I perused the aisles at Reckless Records on a spring Saturday my Freshman year. My boyfriend and his roommates had just gotten a record player to share. Between the four of us, though, our collective collection was lean. My contributions were Steve Martin’s Wild and Crazy Guy and The Soundtrack to The Graduate, each had never been listened to and sat framed on my wall in my single dorm room in CRC’s three blue.

Under the Pop/Rock section sat a used version of Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends on sale for $3.99. I loved the Simon and Garfunkel songs that played on the radio as a child and I blasted Graceland almost daily the previous summer in my beat up Dodge Neon. But I had never heard the duo’s most famous album all the way through. So though I was tired of listening to Mrs. Robinson over and over, I decided for $4 it might be a good addition to the collection.

We walked the mile and a half back to my boyfriend’s apartment that was situated kitty corner to Wrigley Field. Tired, we put on our records and collapsed on the couch. I closed my eyes and listened to the booms of “Save the Life of my Child,” enjoying the anthemic melody for the first time. But then it faded out and in its place was this swooning, surreal storytelling of a lullaby.

And then in its climax, Paul Simon sang:

“Kathy, I’m lost,” I said, though I know she was sleeping. “I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.”

Tears sprung to my eyes. I, too, was lost. I was empty and aching. And the thing that really struck me was that I didn’t know why, either.

But I know that it started my first week at Northwestern. It started with an incident with my peer advisory group at the John Evan’s alumni house for an event that each of my 2,000 peers would go to at their allotted times. There were leftover NU Day at Wrigley shirts and Kellogg water bottles, assorted Vitamin Waters and a place to get your picture taken with the Homecoming nominees and Willie the Wildcat himself. It was all free and it was all required. I was tired of being lumped together with 15 other strangers and forced to change my blood type to Purple. But I was trying to make the best of it, so I sat down with some of the girls in my group. I can’t remember what I said but a Texan chose to point out my accent to me for the first time. “I don’t have an accent,” I said to her. “You have an accent! We’re in Chicago and that means my accent is the norm.” We all laughed – but my laughter was simply a coping mechanism. “Oh. So I don’t fit in here, either,” I thought.

Coming from the Northwest Suburbs, I wasn’t expecting Northwestern – the university literally a 45 minute straight-shot down Noyes Street (the street that ended up in my backyard in Arlington Heights) – to be a whole different world. I had been there many times before, during the summers when my friends and I would jump into the white Jeep Wrangler and head to south beach. Northwestern seemed to be inhabited with students who knew things I didn’t. They knew it was cool (and totally not scary) to make friends before you got to campus and that those pre-Wildcat Welcome programs weren’t nerd camps but actually were the closest things we got to secret societies at this school. Everyone had North Face backpacks and Nike Tempo shorts and iPhones. I had my long sleeve Wilco shirt with the yellow state of Illinois on it and Target sandals. I stuck out like a sore thumb in my own home.

Uncanny is the feeling when the familiar and the unfamiliar meet. You recognize or know what should be, but somehow it’s all a little off. And in my first three years at Northwestern I was constantly trying to navigate what I thought I knew and what I thought I should know, constantly surrounded by other people who were doing the same. And it seems that the more I tried to draw up a map for myself, I ended up losing myself more. I wasn’t getting drunk enough on Dillo Day, I wasn’t as active in my extracurriculars as I thought I should be, I wasn’t girly (or edgy) enough to join a sorority and I didn’t have “that humor” needed to make an improv team. I was low-income so I should have been studying, as my Sociology classes were preaching, instead of taking the train to go to my boyfriend. Every moment doing something I wanted to or doing nothing felt like it was directly affecting my future. I could go on and on about the social cues I learned that taught me I wasn’t enough, that I wasn’t really the Northwestern type. I also can’t tell you how many times Freshman and Sophomore year that I opened “transfer information” tabs on my computer. But I felt pigeonholed into staying due to Northwestern’s massive financial endowment and my massive financial need. I also rationed that any other school with a massive endowment would have a similarly privileged and irritating student body. So I stayed. But it wore on me. It was a pain to get to class, to go out, to do anything. I thought if I fought the current slowly pushing me away that I would be magically tougher, even if I knew that it would eventually wash me away completely.

So junior year I decided I couldn’t take it anymore. I was on the brink of losing myself completely. I took two quarters off for medical leave. I found that it wasn’t Northwestern that was causing me to lose everything. Depression made me empty and achy. So those 24 weeks were devoted to make a slow recovery. I did lose some things and people along the way: my boyfriend and I couldn’t live together any longer; his best friend passed away that June; I sacrificed my Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays to intensive group therapy. But I slowly learned what pain was cruel and unfair and necessary, and what pain I could stop. The world around me became more familiar and I felt like I fit in more. I would go to the grocery store and see neighbors and fellow Evanstonians. I would say hello to them and babysit their children. I didn’t force myself to go to the fundragers or even out on Fridays. I made myself go to bed at midnight.

I still listen to “America,” frequently though now on Spotify, (since my best friend’s boyfriend broke my record player). “Kathy, I’m lost” still affects me, but doesn’t make me cry. It now reminds me of how far I have come, how much I have overcome. I have lost a lot during my time at Northwestern, and my college years will be primarily defined by loss. The deaths of my friends and family to cancer, chemical reactions and suicide. Lost umbrellas, shirts, travel mugs, keys, Wildcards and CTA passes along the way, too. The sleep I didn’t get due to ritalin and coffee and stress. The hair in the shower and in my hairbrushes. The B+’s due to lost points in class and tens of dollars of work study time lost due to missed alarm clocks. I lost opportunities to make more friends and try new things. But I have learned to let those things go. I don’t bleed purple, like we were taught to at Wildcat Welcome. I still do have some purple bruises, however, but I know they will heal.