Maudlin For A Day

I will leave my rants aside for today. I have other things to expound on.

One question, which I really have is why we dwell on the past so nostalgically. Fine fine I know we were younger. And I’m not talking about why it was so great in grade school or even high school. The sands of time have separated us from the truth. I’m talking about the near and dear years of college. We can still almost taste those days.

Perhaps I should be more specific. Of late I have been thinking about my summer between Sophomore and Junior year.. that would be the summer of 2005 I believe. Wow… maybe that was some time ago. Anyway the picture I’m seeing over and over and over is of me. I’m sitting in Starbucks on Chapel street in New Haven. I’ve got my third gen iPod softly playing the somewhat dissonant chords of Death Cab. An iced “grande nonfat latte” next to me (I almost chuckle at this point, but let’s make sure the picture is factual). And in my hands is “Glamorama”.

I’m still new to this all. I recently looked back into my copy and found that I’d missed many important notes during the first pass-through. After all, I wasn’t the BEE scholar that I am today. I’d only read “Zero” at that point, you see.

Anyway, why am I at Starbucks at Yale? (I now become maudlin, thanks)

I’m at that Starbucks supposedly studying for Physics, which I have so brilliantly decided I will take over the summer at Yale. That way I can commute from home (Hartford) and save the parentals some cash (actually just a cover for them to buy me a new car… my brattiness is limitless I know).

I have never known a more depressing time in my life.

I had only just been dumped. By the first person I’d ever really connected with. (That’s not to say the first person I really ever felt close to… because in some ways I was so intimidated that I never got close to this particular person) I’d failed. And now I was totally alone in Connecticut. At Yale, where I didn’t know anyone.

And there was the weather. Honestly, it was as if Bret wrote it himself. Hot. Every single day. The sun was so hot and glaring. Every day. Class was a sweat box. And when you walked outside you knew the gods were just gunning to get you. It was oppressive.

I’m at Starbucks. I’ve just been dumped by someone who was responsible for first opening my eyes. I’m listening to music, which is depressing all by itself, but was also the music I’d shared with him. The sun is glaring over me all the time. I’m reading fiction, which makes me lose faith in everything. I’m hating physics. And not doing well. (to be really cliche) I’m down and out in Hartford and New Haven.

But I’m sitting here. Now. It’s (almost) May 2008. The weather is humid but livable. My life is slowly straightening itself out. And I’m looking back on those days with some… nostalgia. And I think, as I’ve said before… It’s because it was a deep pervasive feeling.

Every day I would feel depressed. Every day I would have to go through that. I’d have to think about it. I’d have to experience it. It was a one-note drink, but it was a strong one. My life has moderated quite a bit. I still feel things, of course. I feel happy or sad or whatever else… but it changes and fluctuates with each day. And the hills and valleys are closer together.

That’s how it’s supposed to be. I know. But every now and then I look back and I marvel at what life was like when I was really “in it”.