Class starts in three minutes. Everyone’s absorbed in their own conversations, so they don’t notice how loud the room gets when they’re all talking over each other. Or maybe they do notice, and the easiest fix is just to talk louder. My buddy to my left is skipping class—starting his spring break a couple days early—so I listen a little closer out one ear, toward the group of girls talking in the corner of our seminar-room square of tables. 

One’s always talking about her anxiety. I get it, now more than usual with my own world of midterms and procrastinated projects coming back to bite me before break, but I can’t help thinking she’s talking about it on purpose. That she likes the attention when the other girls tell her to stop worrying. She looks outside and says the weather’s too raw.

Nobody knows what that means, and they laugh at the innuendo of it. How can the weather be raw?

I know exactly what she’s talking about, though. And she’s right—the sky is a dank overcast, white with gray mist that refuses to rain beyond a sprinkle. When I was a kid, it felt like my mom always chose these days to drag me on errands. I’d stare up at the sky from the passenger seat, her 2010’s alt-pop filling the otherwise silent car. Years later my wires are still crossed; I can’t listen to that music without feeling the same sinking discomfort I feel looking at the sky on a day like today. Raw. 

At the same time, in my other ear, I’m blasting Title Fight. I’ve been on a grunge kick recently, trying to drown out my own stress—all that work I put off, a couple phone calls I regret. Jamie Rhoden roars into my ear: FEEL THE GROW-ING PAIN. Something in his tone feels distinctly raw to me too. I look out the floor-to-ceiling windows behind me: I can see the damp spots staining the concrete blocks on the building across the plaza. A thin wire of disgust runs through me, like when I was a kid. I guess I’m feeling a little raw too.

[originally written 3/26]