Sehnsucht

The Only Energy

The next morning you get dressed in your usual garb. You wore a lot of dark tones, earthy tones, deep reds, blues and purples. You have school today. You study human psychology. You're in your second year of that and it's going very well.

You have absolutely no friends from your class and you like it that way. You had preferred the solo lifestyle since middle school. All of your elementary school friends had gone off to different middle schools. Thus began the attachment to the solo ideal. In that time spent alone, you found music that hit you at your core.

Einstürzende Neubauten, one might ask? Surprisingly, no. Bands like Pink Floyd, Jesus and Mary Chain, The Cure, Joy Division and New Order, Ultravox, and artists like Gary Numan and David Bowie were just a few of the great mix of musicians you discovered in the period of time between about the start of middle school and end of high school.

You started listening to Einstürzende Neubauten in your first year of college. Now that you'd been a fan for a little over a year, you had your favorite albums and just a few that you'd not heard yet. In those favorites was 2X4, a collection of early live performances.

You have your headphones on and are in that musical world you love so much. You know your bus route by heart so you have no problems keeping your headphones on the whole way. Once you get to school, you're early as usual, so you sit alone in the classroom listening to Floyd's "Lucifer Sam" and the next few songs from The Piper.

You see the door open and your professor comes in. "Oh, hello [y.n.], early as usual." You had only heard part of what he said due to your music being at a pretty high volume. You shrug your shoulders and sit back in your seat. The professor sits down at his desk, preparing the lecture for the day. 

More students began to fill in the seats of the classroom. You could hear them muttering mocking words about you and how you were constantly with your music. "S/he couldn't get a date if it slapped her/him in the face." Another girl said, "S/he couldn't hear it either." They chuckled. The professor was far enough away from the group of students that he couldn't hear them. If he had, he surely wouldn't have let it slide. He was quite strict.

The students sit down behind you and begin tossing small pieces of paper crumpled into little balls, little hateful notes. You read some of them - one says, "You should drop out, you suck." Another of them says, "Why are you even here? Nobody likes you." You ignore them. Your heart has become cold and indifferent. You look back at them with a glare of such intensity that they flinch and sort of retreat.

You turn back to the front and smirk. You take your headphones off and stand up, tossing the little paper waste in the trash bin. You'd won that little fight. You didn't care about anyone but yourself, and that helped you in situations like those.

The professor stood at the board and began the lecture.