nowhere is safe.

The worst part about living in the dorms was that there was no place to cry. Your bedroom, which at home had been your sanctuary, was now shared with someone else. You couldn't have a good cry without inviting questions that you would then have to either answer with a (probably) lengthy explanation or a sniffled, "I don't want to talk about it." Then, whether you answered or not, your barriers are down and there you are in all your vulnerable red-cheeked glory. Even if, by chance, you have a sympathetic roommate who does not think you are a weirdo, no one likes to have someone cry in front of them, because it makes things awkward.

You can't go into the bathroom, because that too is shared. Most students can't even go have a sob in their cars, because they had to park them far, far away, and by the time you get there, you've sobbed in front of half the students on campus. No place is your own, and if you, by chance, happen to find somewhere that for a while at least is your own, you can never be sure that someone won't come along and make it their own, too. I actually can't decide if that's worse or better to have a stranger see you cry than someone you know and will have to face again.

Some cry a lot and others not so much, and so perhaps they've not ever thought of this disadvantage to communal living. Maybe they've only noticed that there's no safe place to have sex, but no one is sympathetic towards that. Complain to someone about that, and they'll tell that, son, in their day, they had to have sex in the backseat of a Corvair during a snowstorm then walk home barefoot, you kids these days. Complain about having no good place for a sobfest, then someone will ask whatever reason you have for one, and you're back where you started. Even now, you are all judging me, wondering just what was going on during my first year of college that I've come back four years later to gripe at length that I didn't have a haven for my tears.

I don't want to talk about it.