Take this weekend, for example. Friday night I went to a fun party, rolled out of bed at noon the next day because I was kind of hungover, grabbed some food at the cafeteria (by myself), ate it (by myself), went back to my room and alternately slept and watched Netflix for the next several hours (all by myself). That night I went to a performance with a friend and then strike/load-in for my show.* This usually takes all night, but I got to leave at midnight because I thought I was getting sick and needed to sleep. Except a bunch of drunk assholes were running around my building and kept me up for two more hours. Not that I've never been that drunk asshole, but the walls in my building are super thin and I try really hard not to interfere with other people's sleep. Sunday was cue-to-cue, so from 8:30 in the morning (!!!!) until like four p.m. I was all alone up in the booth (with the exception of lunch). And that's how it's been basically this whole week.
So clearly the show part of the problem; it not only isolates me within the theatre community, but it takes time away from me socializing with my friends. But I love it (I'm majoring in theatre, as well as Spanish) and it is only a temporary thing--plus the payoff is totally worth it. But here's the other part of the problem: I don't have a roommate anymore. I moved into a single (in a different dorm building) a few weeks into this semester. This probably sounds like a great situation and not at all problematic, but sometimes I wish that I didn't have to come home to an empty room every single day. I realize that not all roommate situations are good ones (I had a bad one myself, which is why I'm in a single now), but I just had kind of a crisis tonight. As I was leaving the theatre (ha) I was thinking about returning to my always-empty room (just to clarify: I have friends who sometimes come over, just not all the time). And I was thinking that even though it's preferable to living with my old roommate, I feel more out of place here. I didn't know anyone in the building (still don't really, except my RA who lives next door to me) and I still don't quite feel like I belong here.
This is my room (I keep some of my shit on the unused bed; my friends use it as a couch when they're over):
The other reason I feel kind of out of place I guess is that after I left for college in August, my mother turned my bedroom into an "art studio" and made the computer room into "my room." But however much I love my mother, she just does not seem to understand that I do not have the same taste as her. When I came home for Thanksgiving (my least-favorite holiday; the whole turkey-corpse-thing grosses me out like no other) and saw my new room for the first time, I was not. Pleased. Everything was this pale green color and flowery and shiny and way too damn girly for my taste. So it hurt that after 19 years, my mother still didn't seem to know (or didn't care) what I like and don't like, and it hurts even more to realize that I don't have a room that is truly my own anywhere. I feel homesick but I don't have a place I can go back to that will cure that feeling.
*Load-in: when we break down the set from the last show (right after it ends, so like 9:30/10 p.m.), paint the stage, build the set for the next show, and set the lights and whatnot.
No comments:
Post a Comment