I always found it funny how the restrictions of the sheets, as they slither like snakes trapping my body to the bed, was something more comforting then suffocating. How laying here twisted in the embrace of cotton provides the comfort necessary to dive into those hidden thoughts that only a dream-like mind dares to trace over. Thoughts like that party, back home, where I saw Him.

Charlie was sitting across from me a couple of weeks ago, his hat tilted to the side in that incredibly annoying way. It gave him the power to look straight in my eyes, drilling a whole in walls I’ve tediously built, yet look completely nonchalant to everyone passing by. It’s those looks I remember the most. The ones that held a secret. The ones we used to tease and dominate with. It was always a power play between Charlie and I. Who could hold out the longest, who would blush and look away. With Charlie everything was a game, everything was maneuvered and manipulated. And he was at it again a couple weeks ago, as I a sat at a party I shouldn’t have gone to, running me into the boy I knew would never truly be out of my life. He was replacing the pieces on the starting line and asking me to roll. I couldn’t.

That was the first time I had ever actually walked away from Charlie unscathed. For a while I was actually thinking that maybe that whole phase was over, but as I’m sitting here, alone in my dorm, thinking about ‘burning glances’ I know that’s wishful thinking. Rightly so too, considering I’m confused as it is. Running into the bane of my existence was just frosting.

You see, college was supposed to be the finish line. For years my peers and I got it programmed into us that everything we were working for was to get into our top school. All those papers? Yeah college saw those. All those tests? College saw those too. We had to do good, be good, not pull a senior prank, not cuss out our teacher or key the principle’s car. College cared and we had to make college happy. It was the holy grail of the high school mind set. Now I’m here and frankly, I’m lost.

I wasn’t prepared to miss my friends, and yes, Charlie, as much as I do. I wasn’t prepared to have to find new people, and not forget my keys, and not wake my roommate, and have to share showers and, well, I have to figure out what I’m going to eat. For every meal, and let me tell you…it’s not easy. Above all that though, I wasn’t prepared to find a new purpose. I refuse to go through college and have it be just a preparation for something else. I am determined to experience it to the fullest, and the first thing I have to do is start anew.

One major problem, (besides the fact that the last thing I want to do is start a whole new life) is, well, how do I start anew? Purpose will start falling out of the sky the day meatballs do.

This has to be the reason I can’t sleep anymore. I refuse to even bring the thought into my head that a boy did this. That a boy brought upon this plummet into insomnia. The cause is, without a doubt, my unrelenting mind. The clock is screaming 4 am and in 3 hours the sun will rise, in 4 my alarm will be screeching an obnoxiously loud beeping noise. My one hope is that it will be waking me up and not just a reminder of another sleepless night.

I swear I’ve counted the tiles on the ceiling and the cracks on the walls more times then sanity should allow. Anything to try and lull me to sleep. I just know the second I start thinking, this happens. I spiral down the slide of “how did I get here?” which leads to the abyss of “where am I going?”

The easiest thing to do is put my iPod, stuff my head under my pillow and count backwards from 100. 99. 98. 97. 96. 95. 94.…

I find that staring out the window makes class pass so much quicker then listening to a woman drone on and on about the War of 1812. It’s mesmerizing to look at the faces of the people passing by, my fellow students, and think. Each of them have a story, each of them have a family, each of them have a purpose. Where are they going? Did they just leave the person they loved? Did they just find out they failed a test? Do they have a Charlie? Are they looking for a friend? Are they hoping that today is the day they’ll meet the one they marry? Do they look at others and see an entire past like I do?

If they were to look at me and see my past what would they think? They’d probably see an over analyzing adolescent who expects too much of the world and therefore is doomed to be disappointed.

I see a couple laughing as they go to sit on a bench. Touching, caressing a cheek, grabbing a hand. I want that. What I have, no had, with Charlie was just a twisted game, I know that. An amusing way to burn time and sexual tension. We both had others. We never committed to each other because there was nothing to commit. No emotion there. Just user and used. The embodiment of ’friends with benefits’. That though, outside the window, that is real. Not some silly mind game.

My best friend turned psychiatrist explained to me that my obsession with relationships is one of two things. The first was that I find my own self worth, importance and purpose in the eyes of someone else. The second is that I’m completely and entirely bored. I think it’s a mixture of both. I know that until I find out who I am and where I’m going another person in my life will just contaminate my self searching. Not that I want to remain alone forever. I just don’t want to be with someone for the wrong reasons. Been there, done that.

Where’s everyone going? Oh, the class must be over. Lately I’ve just been out of it. I’m in this constant period of sleepless and awake. The mirror shows the same glazed face at both dawn and noon. It is this incredibly worn out shell of a stranger, exhausted, washed out, with an emotionless stare of discontent....

It’s still there, the same face, reflected back at me two weeks later in the bathroom at my dorm. Down to the bags under my eyes and the rolled out of bed hair do. It’s hard to stare into the eyes of this stranger. The black irises are deep muddled pools that pull with their despair. He said he read people through their eyes. He said I had sad ones. Old soul eyes. He said. He said.

Who are you? This person in the mirror has high jacked my body and forced me into a slump. Walking around as this sloth like half person. Have I really lost that girl - woman who used to make a boy blush with a glance? I used to exude power with a smirk. Have I really become so meek that just a glance could spiral this? I can see him, behind this non-me in the mirror holding my eyes open. He that has caused my sleepless nights. Forced me to re-examine my college self. No, forced me to see that I have no college self. Not yet at least. Now though, instead of a smirk, it’s a look of disgust…and it matches my own.

Who is he to hold so much power? If he were to sit before me now, there would be no intrigue I’d respond with, to tease or play. It would disgust him as it disgusts me. This isn’t love. It never was. He is an umbilical cord to my past. He is the epitome of all that in which I need to grow out of. I need to let go, but saying and doing, I’ve learned in college, are completely different. He is the one person who knows me, inside and out, his arm draping over my hip like a safety blanket called home. But it wasn’t and never will be love. It is called convenience and it’s holding me back.

Knock. Knock. I could have been standing there forever if it weren’t for the door. This late? It’s probably some stupid drunk guy from down the hall.

Surprise, surprise. Looking through the peep hole I see random frat boy. I didn’t even have enough strength to open the door. Pathetic. Both this boy and I. Him a drunkard, me a confused freshman.

Leaning against the door I look around my room. My roommates god only knows where and, well, let’s just say we aren’t the cleanest of people. One thing sticks out among the mess.

Why do college students decorate their rooms with pictures? Faces smiling from back home, surrounded by people who are millions of miles away? How do pictures make a room homey when in them are people time makes strangers? Even me. Me in the picture right there, on my desk. That is a stranger. That was a girl surrounded by love and flowing with confidence. Who’s smile reached her eyes and didn’t mask insecurities. That girl, right there, was happy.

I can feel my back burn as it slides down the door, but my eyes stayed glued on the once upon a time me. I don’t know whether I want to rip the picture in two, but I do know that I want that girl. I want to be her, I want to wake up every morning with a smile of my face.

To find happiness I need to remember what it felt like. I need to remember what it was like to be in peace with myself, how I was before this Charlie spiral took a turn for the worse.

The mess I made of the dorm as I looked for my old high school journal was, well, let’s just say it’s a good thing my roommates gone. It was worth it though as the old tattered notebook sat in my hands. Here it was…the personification of me, pre college. I just had to find something in there. Something which I could relate to now which would make my transition easier, would bandage the cut of the umbilical wound. Pages upon pages were flipped, past the doodles and the pictures, past the lists and the notes. To the poems. There it was.

Ocean’s Gift

All problems pushed aside
Absorbs all the tears I've cried
In the waters vast glory
I find the beginning of my story
And it all begins to make sense
And I push aside my pretense
There in the water is where I see
The real and true me.

Not tainted by the pressure
Not a fake caffeine refresher
Not the girl I should be
It's just me and the sea.

With each stroke I take
Drives more and more of the fake
Smiles, Laughs, Tears,
It is there that I see my true fears:
Being waken from my peace
Forced to leave my one release
For reality's responsibility
And the worlds hostility.

So I go deeper into its abyss
Coming closer and closer to my bliss
Running from the problems of the earth
And into my own rebirth

Lungs stop
Ears pop
Body freeze
Head squeeze

Need one last breath
Or my escape will be my death
So I begin to rise
See the skies
Ready to face it all
No challenge to tall
Because I had my daily dose
Of what I need to most
Time to be alone and think
Even though its gone in a blink.

The answer was so simple. The Charlie incident was a catalyst, this I know. It was the first step onto a path I was bound to take. A brutal and unforgiving one named College. What I had found was a balm, an ease, a transitional diversion.

I need to go swimming. It sounds petty, I know, but I need that feeling of the comforting water surrounding my body. I need the silence water provides. I need to not question, not care, I need to exert myself through laps....

Lap one, I can feel the water caress my skin, playing with my hair, fading the bags under my eyes.

Lap two, all the questions, all the comparisons between me and everyone else fade, I can’t hear or see or feel anyone, just water.

Lap three, I push harder, faster, every push of the water pushes away my confusion, pushes away Charlie and pushes away the what if.

On and on I swim, with every lap I feel it. Like I did in that poem. How could I have forgotten this. To move forward I needed to remember where I was coming from. This is where I was coming from. This cathartic bath.

Lap, I’ve lost count, all I know is this: I am here, I am now, this pool of weightless water grounds me to the fact that yes, I am alone, but I am powerful. I can pull through the resistance of the water and I can pull through this. Bad days and Charlie’s and stress and loneliness will come and go. It’s this, this feeling of contentment that will keep me sane.