Solo Cloud on Float Mode

There's something about living on campus in a residential university. It throws up some very uncomfortable, hair-splitting moments of loneliness in a crowd.

I'd internalized my mother's agoraphobia, and would usually run back home once whatever work was going on was over. And my home was sacred - I was loathe to invite just anyone in. This was something of a family hallmark, I suppose, because I feel that my home still has this aura of... well, not an uninviting quality. More of a sense of aloofness, a feeling that the front door would just like to fade into the wall.

Here, I'm often tempted to run back to my cosy little room. And do what? I brought over a couple of my favorite worldly possessions, my fortifications against loneliness and socialization. Books. Music. Movies. You'd think I'd never need step out, except to feed myself and use the big girls' room. I thought that, at any rate. 

But it's characteristic of a new life to strip away much of that comfort I derived from my familiars. 

Attempts at hurtling into the old havens of fiction and familiarity are now roadblocked by this vague discomfort. There's nothing better that the campus outside can offer me over my books and music, but its half-empty presence rings in my ears, trying to suck me like marrow out of the bone of the hostel.

I have not been an explorer for many, many years. But an impending metamorphosis is already aching in my bones... Strange that I make it sound more natural a process it is, because I'm filled with apprehension and have been puffing a slender cigarette of pessimism for a few months, now.

Echoes of the larger world are already burning like acid through my self-absorbed bubble. And I'm holding back, for as long as possible, from the paralyzing inevitability of stepping out - naked, shaking, endless.