> CD #39: Flashbacks

Greetings from the University of Calgary, where I’m currently writing under the shade of a tree, pondering the space-time continuum. Whenever I walk around campus, I feel split in two because my body distinctly remembers being here 20+ years ago—fact: the English department, where my office is located, smells exactly the same—and even though a lot has changed, so much has not.

It doesn’t help that 90s style is back in full force among the young people. There’s a lot of crop top and mom jean action going on around here. A friend asked me the other day if I thought people might mistake me for a student, and I had to laugh. The students look like babies to me. And I probably remind them of their moms.

For example, today I am rocking a Muji midi skirt I found on my last trip to New York.

When I first put it on this morning, it felt youthful and appropriate for a university campus, but I have yet to see a single person wearing any type of skirt around here. It’s obvious that, somewhere along the way, I accidentally began dressing like a grown-up lady (despite my Snoopy lunchbox purse), and I’m starting to think there’s no going back.

But part of me is reverting to my student self in a slightly disturbing way. Walking through all these familiar spaces has triggered a bunch of latent but extremely visceral memories of my time as an undergrad. And while a lot of great things happened to me back then, like falling in love with my now husband, what I remember most is being stressed out nearly all the time.

It’s the feeling of precarity, I think, that has come back to me strongest. I never took out student loans, choosing instead to scrape my way through university on a bunch of small scholarships and bursaries, plus three part-time jobs. I didn’t consider myself poor, but I also knew that if I didn’t score free parking on any given morning, I wouldn’t be able to eat lunch that day. And lunch was a $1.50 ham and cheese bun.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I also struggled with insomnia and had my first bout of clinical depression at university.

While my brain understands that those days are long past, I can feel myself slipping into survival mode again. I am still going far out of my way to avoid paying for parking on campus, and—I hate to admit it—yesterday I skipped lunch and tried to keep going on a little tuna snack kit I’d tossed in my backpack for emergencies. It was to save time, not money, but the result was the same: I was running on fumes by the end of the day.

I’m not telling you this to ask for pity, of course, because I can totally afford to pay for all the food and parking I want. My situation has changed dramatically. I wear skirts now, dammit! I’m just so surprised at how badly buried these feelings were, and how even though I’m an ostensible adult, that stressed and hungry kid is right there always, easily conjured by something as mundane as a walk through the student centre food court.

I’m also declaring this in a public forum to keep myself accountable: I will take care of myself this year. I can. I must. And I hope you are taking care of yourself too.

:) Teresa  

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