By Mandy Stussman ’14

I’m writing this on a bus coming home from an incredible day in New York City, and the headlights of cars are dashing past like comets and I’m watching the miles roll steadily by, unraveling in the goodness of travel and movement and the night sky is heavy and black and starless. I feel strangely intimate, placated by the deep sincerity that is always present in the late hours of night.

I was told I could write about anything I wanted to in this column, so here is my take on the world.

You know how as a child everything has that amazing magical quality, a wonderment at the newness and vastness of the world? Like jumping through waves at the beach with my sister and the changing seasons and soccer practices and fireworks and the ice-cream man and swimming in the lake and pretending my staircase was a mountain and we were rock climbers or wolves or anything we wanted because we were young and happy and free.

It’s like the way fire burns through wood, the way I discovered pain and fear; the loss of innocence like blood on white cloth.

I became preoccupied and anxious and disturbingly aware. The man on the side of the road covered in blankets and caked in dirt, mud in his grey beard, begging for the change from your dinner out or the father grabbing his son by the wrists with fury in his eyes and the son’s face full of fear, cracking in two or the veteran with no legs or family or the missing person ads or broken bones or disease hunger war death How do I help them? Scattered across the world like broken bits of glass, all chaos How can I save them?

I was born into an upper-middle class American family, and have lived in the same house in the heart of the suburbs for fifteen years. I have gone to the local public schools with virtually the same people all my life. Same post office and restaurants and town center. I’ve watched housing developments grow like foliage. This life is all I know. It’s my entire scope of vision, and I feel like I’m looking through a funnel. I need to break free.

I’m thankful for the life I’ve had, protected from many of life’s cruelties, but I’m ready to leave it behind. I’m ready for the rest of my life. I’m ready for independence and change. I’m ready for reality. Eventually, I’ll figure out what to do, why I’m here, but not until I’ve seen as much as I can; until I’ve taken the longest way possible to get there.

Whelp, I’m off to go save the world. And when that fails at least I’ll have a long list of stories to tell.