I submitted the first chapter of my thesis on Monday. Which indicates, I think, the end of the beginning of senior year. I’m fully in it now. And I have a secret to share: I am not happy.
This fall has not left me smiling or beaming with joy. In truth, I am largely suffering. My feet drag throughout the day while my heart begins to race after dinner. I have grown irritable, chiseled away by stress and fatigue.
Sometimes, I find myself standing so still, frozen in the middle of simple tasks by the weight of my own shoulders. Sometimes, I feel like my clothes are full of water. Sometimes, I work until I forget to feed myself. Sometimes, I cry in the bathroom before walking in to class.
Maybe my lack of joy comes with the times; we are all swimming in the backwash of a global pandemic. Everyone is trying to remember who they were before 2020; and I’m guessing very few are succeeding. The nation’s collective trauma manifests in each of us. I can feel all my COVID-19 resolutions fading away––to be grateful for movement and action, to enjoy the vibrancy of college life. In fall 2021, I mostly just feel tired.
Maybe my lack of joy comes with academic burnout; the chronic condition resulting from a (literal) lifetime of school. Senioritis would be the most convenient explanation––but it also feels the least true.
As a student, I can think and write about things that are real, while keeping my distance from them. I can engage with what terrifies me––climate change, capitalism, women’s oppression, etc.––on a theoretical level. I can break down hierarchies in my papers. I can change the world in a single presentation.
Maybe my lack of joy then comes with senior year itself; the constant knowing that school is almost over. This Colby world of brick buildings, and loud dorm rooms, and long nights in the library will not belong to me much longer. Come May, I will be thrown out on the streets of real life.
I’m glad it’s not May. I’m grateful for the months of college still ahead. I’m happy to be here, but not like happy, happy. Not like the smiling kind. More like the kind of happy in which you’re happy to be alive but also angry that life is so damn hard.
In my senior year of college, I am surrounded by wonderful friends and fascinating work. I know these may well be the “good old days” I cherish forever.
And yet, joy is scarce. I guess I just thought I would feel it everywhere, all the time.
I’ve spent so much of this semester feeling frustrated with my own general unhappiness. Please, I’ve begged myself, try to appreciate this time. Try to be happy. But now, I’m starting to realize something else. Maybe a good, meaningful senior year has nothing to do with bliss. Maybe senior year has everything to do with feeling anxious and angry.
I take comfort in a little book called How To Be Perfectly Unhappy by Matthew Inman. He says, “I’m not happy, and I don’t pretend to be. Instead, I’m busy, I’m interested, I’m fascinated. I do things that are meaningful to me, even if they don’t make me happy.” Our sense of happiness is so brittle, Inman says, it can be destroyed simply by asking whether or not it exists.
I feel differently from how I felt this summer. And last year. I guess I feel worse. I’m working hard and worrying often. I’m writing my thesis, and I failing to write my thesis. But I’m doing my best and then doing it again.
I’m doing my best better than I’ve done it before.
So, don’t ask me if I’m happy. Don’t ask me if I’m having a fun and fabulous senior year. I’ll tell you no. I’ll tell you instead that I’m busy, I’m interested, I’m fascinated. I’ll tell you that I’m brimming with ten thousand moving parts.
Quiet Histories 