On the night of the hurricane, I sat in a room with people whose laughs echoed off the walls in ways I didn’t fully understand. They made jokes I didn’t feel fully attuned to; they felt bright and driven against the white backdrop of the room, shoulders leaned against each other, one boy’s voice rising up, effortless. Two were slouched against the pillow-couched bed, eyes emptied but soft, and the entire room fell away, tied together by words that slipped and raced. The lightning-blue air was muscular, clear and beautiful, and I could feel — tangibly, the sweat, the lack of light, the sound of rain striking the pavement outside, the stillness of the room — that I was witnessing the start of something I was not a part of. I was invisible — I was so convinced I was — even though I was as tactile as each other person. We are so focused on looking beyond ourselves that we forget our own finitude. People can see us far more than we can consciously imagine, and the thoughts we struggle so hard to express still flash across our faces like fireflies, evident to the world.

At the edge of the room, I sat on the last remaining seat with a book I’d brought from home papery under my fingers. Even when the lights flicked off, my pulse beat against the membrane of my neck, as if attempting to break free. The hallway fire detectors shone bars of lollipop-red onto the faces as I passed into the corridor, a film-reel alive with breath. I froze. My mind emptied out, struggling in vain to churn out the right answer, the funniest quip, the most tactful response, as the cinema dwindled to a turning point in these people’s lives, the blue from the window so meaningful and rich that it felt like nothing at all. 

I was invisible. I could feel it — the criss-crossing conversation like a crossfire above me. When I become paralyzed, I think my body begins to show it. I hunch into myself; my face drops into a blank curtain. I tell myself they can’t see me, that I’m obscured in the darkness, that they’re focused on themselves and the bright lick of electricity sweeping down their spines with the thrill of finding their two-way mirrors. Still, when I go back to my room, I breathe slowly and tell myself: You were invisible. So, don’t worry.  

In the first two weeks of Yale, we are simply immersed in people. We are bombarded with names. We sit at dining hall tables trading self-introductions, attempting to ink ourselves into memory. We want to be remembered so badly. Sarah, I remember telling people. English. California. Somehow, all three of those parameters, separately, are so redundant at Yale. In return, I’m given little labels for others. Cleo. I don’t really know, outside the Morse dining hall. Kenny. Chris. Madeline. I would stare at their faces and try so hard to read them –– attempting to unwrap the carefully schooled expressions I saw. Names flooded around me. I was sure they would forget me; I was sure I would slip past their sight like a quiet, chilled shadow beneath a branch, as they were coaxed into their own, brighter orbits. 

I surprise myself by how much I remember about people. When I pass by them, I always feel a little bit in love with them, at how much I want to know them. The girl with tattoos of butterflies; I observe the way the thin lines of ink move across her skin as she leaves our building, scarf wrapped around her neck. The boy with one of the brightest, smoothest voices I’ve ever heard, taking the stairs two at a time, his hair jutting out beneath a beanie. Their names float in my mind, and the mellifluous richness of their voices the first time I heard them. The way they move with the air is like a statue in motion, stilled hair crowning unbruised, fresh faces. Everything about them is a mark of history. Watch the lean silhouettes of people, blushing from the cold, as they skid out onto snow-filled black stone at night. Yet I rarely approach them; the distance feels too far now.

My later friends and I had our nights, too — nights I never recognized as moments at the time. They call it ‘the eye of the hurricane’ for a reason. But one of the people from that night ended up in my room on Halloweekend with another friend. The lights were too bright and our vision was unfocused and brilliant. He said, “We’ve met before. The night of the hurricane.” I can’t remember what else he said, or what I said, but I remember I was stunned. I was stunned that I existed in the memory of others, even when I was convinced I didn’t.

We’re so focused on our own field of vision that we forget how tactile we are. That if we were to look at the scene from a camera’s angle, that we, too, would be living statues, breath pulsing, faces alive with inexplicable, artistic impulses, like complex statues animated by hidden desire. That we, too, have an inner life that others have yet to explore, that our expressions are ones that behold mystery, fascination and curiosity for others, that our eyes are mirrors to theirs.

Sarah Feng is a first-year in Trumbull College. Contact her at sarah.feng@yale.edu.