August 9, 2012

  • Because I can, at times, be of poor memory, and the remembrance of memories is all that is left of what ever happened:

    It was during finals period of this last school year. In my absolute anxiety, I hadn't bothered to've started writing my 15 page rough draft for my final paper for my WGSS senior seminar until the point that the paper was due. Between staying up and lightly sleeping in the hopes of even starting the damn thing, I had a raging headache by the time night had rolled around. Needless to say, I was miserably irate and depressed.

    As I was rushingly trying to finish this late draft, I happened to notice it was 10 or 11 and that Theology on Tap had started. Based off of a Catholic event that had started in Chicago, Williams's version was to get all of the chaplains together, and students would ask them any question they wished regarding religion. It's one of my favorite events of the year, not held too frequently, and I had already missed the last one or two times it had last occurred. I figured the brief escape might help my morale to some degree.

    I was partially wrong. A few students were questioning the history of the church and Father Caster was feeling harassed (I expect his family troubles didn't help to put him in any sort of calm and explaining mood). There wasn't much room, so I sat at the end of one of the benches and just tried to avoid any light.

    A little bit later, some room opened up next to Julia. They offered for me to move away from outside, on the edge of the circle. I naturally declined at this sudden and unexpected change. A few minutes later, upon considering that it'd be nice to be next to Julia (who had been becoming a closer and closer friend to me over the past few months), I decided to move over.

    Julia, recognizing I was hardly in remotely a good mood, put her arm over my shoulder as I sat down. As the event went along, Father Caster was responding to another person's question (actually, all the chaplain's were; I just remember Father Caster's response). It may have been because of my exhaustion, but I don't recall what the question was; I think I sort of came in, while Father was already giving his answer.

    From my vague memory, he was describing how some aspect of his answer related to when we care about someone else. Gah, this is going to irritate the shit out of me now, because I do think his wording was very important to how the scenario played out. Regardless, to paraphrase, he was describing that when we care about someone, we take care of them, we do actions that mean something to them.

    As he was in the middle of describing this, I thought I ought to knowingly nudge Julia. It was the kind of private exchange that I particularly enjoy and also a means of reciprocating the (what seemed to me) wholesale over-credit Julia had been giving my character as of late. Perhaps I'm just a slow creature (in that choices, decisions, and – at times – actions ought to be approached only when entirely certain), and what seemed to me like a very quick shift from being somewhat-alarmed-by-me/acquaintances to being close friends (in that loyalty, fondness, and feeling safe enough to lean upon the other were at play) was hard to justify in my head; not that I didn't appretiate and welcome these things: I simply had a hard time understanding their occurrence.

    In the time it took for me to debate whether to do this (rather, there was no debate whether I should; it was that, once again, any action that was not thought was exceedingly draining of me in such a depressed state), she nudged me. I glanced up to see her knowingly smirk at me. I, in turn, nudged her back, smiling with what energy my body was willing to concede.

     

    It would be false to say I did not have any friends at Williams. I did not have as many close friends as I would like (certainly less than I had upon leaving high school), though it would be false, I think, to say I had none as well. I think the most irritating thing of the entire experience, though, is the way that I felt most people didn't try to get close to me at all (some did, to be sure). I would like to firmly place the fault of which upon my own introversion and aloofness and, therefore, utterly out of a fault of their own.