My Heart is Breaking Into a Thousand Tiny Pieces

The summer between 9th and 10th grade - the summer before I started going to Palatka High School - the summer after I failed my first class and put myself out on a limb forever for LGBT rights - I spent a month in New Haven, Connecticut taking college classes at Yale.

It was a political science summer school for very clever high school students such as myself. We stayed in the dorms at Silliman Hall, attended two very intensive seminars six days a week, and made like we were the genuine article at this institution of higher learning.

I was a fucking seashell. Source

I couldn't tell you jack about the classes I took - it's been way too long. I remember spending a lot of time in the stacks of the library, there was a lot of reading and writing going on, and in the few moments I had to myself  I indulged my budding interest in glam rock. New Haven was where I began my love affair with Lou Reed. When I came home with The Velvet Underground and Nico GT and my mom wanted to burn the thing after listening to "European Son" one time. In truth, they wanted to burn all the CDs I came home with to varying degrees - the only possible exception being a 90s Alternative Compilation CD that by comparison sounded pretty innocuous.

Silliman Hall: Sorta Like Hogwarts

I remember being home from my adventure, sitting in my room, in a lawn chair, in the dark, listening to The Goo Goo Dolls "Name" over and over and over wrapped in a blanket and pining for the few friends I had made that summer. A continuing theme in my life is that I am lousy at correspondence, so after a couple of letters were exchanged, 9-11 happened and life got the better of me.

 Part of my would love to know what became of them, but another part feels better not knowing what a failure this JSA Yale alumnus turned out to be. There are a couple of people I wish I had stayed in touch with. I found out in doing a little research that my nemisis died in 2007. I got in touch with him at some point after high school. That makes me a little ill. His fiance was pregnant with their child at the time.

Classes? Names? No. Music Store? Yes. Source

But it was fun, wasn't it? Just thinking about it, I get the same kind of electric butterflies I used to get falling in love. I feel like I'm suffocating and I want to cry and scream and run forever. It's a wonderful and terrible and beautiful and harrowing feeling. I was there and I fucked it all up. I lost it. I could have been somebody. I could have lived that life. I could have spent my every last at Cutler's Music and studied writing and literature and politics and followed in the footsteps of so many people I love and admire.

But I pissed it all away. I loved it there. I really, really loved it. And I loved who I was when I was there. I wasn't fucked up. I wasn't an extension of someone else. There was no Daniel. There was no Odis. There was only me. And I was alive. I was beautiful. I was a scholar. Oh my god! I had work ethic! I barely remember, but I know I had it. I know it! I had drive and goals and dreams. I want so much to be that person.

I know what Terry Malloy was going through. Oh God, I'm crying. I hate Elia Kazan, but dammit, I am Terry Malloy.