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Where the Butterflies Are… Anne Choi
My stiff back whined and my sore muscles complained after the 14-hour-long plane ride from Seoul to Troy. My swollen eyes and lips pouted, puffy and protesting, from the allergic reaction I endured while cooped up on the plane. Jetlag grabbed on to me like an old, tired friend as I tried to focus on just putting one foot in front of the other.
As I took that first step forward, I whispered to myself, “What have I gotten myself into…?”
A friendly voice greeted me from out of the grey unknown. Stacey, my houseparent, immediately took charge and offered to carry all three of my enormous suitcases up, up, up to Kellas 3 Long.
As I opened the door to Room #312, I was greeted by a bitter breeze howling at me from a wide-open window. It slapped me hard in the face—that lonely breeze.
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I looked at the empty room and fought to hold back the flood of tears welling up in my eyes as I bravely forced a fake smile and thanked Stacey, “Room looks great… I’m excited to meet my other hall-mates, but I think I wanna take a short nap before dinner...”
As the door closed behind me, my swollen eyes filled with tears. I was too physically tired and overwhelmed to even begin unpacking my bags. All I could think of was my warm, welcoming bed back home in Seoul and the wonderful smell of my mom’s home-cooked food.
Exhausted, I threw my body down on top of the sheet-less bed for 30 minutes trying to imagine how I was ever going to survive in this desolate, lonely place for 4 years...
This was the place.
Emma was that one place I had always dreamed of attending ever since the spring of my 8th grade year. That was a time when my thoughts were filled with wonderful visions of what my life would be like at my new school. Emma was a new start for a new me. I had browsed through the school’s webpages a thousand times trying to drink in all of the panoramic views and amazing architecture.
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This was the place. There, in my dreams, I had imagined Emma to be a perfect paradise of a place, where carefree girls played in wide open, green fields filled with fragrant, colorful flowers.
There, I had imagined I would open my dorm room, and I would be greeted by a bed fully clothed in a cheerful, cozy comforter.
Here, I saw grey walls rising up before me as ghoulish gargoyles glared down at me from every rooftop.
Here, my dorm room howled out at me like some sort of angry, crazed hermit, and my bed was a bare-bones mattress that left me feeling cold and uncomforted.
‌I felt out of place in a world I had not imagined.
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I fell asleep there—there in that strange and unfamiliar place somewhere between my dreams and reality—my past and my future. I woke up confused and disoriented a short time later. Looking around the empty room, my eyes finally came to rest on my unpacked suitcases. It’s hard to start over. It’s hard to begin again. But, I did the only thing I could do. I began at the beginning. Piece by piece, I began unpacking my life.
No sooner had I begun unpacking, when I heard a knock at my door. My heart jumped half out of fear and half out of surprise. At the door stood two smiling faces belonging to Nicole and Camila—two of my new hallmates—introduced themselves to me and asked me where I was from. We talked for a while about all the usual things that people talk about when they first meet. Who? What? Where? How? Why? All the things we use to describe to others who we are.
The sounds of our voices filled the empty room and made it seem a little less lonely—a little less unfamiliar. We decided to go down to dinner together, but I didn’t have much of an appetite. The butterflies in my stomach weren’t really hungry for food. They were hungry for comfort. They were hungry for family and familiar faces. In any case, they weren’t quite ready to settle down in this new place, with this new food, with all these new faces.
Isn’t it funny how the butterflies are always there no matter where we go or what we do? They are always there fluttering between the old and the new.
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We all went back to our rooms then—me to mine and them to theirs. As I closed the door behind me, comforting memories from the past flooded my mind and ran down my cheeks. The memories tasted salty and kind of bittersweet. My family and friends were way on the other side of the world. They couldn’t come to me, so I had to go to them.
As I scrolled through photos of my family and old friends on my cell phone, I found some comfort among all the memories there. I guess everyone has their own happy place where they go when they need to escape from their own reality for a while. Some people surf the internet looking for a temporary distraction. Others look for escape in a book or magazine. Yet others look for some stimulating interaction in a video or board game. But, sooner or later, we all run out of fleeting distractions and simulated interactions. Sooner or later, we have to face our own realities.
I finally fell asleep at about 3 A.M. in the morning. When I woke up later on that day, I was a little less exhausted and a little more willing to look around outside my window at my new home. In addition, a constant stream of new faces began to flow into and out of my room as I met a lot of my new hallmates or…maybe I should say that they met me. Being a somewhat shy person, I have always found it hard to approach new people. So, I found myself feeling very grateful and relieved that so many people made the extra effort to approach me first and start a conversation.
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I remember the moment when I was walking down to breakfast with a bunch of other new faces. I remember that moment; somewhere between my room and the cafeteria, the butterflies flew away. I still missed my family and friends, but I began to feel like maybe this was the beginning of something new. This was my first breakfast. The following days and weeks would be filled with my first softball game, my first tea with my hall mates, and my first club meeting as a freshman.
At some point, I began looking forward to tomorrow, instead of looking backward at the life I left behind. Somewhere between the fantasy school I had imagined as an 8th grader and the real school I was seeing for the first time as a freshman—Emma began to slowly change before my very eyes.
The grey walls no longer haunted me with their towering, cold, stony faces, but rather they kindly smiled down at me like warm, 200-year-old, wrinkled, wise grandparents who watched thousands of girls over the years, just like me, playing a game of softball or picking a bunch of dandelions.
The ghoulish gargoyles that once glared down at me from every rooftop began to look less and less like devilish demons and more and more like mischievous, stony-faced students who, like me, may or may not have ever bent or broken a rule or two while attending school at Emma. My dorm room, once haunted by a howling hermit and a bare-bones mattress, was transformed into a cozy, little cabin decorated in my favorite colors of red and white, with a cheerful, oh-so-comfortable comforter cuddling up next to me all through the cold, New York winter.
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I do have to admit that Emma is not a perfect paradise where carefree girls play in wide open, green fields filled with fragrant, colorful flowers.
My dreams of the carefree girls I once imagined have been replaced with hard-playing, hard-working, hard-studying classmates who are now dreaming of getting accepted into that perfect college. Classmates just like me.
My dreams of the wide open, green fields filled with fragrant, colorful flowers have been replaced with a much more realistic appreciation for how hard it is to keep dandelions from taking over even the best manicured lawn.
Somewhere between my fantasy image of what Emma was going to be like and what Emma really is, I came to the realization that Emma is what you make it. More importantly, as I now look forward to graduating and attending the college of my dreams, I know that I will look back at Emma one day and miss the grandfatherly and grandmotherly grey walls, the mischievous gargoyles, and, yes, even the dandelions.
However, what I will miss most of all are all the now-familiar faces of all the people who have filled my life with so many good memories over the last 3 years.
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A school is not a place; it is people.
As I browse through the internet pages of prospective colleges, I try to look past all of the new buildings, sports facilities, and all the other major and minor things that most students associate with a good school, and I try to imagine myself dragging my 3 huge, oversized suitcases up to the entrance of my assigned dormitory. I wonder if a girl named Stacey will be there to greet me with a smile and offer to carry my bags up 3 flights of stairs to my new dorm room. I wonder if a Nicole or Camila will take the time to stop by my room and introduce themselves to me if I am too shy to introduce myself to them.
One thing I know for certain. The butterflies will be there fluttering somewhere between the old and the new—my past and my future And, where the butterflies are‌there I will be.
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