AUTOPHOBIA

sharp fragments from the social simulation we call "college"

this month would take a novel to explain, so here are the jagged parts that snag…

i. autophobia - fear of being alone

I hate conflict, but I love the way it writes itself on paper.

I love how it replays itself, again and again. How new developments twist the characters into villains, and themes begin to slowly take form in “life lessons”. And what could be a better place to create the messiest plot of all time than college. This fucking fever dream of a place. After my first month on campus, I think it’s finally time to unpack it all.

To start, I adore the friends I’ve made. The girls in my hall on the hill and my friends in the valley will likely be lifelong. When you’re ass to ass with people all day every day you befriend people fast. You live in their worlds and breath their air. It’s enough to drive the average person insane.

It’s enough to make someone like me fall in love.

ii. claustrophobia - fear of small spaces

I never went to parties in high school. I was invited to a total of one (1) house party, and it wasn’t even hosted by my classmates, but instead a friend’s after-prom for the local public school. I sat in the corner with my Hydroflask full of water, brutally sober. As of today, I’ve never been drunk or high or even vaguely tipsy, so I was in for a treat when it came to college.

Frat parties are an entirely different demon. I don’t even go to a huge university (the closest one is a state school twenty minutes away that is infamous for its party culture), but the frat parties genuinely shook me to my core. Hundreds of bodies pressed together in a dark, excruciatingly hot room. My school is just outside of the city, so the frat “houses” were really just glamorized brownstones with a square footage that only added to the claustrophobia. It reeked of sweat and liquor and testosterone. Men weren’t even allowed in without being on a predetermined “guest list” or one of the brothers, so my guy friends would stand patiently outside while we determined if the party was a war we were willing to fight.

It was hell, but my eyes were wide to the seven rings. I was enamored by the Greek letters on the wall, the girls with barely any clothes on, even the five foot three brother that tried to hand me a seltzer. Stone cold sober, the frats were my own psychological study.

The aftermath was equally as exciting. Within the first weekend, the goalie on the soccer team had thrown a punch, a girl had her stomach pumped in the parking lot of the sophomore housing, and some guys got a DUI driving off campus. For someone without a single ounce of Lore™, Friday nights were exhilarating from the sidelines. In the driveways outside the houses, on the couch of a pregame, the world was a little more open, the walls weren’t closing in. In a few instants, the storylines unfurled in my brain, and I began to chase them with a fervor.

iii. somniphobia - fear of falling asleep

Saturdays quickly became our bread and butter. Fridays stayed cheap and relaxed, and Sundays were for locking in on work and recovering. Saturdays we packed to the brim with beaches and shopping and parties and people. Because of this, on the third Saturday of college, I learned that maybe I should fear falling asleep.

We have to backtrack a few hours, though. That Saturday, I went to the farmers market for hours, swam in the pool, tanned, watched two sets of a volleyball game, and prepped for the frats. When I wandered into Delt a few hours later, the boy that likes me got stopped at the door with his friends. “No guys allowed, sorry bro.” I felt terrible leaving them in the street, but it was the thrill of the story that pulled me back outside again.

“I’ll be back in a second,” I told my friends. Needless to say, I never came back.

The boy that liked me—we’ll call him R—smiled for the first time in hours when I came back outside. He’s quiet and far too nonchalant to put up with me, but the possibility of some new plot device was a forbidden fruit I had to reach for. I wasn’t in love with R by any means, and I was barely attracted to him. We had good conversational chemistry, though, and that was enough for me to suggest we head back to campus.

I’m going to interject with context: I am as inexperienced as it gets. Three kisses in my book, not a single relationship, my virginity still very much intact. I am a nobody when it comes to romance. I’ve crashed out plenty with boys: the other one, M, from my previous post, had friend zoned me the week before after someone told him I liked him (men are fucking stupid, but we’re friends now, full stop. in fact, i’m helping him fix what he broke with his ex, who he is clearly still in love with—dodged a bullet on that one).

I walked back to the dorms in the valley where R lived with his friends, thinking we would all watch a movie or something. Instead, his friends disappeared and left me alone with R in his single room, not a roommate in sight.

The panic began to set in. I was alone with a boy, one that I knew wanted me, wanted my body. I’d sat in his lap the day before (a long story that I also did for Lore™) and felt his hands on my hips. It was that addicting feeling of a story forming again. Think of Ella and Kat’s reactions when I tell them in the bathroom later! How am I going to update my sister? I was becoming a slut for retelling my life, cataloging it for later and drooling over its reactions.

And so, I sat and watched a Batman movie in R’s arms on his bed in his room. Soon, the world began to fade, and I drifted asleep.

I awoke in a panic at ten a.m. His arms were around me, fast asleep, and sun had began streaming through the windows. I was in last night’s clothes. We hadn’t even kissed, much less fucked. I felt like I was going to throw up. The stupidity of it all was not lost on me. After saying an awkward goodbye, I stumbled back to my dorm at the top of the hill and immediately scrubbed my skin raw in the shower. I needed to get last night off of me, and I went silent on R’s texts.

he hadn’t woken me up we haven’t even talked about us what do I do people are looking at me weird I’m looking at me weird last night was all wrong

I needed to cut it off. The story had gone too far. I texted him. Friend-zoned him. He “agreed”. He still flirts with me, and I still flirt with conflict.

iiii. ommetaphobia - fear of eyes

And then, there was a girl.

Bleached hair, low rise jorts, and a fucking stare that almost gave me a stroke. I was genuinely scared to look at her. I’d followed her on Instagram over the summer and immediately assumed she was out of my league. Lesbian final boss.

Her name is Katie.

I became good friends with her roommate, Kiyari, through my art history class, along with most of her friend circle, so we were friends by association. Then, a week and a half ago—when I had finally escaped the nasty feeling of what happened with R—I was standing in line for dinner when I turned around and saw Katie and Kiyari. I talked with Kiyari and noticed Katie watching me with that stare, the kind that makes you breath just a little heavier. At the time, I disregarded it, thinking that it was me projecting on how gorgeous her eyes were and mistaking that for intensity.

“She was trying to make eyes at you, by the way,” Kiyari said during class the next day.

“What?”

“Katie. She was looking at you on purpose.”

I didn’t know how to react. Eye contact was like sex for queer women. The gaze for the gays, dare I say (ironically, during our conversation, our art history professor was dissecting the power asserted by “gazing” at an artwork, which amplified my panic tenfold). It was feeling real in a visceral way I didn’t know was possible.

Ironically, I became obsessed with the song “Everybody Here Wants You” by Jeff Buckley right as I began to talk more with Katie. It could no be more relevant. People were posting of Fizz about her (who’s the girl with the bright purple hair, i want her). My guy friends from back at home were saying she was way too out of my league (you’re punching up, third string). The first week became drenched in insecurity.

i’m not cool enough i’m not pretty enough i’m not experienced enough

During a week of midterms, Katie went dark on me over texts, and I completely lost my shit. Like all my other crash outs, I survived and almost convinced myself to move on because after all, I never truly believed I would be interesting enough to keep her attention.

Last Saturday, however, I walked one of my friends, Sam, back to the valley dorms (HI SAM! you’re one of my loyal subscribers ily). I off-handedly texted Kiyari that I was in Sam’s room, which was just a floor below Katie and Kiyari’s suite. Kiyari told me to come upstairs with Sam, and just like that, I was in Katie’s suite in my concert glam, still glowing from the music.

I had caught Katie completely unaware after a week of distance. Suddenly, my confidence spiked agian. She was nervous and quiet, and Sam told me later that when I got up to go to the bathroom, katie pretended to reach out after me and bury her head in her hands. Sam and Kiyari proceeded to reprimand her for ghosting me. She was just as nervous as I was the entire time.

we are so fucking back

As of tonight, I’ve spent the past four nights in the living room of her suite, never quite alone with her but always laughing hard enough to cry. Now, I stare back. I catch myself watching her between moments, and sometimes she catches me, too. It doesn’t matter, though, because I’m not scared to look anymore.

i’ll write again when it gets twice as messy, xoxo dakota