Simone

90 minutes isn’t much time in the car. It’s long enough to keep mom and dad and family away, but short enough that my peanut butter won’t separate in the heat of the trunk as we ride to move-in day. 90 minutes in a car is though. By public transportation—accounting for travel time to and from stations, in addition to stops and transfers—this is the most anxious two and half hours in my recent personal history.

This past weekend was my first time visiting my college since being accepted, and the first time my vapid fantasy of collegiate validation was actualized. My questions about my educational future have shifted to what residential houses I should avoid, removing my mind from the happenings of high school. I’ve reached a state of a paradoxical apathy: I await the end of school, gliding through the halls with a resting bitch face and an attitude of nihilism, while also growing sad that I’m not sadder. I want out, but not yet. I have too much and not enough time.

Unlike my work, I’m good at procrastinating my nervousness. So, instead of fretting over every imaginable aspect of a socially-challenging weekend at the college I’m contractually obligated to attend, I spent my worry on defending my navigational skills during road trips with friends, and on my dirty bedroom.

It’s easier to let it hit me all at once, later.

After two and a half hours—accounting for travel time to and from stations, in addition to stops and transfers—of travel, it does.

Leon Bridges’s on-the-nose “River” plays in my headphones as I end my journey along the Hudson. The next stop is the last, and even if it wasn’t mine, I’d have to get off and stand in the rain, and worse (or maybe worst), interact with the world sans the aid of my parents or friends or anyone I’ve ever come to know besides myself. I don’t trust myself. I can’t even pay attention Siri’s Google Map directions.

The acapella coda builds crescendo with the addition of new voices every 2.5 seconds, and while I’m halted by self-soundtracked panic, the train comes to a stop. Conductors direct us off, and I don’t have time to properly reconfigure the distribution of my personal belongings between my ears and pockets and bags. I exit clumsily, balancing a sleeping bag on a suitcase with backpack and phone and book and water bottle in my hands, yet again mortified at the amount of space my belongings and I manage to occupy. (Previously, I’d convinced myself that the most challenging part of the weekend would be getting all my bulk onto the bus without wiping out, which exiting the platform of the Poughkeepsie train station, I was probably wrong.)

As it turns out, being comfortable enough to poop in a co-ed communal bathroom after avoiding the urge for a full three-day weekend is far more difficult, and far more challenging than having to deal with physical and social immersion into your impending future. ♦