Finals. The end to end all ends. The time of the quarter where every college student meets their maker. They stand at the pearly gates and submit their misdeeds and wrongdoings, add up their essays and skipped classes to see if they will be granted eternal salvation or eternal damnation. Will their GPA be made to suffer in their transcripts or will they be one step closer to their highly respected 5,000 pound paper granting them access to the places which were once labeled, “No child under a Bachelors of Arts admitted to this roller coaster.” This is the time of the quarter nearly every college student enters confident of their inability to survive. As if by agreeing to enter finals one is walking into a gas chamber, lying in the target zone, dropping into ‘Nam with no weaponry and a siren attached to their head. But, save for a select few unlucky ones, I think a majority of us pull through, somehow. And so rounding the corner myself, I find that my body is unscathed, my brain battered but not dead, and my hands shaking over this keyboard with caffeine overload.
The wrath of finals is evidenced by the exclamation of one of my friends, Cassandra, also a local barista, “You’re here like seven times a day,” she said to me, referring to Diva Espresso where she works. My only defense is an embarrassed, “It’s the only good place to study.” Which is mostly true. I can’t study at home. But honestly, how embarrassing. And then Karli backs up Cassandra’s sentiment with a, “Well, you are there more than you’re at home.” Which is totally true.
Isn’t home such a laughable concept? I think it is. Of course, my saying that home is a laughable concept is merely a coping mechanism. (It’s easier to say that than to pretend you’ve got the time to pull out a long chaise and permit me outline all of my internal complications which have caused this I-never-feel-at-home complex.) But I sometimes wonder how many people feel less at home at home than say, at Diva Espresso, or rather regrettably, Denny’s. No, I would not feel comfortable stripping down and changing into a different outfit, or running to the bathroom naked, or any other of these various at-home activities in either of these places, but my general day-to-day actions are quite a bit more comfortable at Diva or Denny’s than they are at home. Sitting and reading a book for instance, is easier at either of these places. Eating a meal. Drinking a cup of water. Writing this. Or even at other peoples’ houses. In someone else’s house, compiled of their memories and materialistic endeavors, I feel more warmth than I’ve ever felt in the places I’ve lived. My first home was the closest to home I’ve ever felt. And that was a sad excuse for a home. Arguments. Fights. OCD. Overgrown lawns. Fenced-in dogs. Crap-riddled backyards. Closets full of secrets; taboo, sexual, and completely misunderstood.
The dog should’ve clued me in. Any chance he got he would try to run as far away from our house as possible. He was not athletic or properly treated; he was a symbol of everything our family could not speak of. The indirect receiver of all our antagonistic indulgences. He would bark down in the yard. Endlessly. Crying for escape, no doubt. My father took my plastic Hot Wheels racing tracks and slapped them against the side of the house screaming, “Shut up!” in a way only a 5-year-old adult could sound. Terrifying. Awkward. Tyson, the dog, never shut up. Never. I see now why. Those plastic Hot Wheels tracks came to be scarred with thousands of bite marks, Tyson’s only method aside from crying out to request freedom from this place, or at least make it evident that he requested it.
Maybe that’s what I’ve become. I’ve become the mistreated dog we once owned. Needy of wandering, afraid of home. Crying out in silent rage when trapped in the bowels of my studio apartment.
But whatever became of Tyson? I don’t know. Perhaps he died. He was old. I’m sure he’s dead now, but hopefully he was granted better ownership first. Who knows. The difference between Tyson and I, I suppose, is that I own a car, and he did not.