T H E S H O RT C U T
The Three Phases of Twilight The Blue and White continues its short fiction series with a story from a recent graduate from Columbia College
By Christina Hill
A
round the time the second boy I ever had sex with stopped texting me, I was prescribed Adderall. The school psychiatrist said maybe the reason I was so unhappy was because I couldn’t focus. However, instead of using my new hyper attention on the mountains of work piling up on my to-do list, I directed my energy towards that boy. My thoughts turned repetitive and constant and only about him. About him not texting me. About whether or not he would text me. And, most viciously, about the many reasons he wasn’t texting me. On my 19th birthday, I kept refreshing my Facebook timeline to see if he had posted. I ignored the five calls my mom left. “Llamáme,” she would text. I wouldn’t answer. My mother, the school teacher, always
Orientation 2019
attempted to make my mistakes into lessons. Anecdotes I’d share quickly turned into advice so at some point I stopped sharing altogether. However, I tried again when I started freshman year, calling home with stories of the people I’ve met and what I was doing. But I’d still be met mostly with frustration. I’d explain on the phone that no, mom, I haven’t been going on dates because that’s not what people do in college. And no, mom, I don’t know if I feel at home here because I don’t know what’s going on in school. I soon stopped calling. After I got the prescription, the sun began to set at four and I’d swallow another blue pill to feel a spark of energy that my brain was incapable of producing naturally. The soaring buildings that surrounded the campus on Broadway and Amsterdam created shadows that made everything seem colder within them--they sucked up sunlight even faster. While I sat in my dorm hallway far into the early hours of the morning, waiting for the Adderall to come down so I could fall asleep, I would overhear conversations of my peers discussing their achievements as I would be struggling to finish an overdue paper. They would talk about their internship plans and I would search through my murky thoughts as to how to contribute to the conversation. Maybe that’s why he didn’t want me; I couldn’t even form a coherent thought in my head without those blue pills. After my last final, I stepped onto the plane
Illustration by Kate Steiner
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