Nouvelle Vague

words by Saanvi Sadu, art by Claire Zhang

Lying in bed, you stare up at your dorm’s popcorn ceiling. The paint is peeling off in chips in some areas, and if you stretched your arms up out of bed high enough, you could reach out and grab one. 

You won’t though; you haven't gotten out of bed the entire morning, and it’s almost mid-afternoon. 

The sun smiles high up in the sky. It shines bright, but it feels distant, far out of reach. You feel cold and strangely empty underneath the covers. 

Ideally, you’d be stuck in bed due to a nasty hangover instead of lethargy. Yesterday was Friday. Ideally, you would have gone out with your friends, had fun, drank until you couldn't comprehend a single sentence of English, maybe even met a new distraction. Instead, you sat in your dorm, empty of all your prized childhood possessions, holding an even emptier phone as you refresh for notifications that will never come. You clicked a hometown friend’s contact and then debated on whether or not to reach out, to beg to be invited to unappealing plans they discussed right in front of you—as if you were invisible. You chickened out and closed your phone, going to sleep at 10:30 PM. 

Now, you contemplate how you even got here. The room gets colder still. 

All throughout high school, you worked so hard to be the absolute best you could be, to be the “perfect” student. Early evenings were spent at school planning for clubs and late nights were spent bent over your tiny desk, agonizing over physics problems that never taught you how to be more likeable or easier to get along with. Your dreams consisted of starting a new life at a pretentious school in the northeast far away from here, where everyone was just like you; over there, they’d be considerate and invite you to cute matcha cafes instead of disgusting frats you didn't even want to go to. But what now? You ended up only two hours south of home, surrounded by all the same people, but all you feel is even more alone. 

The sun is setting now. Your room is colored with shades of pink and purple you haven’t seen since you were a child. 

You’re not sure why you wanted to leave so badly; high school wasn’t always perfect, and you had your fair share of traumatic senior year experiences, but it was all right at the end wasn't it? The moments spent with your friends before college started were some of the happiest of your life, so why did you want to start over so badly? 

You close your eyes for a moment, desperate for respite against the burning colors of the sunset. A moment later when you open them, the room has faded to black, and you can’t tell where the wall starts and the darkness begins.  

Your eyes start to sting, and you decide to go back to sleep, just to forget about all of this. You turn over and tightly shut your eyes but just cannot fall asleep. You try to count sheep (though you aren't sure if you really believe in that), but before they materialize, they slip out of your mind and disappear into the darkness. As the world once again fades away, you find yourself hoping that you'll dream of better times.