You’re sitting in your dorm at your desk. You stare into the endless abyss that is your computer screen, watching some godforsaken YouTube videos. It’s just another Thursday night. You finished your homework for the night. You look at your phone and its only 6:30. Too much time left, you think to yourself. You hear a loud thud. That was your framed picture of you and all your high school friends dressed up at prom, seeming inseparable at the time, being slammed on the top of your desk because the people in the room next to your’s music is blaring, but all you can hear are laughs and the fun. You’re too afraid to knock on their door to at least tell them to quiet down because you just can’t take all the fun their having.

It would be an understatement to say that you are jealous.

You don’t know them. Your roommate rarely opens their mouth to talk to you, let alone tell you where he/she runs off to on the weekends. There’s no communication, there’s nothing. The relationship is non-existent. You’re all alone on your floor, you think to yourself. The only person you kind of like on the floor is yourself, only because there are days that you can’t stand the sight of yourself. You think to yourself, this is all my fault.

You think that you’re too late, that the ship has already sailed, and you just got to the dock looking like a fool for being so late.

I am the one to blame for my “college experience” not turning out the way I so dearly wanted to. I didn’t put myself out there, I didn’t reach out, I didn’t do enough. The thoughts become stronger, almost taking a life of their own, and nearly consume you. You, who is seemingly locked away in your room when there are people who are the exact same in the room right next to you, let alone the whole freaking campus, yet you feel isolated, like you are doing this to yourself, like you are the one to blame (great, more blame, that’s just what you need), just sit. Alone. Just you and your thoughts that have been morphed into monsters.

It’s only 8 p.m. now. You think to yourself that it’s too early to just go to bed, but too late to take a nap so you can hide from the reality that you’re in. No one comes knocking on your door, and you know no one will, just like your parents told you. So now you think to yourself what you did wrong, what caused me to be in this situation? What caused me to not be close with anyone at a place that seems light-years away from my hometown? Does anyone here actually care about me? It’s all my fault that my college life sucks right now, isn’t it? So many questions, and the only things to answer them are the monsters in your head.

College was supposed to be fun, right?

It’s college! The promised land, the place you worked all of high school for, but why do you feel the way you do?

You check your phone, deciding whether or not to dare ask someone, anyone, to go and grab dinner with. You scroll through your contacts, as you slowly figure out that you didn't really ask for anyone's number that you wanted to hang out with. You wonder where you went wrong, again, and then realize that you excel in the art of assuming that no one wants to talk to you, but maybe you're right?

Your phone says 7:30 a.m. as you wake up with the dim sunlight light barely peering through your blinders. Turns out you could crank out almost 12 hours of sleep because of how under siege your mind really was. You needed that rest, even though you never left, it feels like your mind was going through some P90X for hours on end. You throw on your clothes, grab a snack, and head to class. You’re finally out of your cell, but it may have done more harm than good. You can’t help but look at everyone heading to class, all laughing and talking with their friends on their way to class. You then take a look at yourself, alone once again. You think to yourself:

Shouldn’t I have had this whole making-friends thing figured out already?

If you just read the title, there will be a Part 2. Stayed tuned till next week, folks.