This past weekend, I found myself standing on a porch. It was the front porch of a white, wood-paneled house that sat at the end of a gravel road. It was also the front porch that rendered the setting of the perfect college house party. The house party that every college student knows all too well.
Scrambling up the cement steps that lay adjacent to the porch, my heart was pumping. With every step I took, the steps became more and more congested with bodies as my friend and I drew nearer to the top. With my entire sense of personal space diminished and the pounding of modern rap music vibrating through everything that I touched, we stepped onto the overcrowded porch.
People. People everywhere. My friend led me to a group of friends that she knew as my boots stuck to the sticky wooden floor. The leather jacket that I was wearing rubbed up against the backs and fronts of people that I had never once laid my eyes on in all my nineteen years of life. It was a type of intimacy that was just as strong as the smell of cheap alcohol that permeated the porch on which I was standing and the surrounding crisp, outside air.
A beer pong table was set up off to the side and it was engulfed by people awaiting their turn to triumph over the last winner of a game that they had most likely been playing for the majority of the tailgate that they were just at only a few hours ago. Couples that probably barely knew each other were glued to one another along the wall of this house and on the other side, there was just another mass of bodies that had found comfort in the chaos.
And then, there was me.
While I stood in this small huddle of friends by a mutual friend, we engaged in superficial compliments about each other's outfits and the ever-monotonous "nice to meet you’s," but then, I mentally took a step back and just took in all of my surroundings for a second.
People. People everywhere.
They might have been people that will forget what they did that night, talk to people that they will forget meeting, and have a phone full of numbers that they will end up deleting, but every last one of them also had their own dreams, ambitions, and thoughts. They were people full of emotions, and personal stories that would never be uttered in a place like that for fear that they wouldn’t blend in with the rest of the others. Each one of them was feeling something inside but in their own way.
My mind started to ask them questions. I had given up asking the common "What are you wearing," and "What are you doing" many weeks ago. This time around I was curious to know what their experience with high school was like and who was the one that made them feel heartbreak for the first time. I knew that I would never find those answers, but curiosity took over for just a second.
Just for a little bit, in my very own Gatsby-esque way, I, too, felt within and without.
