On Claustrophobia

I expected that coming back to school in America after a semester in Oxford would have it's strange moments and its challenges, but one thing I don't think I anticipated was how strange it would be to come in contact with so many people.

I don't just mean that there are people around, because there was never a lack of life in Oxford. What I mean is the overwhelming presence of people that you see and talk to on a regular basis. There were fifty or so Americans in the same program I was, but even most of them I saw only rarely, and though they were wonderful people whom I miss, I was not close to a lot of them. However, being a member of the theatre department here means that you are part of a family. It is inevitable. We are always around each other, always working together. It has been one of my favourite parts of my college experience, but it is intense. I had forgotten how intense it was.

And unlike classes here, my tutorials always consisted of only myself and the professor. We would simply have a conversation about the subject of the week, not the throng of listeners or bevy of voices that tend to be the two extremes of the American classroom. Again, this is not to speak against the American system: it is just a shock.

Strange as this may sound, it is startling to have so many close friends around me. At Oxford, the only close friend I had was Eric, and everyone else was just opportunities to get to know people with the vague hope that some of them might develop into lasting friendships. Even over the summer, I was closer to people, but I saw them only intermittently and rarely more than a couple at a time. Now I am on a campus filled with friends, a number of whom I have known for three years and some for much longer. I have some fantastic friends, but it is curiously disconcerting to have so many of them around me all the time. I believe it is good, but I am still getting used to it.

In a broader sense, the English are just a much more private people than Americans. Emotions were rarely expressed in public. That seemed to suit my natural disposition pretty well and I got used to that pretty quickly. Even my first week back in the country I noticed how much more expressive, boisterous, and public emotions are in America. We tend to wear our hearts on our sleeves. Coming back to college has simply magnified my perception of this difference. I feel like something about my college encourages a campus even more emotional than the general populace, and it is something I am getting used to.

The point of all of this is that sometimes it all suddenly feels like too much, and I feel like I need to run away, to sit among strangers, to speak and have no one hear me or have no one care that it was me who spoke, to go somewhere without anyone else knowing my course, maybe not even me.

For some reason, I feel a vague pressure that these are feelings I am not supposed to have. And I don't know where that comes from.

I love my friends. I love talking to them, and I love it when they force me to open up (even if it is painful). My friends are more than I could ask for, and I am thankful to have them in my life. But sometimes I want to be alone. And other times I want to sit in silence next to someone who knows me very well and have that be okay.