Belonging and Anxiety

I returned to the college on Monday with Roommate #1. I planned to sit in the comfortable lobby chairs to some more work on “Becoming a Master Student” and to read a few chapters of my library book on compulsive hoarding.

When we got to school the lobby was full. A group of students had pulled all of the chairs together to use their laptops and play a card game. I saw familiar faces. The sleeping student with the thick, black glasses was now sitting in the corner near the staircase. He was awake this time, engrossed in a book and paying no attention to anything else. On the small loveseat an elderly Asian woman, possibly the same one I saw on Thursday, was sleeping with a coat over her head. After I sat down and got situated, she sat up to go to her classes and smiled at me again. She looked somewhat sheepish about sleeping on the couch, but not embarrassed. The handsome young man in red returned; this time he was wearing white.

Though I tried to focus most of my attention on “Becoming a Master Student” and my library book (“Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things” by Randy O. Frost & Gail Steketee) I found it hard not to watch my surroundings. Aside from the now-familiar faces of the students I saw on Thursday; there was a tidal wave of people moving in and out of the lobby area. When I first entered, there was a woman talking on her cell phone about a trip her grandmother had paid for. An hour or two after I sat down, I spotted a tall man with a cropped haircut sitting down on the same bench as the woman with the cell phone. She was long gone though, and he took up the entire bench as he fiddled with his own phone. He was very tall, I recall wondering if he played basketball. Moments later, a tiny woman, easily no taller than four feet, ran into the room and hugged him. They were the same height while he was sitting, and when he stood she only reached his elbow. I wonder if she was his sister, his girlfriend, or maybe just a friend.

Throughout all of this, I felt a sense of calm and belonging.

Feeling as though I belong is something that I have struggled with since I was a child. Even before I was diagnosed with bipolar and began experiencing anxiety attacks I never felt as though I fit in anywhere. In groups of people I felt like the odd girl out. There was an unexplainable anxiety in my chest when I was at school, at my father’s house, and even at my friend’s houses. Usually it would go away when I was at home, but sometimes even then I just didn’t feel as though I belonged there.

That feeling basically disappeared when I moved to California, but I didn’t expect it to go beyond an absence of anxiety. It’s difficult to explain. After all, it took me many years to place the feeling of anxiety that was always just on the cusp of my understanding. I used to call it the “I want to go home” feeling. Being able to articulate that I felt panicked and uncomfortable came later, and I assume a more accurate description for the feeling of belonging will come in time as well.

But what matters is that I feel it. What matters is, despite the fact that returning to school after ten years can be a scary thing, I don’t feel scared.
I suppose I’ll have to see how I feel the day before my first class; August 18th still feels like a long time from now.