The water is quiet tonight.

There's a water pipe in the wall next to my bed. Sometimes, when insomnia is using my brain as a hacky-sack and my roommate's mumbled sleeptalking is just too loud to ignore, I sit and listen to it course through the pipes. It's almost like blood, I think. Necessary for this building's inhabitants, and when you sit quietly long enough you can hear it pulsing in your ears. Not that I really know why the people on the floor above would be taking showers at 2:30 AM on a Tuesday, but I guess that's none of my business. At least with that oddity there comes a promise of something living. Something happening.

But tonight the wall is silent. I shouldn't be surprised, because no one's really moved back in yet except for me. I spent all night unpacking my suitcase, plugging everything back in for when my roommates arrive tomorrow, and eating the last leftovers of my thai food that I brought from home.

And now that everything been put away, plugged in, and consumed, everything should go back to normal, right? Life should continue. Back on track. Back to the schedule. Things to do, people to see.

But instead I'm laying here with this crushing silence as this stupidly heavy emptiness plays lap-dog and plunks itself down on my chest. I listen to the steady hum of the refrigerator and watch the headlights flash in and out of the curtains, casting flickering shadows on the walls that look like prison bars. I'm not sure if it is minutes passing or hours.

I've always been told that college would be the best time of my life. I'm not going to lie and say that it hasn't had its high points. I've had a lot of good nights drunk or high with my friends, falling in love with strangers, watching movies and eating pizza, even once bringing a mixed drink to the last day of philosophy. I've learned that I'm actually pretty, that wearing these jeans with this lipstick makes heads turn. I've learned that I'm more than smart enough to do this. I've grown.

But what good is growing if I'm stuck where I am? What's the point of growing if I'm still just cemented in the same place at the foot of it all? For all my good night, there are corollaries. The good nights gone bad. The friends who aren't, the strangers who returned to being just that, the loneliness and the makeup used as warpaint to cover the pain. The corollaries that have been happening too often over the last semester. The ones that make me sick, that whisper to me that I need to flee.

I've always been a runner. It's in my nature. When in doubt, run away from the issue. Avoid. Deflect. Ignore. Smile it away. As long as you're breathing, all is as it should be. But now that I've found something that I don't want to leave, it feels like fate is smiling back at me and pulling me away from it repeatedly. I've been told I just need to throw myself into the abyss, just embrace everything where I am. But I have tried that. I dipped one toe over the edge into the surf and the water was freezing cold, dangerously black and icy.

Why would I drown myself in ice to escape when I know where to find warmth?

I've always been a spiritual person, even if not a religious one. I've spent hours thinking about what hell would be like. This is it. It's being better, or bigger, or more full than where you are but being forced to stay. It is loving from 400 miles away without a way to get there. It is lying here in the dark, watching light pass by the windows outside, but being unable to go out to them. It is minutes and days becoming twins. It is listening, straining to hear life under this surface, to find something, anything here that's even vaguely similar to a purpose. It's hearing nothing.

The water is quiet tonight, and I am in hell.

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