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Being around people doesn't really make depression better. Depression consists of conflicting desires: the desire to simultaneously obliterate anyone and everyone around you and be close to someone, anyone, who can magically make everything better.


Something else interesting—I think that, with many of the activities I'm seeking out these days, I'm merely attempting to somehow regerate the feelings of satisfaction derived from being around people from high school... Case in point: I found myself, upon walking across campus, randomly thinking about joining set construction up here...


Another aspect of this, I think, may be automotive deprivation. Freshmen here may not possess cars on campus. And yes, I know, it sounds as though I'm complaining idly like some spoiled [surprise!] college student. But nonetheless, I find it demeaning that I am not allowed—in a city that is virtually defined by the ubiquity of cars—to own anything resembling that primary mode of transportation. I am forced to rely upon (1) my parents, because unfortunately I'm going to school in the city I grew up in (2) other students lucky enough to have easily accessible transportation, who I don't know, who it would be a hassle to get to know... (3) public transit, which is ridiculously inefficient, as any St. Louisan knows, or (4) activities that I can join where they'll—oh glory, hooray, yippee—transport me to the inner city, a night club, or some other unpreferred destination. Perhaps they believe this will foster a sense of closeness with my peers. Yet I believe it does the opposite—I probably grow more resentful of my peers and the school in general because I can never leave. There is no way to gain relief through escape from the other rats in the cage, so I must learn avoidance tactics, which probably harm my psyche far more than a lot of things.


*Phew* So those are my frustrated thoughts upon walking through the heat (and it will be the same in winter, just with more cold and chafing and slipping and suffering) past cars cooling on the lot that lies as an obstacle between me and my place of residence on the South 40. Some may think I'm merely bitching, and perhaps that's true. Yet, as with any gripe wherein someone actually bothers to provide examples and refutations, I just might be on to something.


We need more studies...always more studies to tell us what our intuition and common sense already know.


This is a research institution, after all.


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Me: I want to have a car
Boyfriend: why?
Me: and drive off campus
Me: just off campus
Me: nowhere crazy
Me: it's this cruel paradox
Me: the road out of here goes right past my dorm....right under my window, even
Me: it goes and goes....but I don't
Boyfriend: awwww
Boyfriend: what road?
Me: Shepley Drive
Boyfriend: oh.
Boyfriend: where's it go?
Me: around the dorms, out to the Place of the Backwards Stop Signs
Boyfriend: umm
Boyfriend: right
Boyfriend: this sounds like some weird pseudo-college but pseudo-african mythology
Boyfriend: The place of the Backward Stop Signs, where the pavement people dance when they have died
Me: haha
Me: exactly!
Me: That's the point—it's the mysterious Other, the Unknown, Out There. Not on campus...


6:00 pm, September 20, 2002 :: erstwhile

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