The Coming Explosion – College Freshman Year – Section A
An explosion was on the horizon when I entered my freshman year of college. Yet, before it happened, I had to learn my way around a new dynamic. It was an exciting time for me. I was so glad to finally be free of my narcissistically controlling parents. I did not care about the adjustments I had to make in my new world because I was finally free.
My college freshman year was a relatively new and exciting world of independence. I successfully began life in my new world of independence until I began emotionally sinking. It was a fine time for that emotional wellspring of angry volcanic flow to begin awakening from its dormancy. It had not ever truly surfaced during my high school years.
I went from a soaring and successful high school student who lived life in dissociated states to becoming a bored and unmotivated college freshman on the verge of self-destruction. For whatever reason, the college did not allow freshman to take more than 12 credit hours of courses during the entire freshman school year. The school wanted the freshman year to be about making new connections and building comradery with other freshmen.
As an introvert, I found it incredibly difficult to make connections. I did try, but I felt as if I was forcing myself to do something that was inorganic. Yet, there were other introverts at the school as well, and they did not appear to have trouble making connections at all. Everyone seemed to have been a part of a clique, and although I got to know my roommate and suitemates fairly well, I did not feel that I belonged to any particular group.
For the most part, I mirrored the person I had been during high school. In high school I had two best friends, but we did not see each other all the time. We had different schedules and different interests that often kept us apart, but we always managed to spend breaks together.
So I coasted along fairly well throughout high school – popping in and out of different groups. I usually spent a significant amount of time as a loner, and that was okay with me, and it did not seem to be a problem for anybody else. I did not belong anywhere really, but I managed to get along.
Although I connected with one of my college suitemates, we seemed to be overshadowed by both our roommates who had controlling and narcissistic tendencies that especially rubbed me the wrong way. I had escaped a home where my every thought was controlled, monitored and manipulated by narcissistic parents to only have to fight to escape being controlled and manipulated by hen-pecking peers.
Being controlled by peers was not going to work for me. So I rebelled by physically and emotionally distancing myself from them. I took to exploring my new world off campus as much as possible. My freshman year left much to the imagination and turned out to be a complete letdown in almost every single way.
Of course, I was not the only one who was bored. I think almost the entire freshman body unleashed themselves within this new world of amazing independence and freedom because they were bored too.
The college heads feared that new incoming freshmen would not be able to handle so many new experiences at once. They believed that we would flame out from being loaded down with too many courses along with our newfound freedoms.
Yet, I do not think the college heads considered people like me whose minds needed and thrived upon intellectual stimulation. I do not believe they thought about the mental health issues that could result from such a drastic academic change for highly driven students who had taken more than two courses during a semester in high school.
There was no web of information or social media for escape back then. So, to find mental and intellectual stimulation, the campus library became one of my favorite places to hang out and download information into my brain. I also eventually fell in sync with the eclectic city life. I occasionally disappeared from campus opting for the city bus as a means to sight-see the area and learn my way around the city.
I refused to become bound on campus despite the obvious off-campus dangers. Somewhere inside of me existed a need to explore and taste the dangers of freedom. Instinctively, my mind nudged me and silently whispered that I had survived a lot worse than my fears of the unknown. So I took to leaving campus quite frequently.
However, without enough courses to keep me intellectually alive, I sank into an intellectual abyss of boredom, and the dark shadowy weight of depression that I had fought to keep at bay during this new season in my life had finally fallen upon me. The anger began to leak from my pores as a means to set itself free.
I found myself defying those who would attempt to constrict me with their judgments regarding how I did this or that by being as sarcastic as possible. I had to wonder if my parents were actually somewhere lurking around the campus because some of my peers were set on mimicking them by trying to control me so badly.
It never ceased to amazed me the number of campus-mates I met who had in some way lived a similar life to mine, but I do not know why I was so surprised by the people I encountered who mirrored similar personalities of my parents. In fact, I recall a crew of campus-mates who seemed to rally against me for being such a “free and unyielding spirit”.
I was somewhat reminded of my not-so- happy-days when dealing with similar opponents from high school. It was good to dissociate so that I learned to tune them out of my zone. I will never forget how a highly arrogant dormmate (who I now believe was a budding narcissist) felt it was her civic duty to always criticize me about everything – my clothes, my hair, my introversion, and even my meal choices.
The Arrogant Dormmate
The arrogant dormmate seemed to hate me with a passion. I will never forget washing my hair and deciding to allow it to freely flow in the hot wind to air dry. When I say she was beyond angry with this simple expression that many other girls also did for time purposes, there was not enough wind to blow the hateful looking smirk from her face. She seemed to be angrier than she needed to be about something so meaningless.
While walking through the dorm lobby minding my business, I was stopped by the dorm leaders for a dorm meeting. During the question-and-answer session, the arrogant dormmate decided to address me about my freely flowing hair. I was mystified and responded with curiosity. I addressed how she apparently had way too much time on her hands if she was so preoccupied with how I chose to dry my hair. The crowd of other dormmates exploded with an uproar of contagious laughter. I saw immediate anguish within the dormmate’s eyes.
I asked the dormmate why she cared when nobody else did and why it even mattered when there were other girls at the meeting who were also allowing their hair to airdry. The arrogant dormmate replied that I thought I was “somebody”, and I replied, “I am!” She silently seethed with anger to my response. It was weird to me. I could not understand why she was so angry with me, and we did not even really know each other.
It was from that point on that the arrogant dormmate took it upon herself to single me out every single time she saw me to devalue me with disrespectful and often hurtful insults. One time, in front of the campus president she spewed with venom towards me that I was an “antisocial freak” all because of the questions I asked the campus president that pertained to life on campus as an introvert.
I was mortified by the arrogant dormmate’s response to me. Her comment cut me like she was purposefully stabbing me with a knife. It was a comment that stayed with me for years afterwards. From time to time, I would inwardly ponder over her words of hate to me in an attempt to understand myself when I felt at my lowest. Of course, now I know that she was merely projecting onto me her own character traits about herself.
It turns out that she was gearing up for an overseas war in the Persian Gulf. So she was likely terrified since she had never been called away for service. During her venomous attacks against me, she had been receiving accolades about her service to the country. I had even praised her in the same way as well, but unlike her responses of gratitude to others, she vehemently ignored me.
I never understood her strong dislike of me. To my knowledge, I had done nothing at all to or against her. She had become friends with my roommate and suitemates, and I assumed that maybe negative words had been said against me in my absence. Perhaps because I was incredibly introverted and did not want to hang out with them all the time, I was seen as antisocial.
But there is a big different between being an introvert and being antisocial, and although I attempted to explain the differences to her and some other campus-mates, my words fell on deaf ears. The arrogant campus-mate had already tainted me with her smears. Basically, because of her smear campaign against me as an “antisocial freak”, I became somewhat of a pariah on campus among a lot of freshmen cliques.
So when the arrogant dormmate was finally called away for service, I did not miss her at all. She was a bully. Who really misses a bully’s absence? On the one hand, I felt bad for her in my attempts to place myself in her shoes. She was going to war. I could not begin to imagine her fears. Perhaps she needed to feel good about herself by mistreating me. Of course, her actions do not make her right in any way, but maybe she simply did not know how to handle the unknown of what she was going to face.
I thought the arrogant dormmate was a cool person otherwise, and many people on campus were drawn in by her charisma, but she was not a very nice person at all – at least not to me. I did not wish bad upon her though. I even stood off to the side silently praying while others stood around her in a circle offering up prayers for her safety and protection before she left to go away for service.
Yet, I cannot say I really cared to have any more run-ins with the arrogant campus-mate. She made a portion of my freshman year a nightmare. When she eventually returned to campus after about a year and a half, I spoke to her in passing by simply saying “It’s good to see you back.” Although she responded in kind, I kept my distance from her as much as possible.
Yet, I noticed that the arrogant dormmate seemed to be less of a problem for me than before. In fact, she was very subdued and almost humble in her behavior. The arrogant dormmate of charisma had turned into a seemingly settled and changed campus-mate. I would imagine she had survived seeing some of the worst while on active duty in war. I had heard many sobering stories on campus that she did not personally share with me but that I had heard in campus study rooms among other peers.
I somewhat wished that the arrogant dormmate and me had a better chance at becoming friends, but as my life moved forward on campus, she seemed to disappear out of my life’s existence. Prior to the leak of anger that would begin protruding from my pores and damaging my life and perhaps affecting the lives of others around me, I trudged on learning that I could no longer take the amount of control that others desired to exert over my life.
There was an oncoming explosion that I could not deny, and my encounter with an arrogant dormmate was only the beginning. Stay tuned for what happened next.
My Voice Unchained 