Alcohol, sex, fate

I whole-heartedly believe that our lives are made real because of the people that enter them. Whether it is our family, those that have been with us through the good and the bad, and even when we didn't want them there, or the strangers that we become acquainted with one night and never meet again. It is because of these people, the conversations we hold, the awkward mishaps, the brushes with fate as I refer hopefully to them, that we are able to feel something beyond what we can do ourselves.

This brings me to the point in life where the people and places and become repetitive, or on a complete opposite, they are taken from us suddenly. We are left in some melodramatic pattern feeling sorry for ourselves because our upper-middle class lives still don't bring us happiness. Or we are left with regret, anger, pain that someone was taken from us or has left us and we are here, alone, to pick up the pieces ourselves. So what do we do now?

Being a recent grad I will allow myself to speak from personal experience on the way that a lot, and I am not implying all, but a lot of college student handle these feeling of monotony or lonliness. The two most obvious are alcohol and sex.

Alcohol, god you have done wonders for my life to say the least. It seems the answer to almost any question that an 18-24 year-old has. You do well on an exam - you drink. You do horrible on an exam - you drink. You are celebrating an occassion - you drink. You are wallowing in a break-up - you drink. You drink for every reason and you drink for no reason at all. Why? Maybe it is the social scene, being able to open yourself up to things that you would never do sober and subconsciously have always wanted to say or do. We have all heard of the angry drunks, and the emotional drunks, but either way drinking brings about some type of outlet that most can't admit to. Drunk dials, telling the guy/girl that sat next to you all semester that you think they are hot, showing up at the dorm room of your ex begging for them back, destroying some sort of property just because you are that cool... alcohol can single-handedly make you feel like in doing these things you are making the best decision. Alcohol is an outlet that makes us feel, when we don't want to admit that we feel, but at the end of the night in our hearts and our heads it tells us what we really think.

Sex. Not even sex, but any type of sexual encounter ranging from an ass-grab, an intense make-out, even the across the room eye-f*ck, very common amongst college students. Why is it that we find the urge to try and get in the pants of anything human when we are at a low-point in our lives? As much as people don't want to admit that there are feelings involved in the one-night stand or the friends with benefits, I challenge you to call my bluff on this. Sex makes you feel. Maybe not the head-over-heels in love want to spend the rest of my time on this Earth with this person feeling, but it physically makes you feel and I believe there is some emotional attachment that stems from it, if only in ourselves. Now give me a chance to explain. Even if you only want to hook-up for the fact of hooking-up, we do it because it FEELS good. In such a confusing time, the college years, where we don't know what the hell we are doing with our lives, we can feel some sense of being wanted from an attraction of another person. For that instant, or that night, we, out of 6 billion people in this world were chosen. The reason why is insignificant and only complicates the situation, so we will overlook it. But our bodies go through a sexual gratification, stimulation, the urges that we can't control any more and lead up to any one of numerous climaxes. We feel, if only for that second, within ourselves, something that overtakes our bodies and our minds.

So I state again, these people that are brought into our lives: the conversations we hold, the awkward mishaps, and the brushes of fate, with all hope, we are able to allow ourselves to let someone in, so we can feel more than what we simply do to ourselves, but the feelings -- both good and bad -- that others install in us.