To the me who thought that sophomore fall was going to be better. It is! I wouldn’t change anything about it (except for maybe my four courses…I should’ve dropped one while I had the chance to). But at the same time, I’ve never felt so alone. 

Being in different housing situations and dropping premed last year were great factors that I think contributes to my loneliness this term. All of my close friends from last year are in different houses from me, but they all share a room. It feels like now that they’re in a shared space, I’m out of the circle. No longer do I get notifications or updates about if they’re getting breakfast, lunch, or dinner. No longer am I included within the same circle because I get no notification from them. Even when I do reach out, it maybe takes them an hour or so to see it and by that time, whatever they had was over. No longer do they take the time to include me. I feel left out. 

And since I dropped premed, no longer do I see them in the same classes either. There is virtually nothing bringing us together this year, or anything that is keeping us together other than feeble attempts at meeting up or coincidentally running into them doing something. 

Why am I here? 

Sadly, I feel like I’ve been asking myself that question a lot. It feels like they don’t care about me, so why should I be here? I’ve been an outcast from the rest of my friends, and they don’t count me in their schedule when planning things out. Maybe it’s on me for taking four courses but it’s not my fault that I’m busy on some weekends because our midterm schedules don’t align perfectly, and it’s not my fault that sometimes I’m so tired after a week that I can’t make it on a six hour round trip to Boston and indulge myself in the world outside of Dartmouth. 

I can’t wait for winterim to come. But even then I expect myself to be alone. At least I’ll be with Hera. 

I’ve had three mental breakdowns this week, on my fourth or fifth, and I’m not sure how I should be handling things. I went to my friends about it, but they offered me a tissue, asked if I was alright (to which I said no), and proceeded to go right back to studying for their upcoming midterm. It was sad. Sad in the sense that I didn’t feel cared about, sad in the sense that maybe they could’ve paused their studying for a few minutes to make sure I was genuinely ok instead of continuing to let me cry, sad that one of them mentioned how she also had a mental breakdown and almost invalidated my experience and my feelings, sad that none of them gave a second thought to me. Never have I felt so alone. Crying out to my closest friends, or who I thought were my closest friends, to not get a response in return. Just a tissue and a 2 by 2 foot space on the floor where I buried my head in my jacket and cried. 

Maybe when I look back at this, I’ll laugh. Laugh at how completely unprepared I was, laugh at how different my life is now. I hope so, because I don’t want to continue living this life.