Snapshots of a Modest Life

Laughter and Tears

I'm sitting here looking at the emptiness of the other side of my room. My roommate was "dismissed" from the Foundation this week, and I don't think it has quite sunken in yet. She's just moving down the street to New Hall, but the difference between eight feet and a quarter of a mile is greater than you might think. I haven't really cried yet. There's this expectation that I will just break down into tears and cry uncontrollably for hours and hours until someone notices that I haven't been seen since the previous week and discovers me in a shriveled mess lying on my bed, face firmly rooted in my soggy pillow full of saltwater tears and drool, since I would have been so distraught as to forget personal hygiene and nineteen years of training on how to not drool outside the context of sleep. I was watching Garden State and there were a few times in random places where the tears were on the verge of breaking the dam, but I never got farther than a tear. I sat there, my stomach swollen from an excursion to Bamboo House with C., hugging my tiger wishing I could cry. Crying always makes me feel better.

When I was packing my things to move up to Tallahassee for the first time, I remember sitting in the swivel chair and just sobbing because I was leaving my friends, my family, and everything I had known up until that point. I rested my head on the slide out writing board on my desk (which was clearly made for right handed people) and wondering how long it would take for my tear reservoir to be exhausted. After fifteen minutes of trying to pack through the tears I finally stopped crying and went on with life. As utterly futile as those tears were, everything seemed okay afterwards.

I've laughed a lot this week, trying to be funny to hide how torn up I am about this whole situation. Not only have I lost a roommate and good friend, everyone in the house is at each other's throats, wound tight from the stress of knowing that someone who lives in the same building, the same home as you has "ratted out" one (or in this case three) of your own. We used to be able to trust each other, we were all going through life together.

My roommate has been gone for eight hours. Some of her stuff is still here, but the room feels empty. Very empty.