Lost, alone and confused

A plethora of colour and light flashes across my face in the darkness, my silhouette looms over me from the wall behind as my laptop screen projects the images of a cut and paste action scene at me. I sat there gazing blankly at the fast-paced scene that was developing, it should be exciting or at least a little engaging but right now I can’t even tell you what the main character’s name is, let alone his motivation for killing 7, wait no, 10 men whose only flaw seemed to be that they were in the way. Then I remembered they had killed his puppy, so I think they did deserve it. I was sitting in my three by three-and-a-half metre university res room on a Friday night, alone. Why was I alone? Why in a residence of 75 guys did I only have one friend and why did that scare me so much?

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The screen faded into a blur as I leant back in my semi-comfortable chair and allowed my mind to wander. Being a lone shouldn’t be so terrifying, should it? It should provide me the space to think and gather myself, re-organise my life and maybe even find enlightenment (if I was even into that sort of thing). But I was terrified. Not because I was afraid of being alone in that moment, stuffing my face with another slice of triple decker pizza, but because I was afraid I would never be able to stop. I began to scan over my recent memories, as if searching through computer code, trying to find my malfunction; the error script that I could recode to become acceptable to the system.

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As the screen flashed neon purple and blue and the hero worked his way through a night club systematically killing everyone in his path, it dawned on me. The problem was simple. I had nothing in common with the guys I lived with, a symptom, I guessed, of having no access to a shared experience. My entire school career was spent with like-minded guys who shared my interests, language and hobbies. Guys who weren’t afraid to get real and talk about the meat of life, and yet here in this melting pot of culture and lifestyles I was an outsider and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like FIFA, drinking or partying nor was I involved in any varsity sport and so making conversation was like being lost in a foreign country with no translator.

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A female assassin began sneaking into the hero’s apartment room attempting to catch him off guards as I realised: I had made a ton of female friends in the two years I have been here. In fact I found it incredibly easy to maintain friendships with women because I felt like there was more to them. Most women did not seem to mind moving past the niceties, to delve past the surface and get real with me. There was a reciprocation, or at least as much of one as I would allow. But this was not my experience with guys, and it was bothering me.

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The hero lay broken on the sidewalk, gripping his barely functioning cell phone in one hand watching his long dead wife on the beach, blood pouring from the multiple wounds he had sustained throughout his revenge rampage. Suddenly, out of nowhere I felt as if I identified with the man. Sitting in my room alone, reminiscing about a better time, injured and unable to move. I was overcome with a profound sense of being wrong, like I was not properly equipped to step into the role expected of my gender. I could try and change I suppose, but I didn’t want to. And so I resigned myself to Friday nights alone, empty Debonairs pizza boxes pilling up next to me, glazed eyes hiding a confused and lonely boy who wanted nothing more than a brother to confide in.