myself to be. I was instantly ashamed, as if this was wrong, was somehow my own fault, and so I pretended it wasnât there. This was easy at firstâthere was no one to tell the difference. Phineas was in the wind by thenâlost, but not yet found. My parents were home, in their empty nest, a little more than an hour south from me. My mother, keeping busy at her school, teaching art to kindergarten through twelfth grade, organizing the yearbook and the art fair and the half a dozen other extracurricular activities she always seemed to be in charge of; my father, listening to audiobooks in his woodshop as he made jewelry boxes and tables and stools, sanding them smooth, then varnishing them until the wood grain glistened like living golden veins.
I had chosen between two boarding schools, one large, preppy, and prestigious, one small and alternative, with a working farm on its campus. I donât fully remember my reasoning behind choosing the smaller school, but the idea that Phineas would approve certainly crossed my mind, as his approval had yet to lose its currency with me. When I toured it I saw kids with neon hair and piercings, in frayed jeans and muck boots, playing Ultimate Frisbee, dreading one anotherâs hair, sketching on big pads with sticks of charcoal. The tour guide showed us the barn, with its rows of cows and a few students shaking containers full of feed, and the pond, where kids swam in their underwear. It was familiar, and at the same time it was a whole new universe. I could see myself there. At the other school they showed us the massive, silent library and a Vespers rehearsal, brick dorms, and pristine soccer fields. It was a beautiful campus, and utterly predictable. The first school drew me in with its strangeness. It magnetized me.
From the moment orientation began, there was so much to do, so little time to think, that I was carried through the first few months of my freshman year simply by the momentum of everyone around me. Yet this in and of itself began to eat away at me. Yes, my peers were interesting and unique, artists and farmers and activists and nerds, but I couldnât escape them, even for a moment. I had grown up with hours and hours to myself, whole days for sitting in the tall grass outside or reading in my room, and suddenly it wasnât possible to be alone. Suddenly, I needed to be in class, or at an activity, or at my work-study job, or doing homework, or socializing. I was almost immediately exhausted.
There was no time to address the sadness that was overtaking me, no way to release it. I upped the wattage of my smile to compensate, but it only made my energy fade faster. It only made me feel like a liar. Pretty soon I started acting like one, too. I lied about skipping classes, about smoking pot in the woods; I lied about the bottles of booze that I grew skilled at stealing; I lied about hallucinating with psilocybin mushrooms and unadvised amounts of cough-and-cold medication, watching the ceiling bubble and the walls breathe. All this was a way of searching for a release valve, some way to let just a breath of despair escape my body, because if I couldnât find relief I was sure I would burst.
Of the blur that was my freshman year, I remember most vividly the crowded crush of Milk Lunch, a mid-morning snack that the school served in the foyer of the dining hall. There was watery hot cocoa and cider and coffee and warm, gooey muffins laid out on a barricade of folding tables, plus a few hundred kids packed into the cramped space, waiting and pushing and squawking like a flock of gulls, crumbs falling from their mouths, muffin wrappers scattered across the floor. I remember entering the throng and feeling as though my head would explode, wishing fervently to disappear, to find myself somewhere, anywhere, else. Come to think of it, I felt like my head was about to explode for almost the entire year. I had always been a relatively easygoing kidâI
I had chosen between two boarding schools, one large, preppy, and prestigious, one small and alternative, with a working farm on its campus. I donât fully remember my reasoning behind choosing the smaller school, but the idea that Phineas would approve certainly crossed my mind, as his approval had yet to lose its currency with me. When I toured it I saw kids with neon hair and piercings, in frayed jeans and muck boots, playing Ultimate Frisbee, dreading one anotherâs hair, sketching on big pads with sticks of charcoal. The tour guide showed us the barn, with its rows of cows and a few students shaking containers full of feed, and the pond, where kids swam in their underwear. It was familiar, and at the same time it was a whole new universe. I could see myself there. At the other school they showed us the massive, silent library and a Vespers rehearsal, brick dorms, and pristine soccer fields. It was a beautiful campus, and utterly predictable. The first school drew me in with its strangeness. It magnetized me.
From the moment orientation began, there was so much to do, so little time to think, that I was carried through the first few months of my freshman year simply by the momentum of everyone around me. Yet this in and of itself began to eat away at me. Yes, my peers were interesting and unique, artists and farmers and activists and nerds, but I couldnât escape them, even for a moment. I had grown up with hours and hours to myself, whole days for sitting in the tall grass outside or reading in my room, and suddenly it wasnât possible to be alone. Suddenly, I needed to be in class, or at an activity, or at my work-study job, or doing homework, or socializing. I was almost immediately exhausted.
There was no time to address the sadness that was overtaking me, no way to release it. I upped the wattage of my smile to compensate, but it only made my energy fade faster. It only made me feel like a liar. Pretty soon I started acting like one, too. I lied about skipping classes, about smoking pot in the woods; I lied about the bottles of booze that I grew skilled at stealing; I lied about hallucinating with psilocybin mushrooms and unadvised amounts of cough-and-cold medication, watching the ceiling bubble and the walls breathe. All this was a way of searching for a release valve, some way to let just a breath of despair escape my body, because if I couldnât find relief I was sure I would burst.
Of the blur that was my freshman year, I remember most vividly the crowded crush of Milk Lunch, a mid-morning snack that the school served in the foyer of the dining hall. There was watery hot cocoa and cider and coffee and warm, gooey muffins laid out on a barricade of folding tables, plus a few hundred kids packed into the cramped space, waiting and pushing and squawking like a flock of gulls, crumbs falling from their mouths, muffin wrappers scattered across the floor. I remember entering the throng and feeling as though my head would explode, wishing fervently to disappear, to find myself somewhere, anywhere, else. Come to think of it, I felt like my head was about to explode for almost the entire year. I had always been a relatively easygoing kidâI
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