Fun fact: I don’t own a car. Feel bad, yet?

I know this doesn’t sound like much, but before you turn your attention away from my predicament, let me offer you my point of contention: I’m lonely. I do not suffer from a lack of friends—I have a full and active friends list on League of Legends (a clear indicator of my avid social life). My brand of loneliness is of a foreign kind (i.e. I’m not like other girls). As a result, I often ask myself — if I’m surrounded by Champions all the time, why do I feel so alone? MayoClinic tells me the prognosis is cancer, but personally, I more closely attribute this lingering loneliness to my lack of a car. 

It’s a sad reality to see all my friends speed past stop signs in their mothers’ Mercedes, when my own mother refuses to let me even sit behind the wheel of her 1996 Prius. It’s not even that I can’t drive—I’m a good driver! Or at least, that’s what Grand Theft Auto (GTA) tells me. But according to “the law,” you can’t drive without a permit. Now, you may be thinking, a simple remedy to my situation would be to actually study for and obtain a learner’s permit from the government, but why should I let the government judge me when GTA already knows I’m a winner? 

Regardless, as a result of my car-less situation, I’ve become a known vagrant among my many car-bearing friends. As they make their way off of campus, keys jingling in-hand, I follow close behind, holding out a raised thumb in hopes of hitching a ride to a closeby coffee shop or local library. But my true desires lie beyond those offered to me by a change of environment—what I desire most is freedom. And, without a car, it seems more and more clear that freedom is beyond my reach. 

Without the rides of others, I’m landlocked on campus. I have no car, no means of transportation, no divine vessel ready to carry me away forever with heat and air conditioning available on tap. Even when I travel with others, I’ve been relegated to the back seat, forced to acquaint myself with loose change and used napkins. 

During my free periods, I circle campus blindly, bitter and alone. As I watch my friends skid out of the parking lot, grinning behind the wheel, tears well in my eyes. I’m at a standstill, trapped on an island floating in a sea of depression and Westridge’s smell of sewage. With nothing to fill the void  aside from my own pity and partial fantasies, maybe I succumb to solitude. Maybe I’m allowed to wallow in self-pity until I’m able to remedy my life problems by declaring them as a New Years’ Resolution. Until then, however, I’ll continue to complain.