dismissing class and the Post-It note on his door says, “Sorry, everyone, no office hours this afternoon.” We are all too tired, too preoccupied trying to cope.

I find myself torn again, and this time it cuts me differently, but no less deep. Because while my friends are going to protests, making their voices heard, I am drowning in a physics problem set in the sickly fluorescent light of my dormitory. Studying feels at once a luxury and a responsibility, especially what I am studying. Do I really dare cast my net out into the far reaches of the universe when there’s so much to attend to on our own planet? Isn’t there something inherently selfish about pursuing astronomy?

Carl Sagan said in Contact, “For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.” It was his birthday on November 9. He would have been 82. This is not about me, and right now it is not my voice that needs to be heard. But I will do what I can. I will do what I can. I will do what I can. ♦