What Drives Me to Write About Languages

Channeling life pain into positivity

Image generated by Microsoft Designer AI with prompts by the author.

It was Thanksgiving morning in my college dorm in Boston circa 2009. Most of my suitemates had left Wednesday afternoon, and it was just me in a room that was always too hot for how cold it was outside. I opened the window to get a breath of fresh air and stared at the empty Evans Way Park.

I looked down at the depressing brown carpet and basked in the silence of a dorm that was once full of 7+ college kids.

“Was this it?” I thought.

I felt deeply unloved for the first time in my adult life. My bus back home to Vermont wouldn’t depart until later in the evening from South Station.

Then I saw my roommate Kenny’s beaming smile in the door threshold. After hearing him rant and crack a few jokes, I felt like a real human again.

Not this outsider who wasn’t hugged when I needed it the most.

Not this “stranger in the room” feeling that’s persisted since childhood.

Entrails of this empty feeling persist to this day. When I step outside the front door, even the grass growing through the cracks in the sidewalk reminds me that love is not a given in this world.

You must scour the Earth for love until it…