Maren Knutson ’22, Fight, Flight, Freeze

Fight shoot them an eye-rolling emoji and then watch it dissolve into screenshotting each understand your point of view when they can only see from theirs. Friendships crack and fade, and you write sad songs about people leaving you because this was everything and now it’s nothing. But you brought it up because this has made you angry for too long and you can’t take it anymore. Years of friendship dripping down the drain already but you just pulled the stopper out and woosh, it’s gone. This one you can’t regret because when something good turns sour you need to protect your heart and get out, who cares if pictures out of frames and replace them? You can’t care because that’s over and gone and done. And you were the one who ended it.

Flight Because of course you have to write a song about your feelings on a subject that you’ve talked about to basically no one. And then sing it to a group of people that you kinda know, including most people who have had large emotional impacts on your life. And then, because this is what’s happening, you forget half of the verses and have to pull up your notes app. Seriously? Time to run, run away, up the stairwell, down the hall, get out of here because no one knows why you’re crying, and that hurts more than the panic attack you’re having. You spill your guts to the next person you see because you need someone to know the secret you’re trying to hide. You want to get away from all your your tears and walk back, pretend everything is A-ok and sit quietly for the rest of the around in excitement because this is it, this is how you leave. You don’t make a choice until you say it out loud, and no one expects that, not even you. Because you don’t leave, you stay, and is everything better or worse?

Freeze Can’t move, can’t think, can’t breathe, you’re so stupid why on earth would you tell someone you like them over text, that is the dumbest possible move to make in the history of ever. You’d barely even realized that you liked them before you sent a text message telling them just that. You alternate between staring at your lock screen and putting your phone facedown because the anticipation is killing you, and holy crap are you gonna get the dumbest person on Earth because you threw away a great friendship for the dream of something more, something you’ve never had so how do you even know you want it? And you don’t talk to them for a week and then tell them you didn’t mean it, because you want to salvage what has been so thoroughly broken. But the aftershocks linger, and you still don’t know if what you felt was real or just the longing for a person you’d never had before. Things are worse than anger because it’s indifference, no more casual texts or hi’s in the hallways, just nods of acknowledgment. You think about it more than you should because you don’t miss the prospect of romance, but you miss the friend, and they barely spare you a cursory look nowadays.