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I kept peering down the river, hoping that at some bend in the trail, I would see the red dome of Dunster House poking out from above the treeline. With the Charles River to my left side, I knew that regardless of how lost I was, I could follow the water back home —
Home? At what point had the humble white walls and twin XL bed become home? It was only one month ago that I had moved into the 18th-century rectangular prism known as Massachusetts Hall. I could remember the details of move-in day — the faces, the weather, the goodbyes — to a degree that now has faded into a speck of emotional parting.
After my parents left, I remember sitting on my freshly wiped-down chair, staring at the window on the other side of the room, a slight August breeze circulating the Clorox-infused air. I remember feeling like a snail robbed of its shell, bare and exposed to the whims of social anxiety. Yet some miracle of adrenaline carried me through those first few days.
Roaming around the square with strangers past the wee hours of the night, hiking miles in the Appalachians on the First-Year Outdoor Program, only adrenaline drove me forward. In the beginning, I felt that I had entered a new world, the past 18 years and shelter of a familiar life thrown away. I was drifting through the start of college faster than I could catch how it was shaping me.
In an effort to root myself, to find security in my new surroundings, I returned to a familiar form of meditation: running. Running has always been my break from the bubbles that trap me in the other 23 hours of the day.
On this day, I found myself determined to run alone. Perhaps my desire for security led me to feel more confident, perhaps the adrenaline made me rash, but I also decided I would do so without my phone. At home, I always ran without my phone. I liked to hear my footsteps on the gravel, a rhythm just as calming as listening to my heartbeat, a testament to my body’s strength, yet also its fragile intricacy.
***
And so, as the temperature cooled with the setting sun, past Winthrop’s gate, I turned right. I took a route that I had taken with the running club just twice before. As the cars rolled by on the adjacent road, I remember taking notice of the geese on the path that honked — but never moved, even as bikes zoomed by.
For the first time in a long time — since move-in day, since staring at the peaks of the White Mountains on FOP — I found myself appreciating the world outside of the internal trance I had fallen into with orientation, Annenberg’s conversation roulette, and the start of college classes.
I passed bridge after bridge, until I came upon the one that I needed to cross — this turn I maneuvered correctly. Yet across the bridge, I found an intersection for which my memory had no direction to guide me. I took a right. Now, I recognize how perhaps a little logic would have led me in the direction back to campus: A mental map of a U turned on its side would have told me to turn left.
Still, I ran for about 10 minutes in the wrong direction. Yes, I realized that something was off when the landmarks I remembered never reappeared. But emboldened by my false confidence, my self-assured security in this new environment, I remained convinced that Harvard’s brick buildings would appear at some point — as if I could will them into existence.
Then I passed by the athletic fields of a different university and a boathouse completely foreign to me. I realized that I was lost. No one was there to help me. I couldn’t rely on my friends to know the area. I couldn’t rely on the knowledge my parents had imparted to me about my local home roads. I was alone.
I realized, in what felt like the middle of nowhere, on this expedition to prove to myself that I could find security in my new environment, that I was alone in being responsible for myself, in staying safe, for waking up at the right time, for making time for meals, for taking care of my mental health.
I yearned so deeply, facing a completely foreign stretch of the river, for any familiarity. I yearned to be back in the Yard that I had first seen just weeks ago. Though they were still not much more familiar than the streets of Watertown, the centuries-old brick structures provided me with warmth. The Yard had become a hearth I could return to in this entirely new city, amid an entirely foreign experience. It had become my place of rest in the exhausting adventure of navigating freshman fall.
In this fluster to return back to campus, my dorm appeared to me as the shell I was missing, something I longed to crawl into.
***
The sky had descended into darker shades of pink and purple. I retraced my recent steps, finding that intersection once again. Eventually, I found a couple, who I assumed were locals on their pre-dinner bike excursion, and asked for help. I felt at that moment like an elementary school child, asking for directions back home.
It reminded me of my first-grade teacher, who made us all memorize our house addresses and parents’ phone numbers in case we were in an emergency. I never needed to ask for directions home in my suburban childhood. Yet here, as a college student, I found myself facing an unknown world, more reflective of the life ahead of me. The fear that I would never see my dorm room again, that I would never befriend the strangers I had started to spend time with, made me promise to myself that I needed to take better care of myself.
Following the flow of the river back to campus, as I became once again familiar with the paths leading me back and I saw the tower of Memorial Hall in the distance, I could return to meditating to the sound of gravel.
The comfort of seeing campus softened my anxiety to understand this new world. In seeing this place as a new home, I realized I could take all the time I needed to slowly unravel the unfamiliar. It wasn’t like I would be going anywhere anytime soon.
This would also not be the last time I would be lost in this new place. Yet, knowing that I could make it back — even if it required asking for the help of some strangers along the way — I still felt equipped with the energy to explore some unfamiliar paths, to make wrong turns at forks along the way, but find a route back to safety, if needed. All these experiences could be a part of the process of finding my shell and refining the home I will construct for myself here.
—Magazine writer Jeffrey Q. Yang can be reached at jeffrey.yang@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeffreyqyang.
