Eating Alone

Photo credit Willis Lam, via Wikimedia Commons

I’ve never been naked in public, but I assume it feels pretty similar to my fourth trip to Traditions at Kennedy. For the first three, I’d managed to tag along with my roommate, my high school friends, and my roommate’s high school friends, but not this time. This time, I ate alone. 

When had I last eaten alone? My family always ate together, my brother and I never skipped our early-morning cereal, and in the school cafeteria I’d always had my friends. I last sat alone in the 5th grade in the wake of a family move that forced me to switch schools. After a few weeks the new-kid mystique wore off, and I ended up alone in the middle of one of the long folding tables. I slowly ate my turkey and cheese sandwich, and stared at it as if it was the most interesting item in the world. A kid on my bus had seen me from across the cafeteria, and as we were riding home he graciously informed me that I “looked like a f**king loser”. He’d just learned a lot of cuss words, and in his excitement to put them to use, he often used them incorrectly. But he nailed that one. F**king loser. 

As I sat in Kennedy and ate my salad, the walls of my subconscious were painted with those words. You know who eats lunch alone? F**king losers. These words would not be power washed away. The walls would have to be repainted, brick by brick.

Humanity 

During my freshman year in 2022, Artificial Intelligence had just started to show some of its abilities. There were AI image generators, but not like the ones we have now. They could use the right colors, and maybe the right shapes, but there was no mistaking them for reality. You could look at an AI generated human and not see any features of humanity. One day after returning from dinner, I used one of these bots to make this image. 

I didn’t feel real, I didn’t feel human, and AI nailed it. Before college, school was 7 hours of mechanical information memorization, and for 30 minutes in the middle you were permitted to be human. You could trade your granola bar, make fun of your friends, and spill fruit cup juices on your shirt. Now it was the opposite. I had every freedom allotted to me throughout the day, but every so often I had to march into a dining hall, find a single chair, and consume a scurger (Scott burger) for nourishment. I wasn’t doing well. I needed a friend, but I had no friends. Who do you turn to when there’s no one to turn to?

God 

A few weeks later, someone approached me while I was eating. Our talk went something like this:

Guy: Where’d you get your shoes, bro? 

Me: Online. 

Guy: Oh. I thought you thrifted them, man. They’re, like, super dirty. 

Me: …Yeah. 

[10 seconds of silence.] 

Guy: So, how’re you doing? 

Me: Pretty good. 

Guy: You do anything here on campus, man? 

Me: I do some social media stuff with the student radio. 

(note: I had made a single video with AROUSE at this point and knew no one in the club) 

Guy: Oh, that’s cool. I do some social media stuff with my church. How do you feel about Jesus? 

Me: Uh… I think he did some cool shit. 

Guy: Stuff.

Me: Huh? 

Guy: He did some cool stuff. 

Me: Oh. Yeah. 

[15 seconds of silence.]

Guy: Well, me and some friends are in a Bible study group. Would you be interested in learning more about Jesus? 

Me: I’ll probably pass. 

Guy: You sure? 

Me: Yeah. 

Guy: Well… can I give you a hug? 

Me: …Sure, man. 

As we embraced, he leaned over and whispered “Jesus loves you” into my ear. 

This became a regular occurrence. Someone would approach me while I was eating alone, ask me how I was doing, and then invite me to join their Bible study club. At first I thought “Wow, I must just look really Christian”, but then I realized that wasn’t it. I didn’t look Christian, I looked pathetic. They targeted me because I looked vulnerable. I looked like I needed something to believe in. If I was with even one other person, I saw the same proselytizers avoid me and go to solo diners instead. Luke 14:13-23 reads “But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind”. However, I don’t think the invite Christ had in mind was “Hey, you look lame. I could be your friend maybe… if you come to my Bible study.”

Work 

One day I had a lot of stuff to do. I went to Oxley’s by the numbers and used my few dining dollars to buy a breakfast sandwich composed of bacon, egg, cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato, pretzel buns, and chipotle mayo. Then I sat down, opened my laptop, and began to work on Calc II while eating my meal. For the next 2 hours, all of my thoughts fell into one of the two following categories: 

1. This sandwich rules. 

2. How the f**k do I do integrals? 

I felt good after this. Abnormally good. Maybe I felt accomplished? Or maybe the sandwich was really that good? It took me a little to realize that, while those may have helped, it was mostly the fact that the aforementioned list of thoughts did not include “I am alone”, “I am not human”, or “I have no friends”. It seems that when I avoided throwing myself a pity party and convincing myself life was terrible, life was more than terrible. 

Thinking 

Avoiding negative thoughts is easy enough, but actually building a positive outlook can be challenging. Without the escape offered by Calc II or Introduction to Java, it was a struggle to stop reflecting on my loneliness. One night in December, I brought my Mirror Lake tenders to the terrace that overlooks Mirror Lake. I sat there and started to eat, and I stared at the water. I looked at the ripples, and the streetlights reflecting, and started to go right back inside my head. But then something caught my eye. They recently had the annual “Light Up the Lake” event, and people had grabbed and rearranged chairs all about the area to spectate. I had a thought. What if I analyzed all their new positions? I started taking pictures.

It was fun, it was occupying, and it wasn’t self-deprecating. I was learning to enjoy talking to myself. I learned that I’m pretty funny, or at the least I just have the same sense of humor as myself. Either way, big win. 

Eating Not Alone 

Soon, I found more things to talk to myself about. I ruminated on the things I watched, the ideas I had, the people I talked to. I became so absorbed in my thoughts that when not eating I would sometimes pace circles around the Oval, happy just to think by myself. 

The next year, a member of the social media team at AROUSE had the idea of filming a dining hall music review at Scott. They loaded up their plates with true meals, while I selected 5 pieces of pineapple and a singular grilled cheese. By the time they finished their food, I’d eaten half of my sandwich and three pieces of pineapple. I couldn’t do it anymore. Being with people and eating were two different things to me now. It was like patting my head and rubbing my stomach at the same time. 

Eating was never really the struggle. Even when I was alone, I was perfectly capable of grabbing food, putting in my mouth, chewing, and swallowing. Being alone with someone can be rough, especially when you don’t like that person. I could run from myself all I wanted, but I had to stop running to eat. And you have to eat.