An Epiphany in Three Parts

I

The fall of my third year at college, I lived in a sterile (except for the leaking toilet that perpetually stained the carpet in my room which was right next to the bathroom) fifteen year old building where the keys weren’t the metal jobs most people have to lock up their apartments or houses, but rather plastic credit cards that slid into a slot on the door. It always made me feel like I was living in a hotel. I lived in this university owned two story apartment with four other girls, and on occasion the world’s only cool cat, Quibby.

The best part about the apartment was the fact that there was tons of space. This made it an ideal place to play host to numerous friends (peripheral and close) who straggled into New York City for a visit. It also sometimes set up a strange dynamic because I was really different than my roommates, or at least I liked to think I was. Being the indie-rock listening, anthropology student diverged from the generic pop-listening, pre-med and economics majors that lived all around me. But, I would soon realize that the lacuna was not as vast as I made it out to be.

II

My family first got hooked up on the internet back around 1993. I immediately found myself spending way too many hours in front of the glowing Macintosh screen (things haven’t changed too much) and exploring the very new technology of AOL and chat rooms. Back then (in the good old days, ha!) a person could sign onto AOL on consecutive evenings and find the same group of screen names inhabiting the same chat room. There was a sense of community much more so than there is now that the whole internet “fad” has become a way of life.

Anyhow, I was playing devil’s advocate (a favorite chat room past time for a smart, pretentious 14 year old) with some other folks when a question popped up in the room: “Any misanthropes in here?” Officially the coolest thing I had ever seen written online. I couldn’t resist and I sent an instant message to the kid behind the name. His name was Chad and he was a year older than me. He lived halfway across the country in Annapolis, Maryland. And the more we talked about music, books, etc. the more we liked each other. So, a friendship was formed

Every once in a while we would talk on the phone. When I would go away for the summers or he spent a semester of high school in Germany we would write epic letters about our experiences. I turned him onto Jeff Buckley, he began proclaiming the inevitable greatness of Radiohead upon his first listen to The Bends.

For a while, we didn’t talk. I know we got into a fight and I’m pretty sure I started it. But, neither of us can remember what it was over.

In college our friendship was reinvigorated by high speed internet connections and we talked often about meeting up. It didn’t happen until September of 2000. Nearly six years after we had started our friendship, Chad (along with his friend, Scott) came to New York for the CMJ Music Marathon and they stayed at the apartment. On the evening they arrived in town, he called at 11:30 p.m. to say he and Scott had arrived on campus. Excitedly, I went out to find my long time confidant, somewhere on the campus’s main walkway. I’d never even seen a picture of him.

But, the minute I laid eyes on him, I knew exactly who he was. We hugged and then I led him and his friend to my building where they dumped their bags and we went in search of a movie to watch. It felt more like a reunion than a first meeting.

Chad’s visit was about 3 days long and our time together was very sporadic. Scott and he spent most of their time at shows and movies, so we only hung out in the mornings or late at night. Usually we’d just sit in my room, smoke pot, listen to music and shoot the shit.

One night, we were sitting in my room and I was telling Scott and Chad about the anthropology lab where I spent about 6 hours each week working with human and primate skulls. Scott inquired, “Does it bother you to know that those skulls were once part of people?”

“I’ve never really thought about it,” was my reply. It bothered me that the thought had never crossed my mind.

III

Over the years, I’ve learned that I need to have lots of stuff to do all the time. When I have too much free time, I get bored and when I am bored, I start to realize how crappy things actually are, or worse yet how I feel.

So there I was near the end of my twentieth year realizing that I was so happy just hanging out with cool and smart like-minded people. People who read because they liked to and only learned about what interested them.

But, I wasn’t like Chad and Scott any longer. I was living my life for some inevitable future. Somewhere along the line, I had stopped being the excited young person living in New York City with virtually no responsibilities. I no longer read the newspaper. I ceased to search out new music to listen to. I had stopped questioning why I was studying a particular topic or going a particular place. I had started to just do.

I was like a 60 year old many going through the motions, waiting for that day to retire and forget about the horrible job that I had done for all those years. Only I wasn’t sixty, I was twenty. And things weren’t ending they were just beginning.

A series of things became clear to me: I was sick of school, I was burnt out on science classes, I hated New York City, I wanted different friends, I didn’t want to be a paleoanthropologist, I didn’t want to go to the bar, I didn’t want to go to class.

Things had to change.

For the first time in my life, or at least the first time that I was aware of, I felt really shitty. Every day for nearly a month, I would call home and my dad would ask me if I was all right. I could hear the concern in his voice and I would hold it together, hearing Stephen Malkmus singing in my head: “Write it on a postcard/Dad, they broke me/Dad, they broke me.” But, when my mom would get on the phone I’d fall apart.
I needed to change things. When you don’t want to get out of bed, you know that things need to change.