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The silence was too loud. Rachita woke up with a start in the middle of the night and she wanted to scream at her roommate for leaving mid-semester. She wasn’t used to sleeping by herself and she hated that weird tension that she felt in her stomach whenever the hostel was too quiet. Most of the people in here thought that she was lucky that she got a room to herself and now she can do all the things that people with roommates cannot. (Like call friends over and all, of course) But Rachita wasn’t one of those. She wanted to have a partner because being alone gives her anxiety. She used to find solace in just the mere presence of another human being in the room. They had their own share of fights and arguments but never even once she imagined that her roommate would have to leave college because her partner ruined her.
She was a closeted gay woman and she was dating some girl from her Philosophy class. The college was a homophobic one and then you know how these things in the hostel get, right? The other girls were “scared” of her. They said, “It’s like living with a boy in the hostel because they weren’t safe.” A load of shit. Being gay doesn’t mean that they’ll find every one of the same sex attractive and even if they do, they won’t throw themselves on you. But you can’t reason with a wall. Can you? It’s not that Rachita didn’t try, she tried really hard and then she gave up. She accepted that you can’t expect a mere ruling to change deep-rooted mindsets, even if they are archaic and rotten.
The loud honk of a passing train brought her back to the reality. She checked the time on her phone, gave a long look to her roommate’s now empty bed; the torn paint from her Rihanna poster still there on the wall, and she lets out a sigh.
She keeps the phone on her side, tucks a cushion between her legs and tries to fall asleep by digging her head in a pillow.