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katkatcorf-blog · 7 years ago

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my world and its colors

by Kat Corfman / Yale University, ENGL 120: Reading and Writing the Modern Essay / 09.22.17

Once upon a time, my world was cloaked in gold.

Vanderbilt University's dominant collegiate color is gold, and the reason is unmistakable. Just step onto campus from the cramped, restless streets of downtown Nashville—trees of the most vibrant yellow stretch heavenward on all sides, creating a serene corner of Earth all to itself. Holy hell, I’m thinking as I swell with pirate-like lust, I'm in a treasure chest.

My mom waves in my peripheral vision as a girl approaches with a smile, a pamphlet, and an extended hand. She asks where I want to start, and I nearly reply, “Where do I sign?”

We’re two hours north of Florence, Alabama: home. All the conveniences of it begin to assemble in my mind. Left my favorite jacket in the laundry back home? A quick trip to pick it up and lunch with Momma for good measure. Papaw turns eighty-four? I could hug him that very day. Little brother needs a babysitter for the weekend? I’m the girl for the job.

My sights have been set on the Ivy League for quite a while, but Vandy is Ivy-caliber—everyone says so. Plus—let’s be real—Vandy has one of the relatively higher acceptance rates on my list, twice that of Yale or Harvard. There are no cons as far as I can see, and God have mercy on any soul who dares attempt to convince me otherwise.

And then, all the advantages of being close to home are magnified by the presence of Joseph, the quiet, handsome son of retired Navy veterans with a smile every bit as authentic as it is weakening. Every Sunday for months, I’ve been sitting in the front pew to get the best view of him and his hodgepodge drum set playing along with the worship band. My god—that passion, that focus. Hallelujah. And now he’s mine. Amen.

No more than a month passes before I know I love him. I am either ridiculously lucky or irrevocably fucked.

It’s on the floor of my bedroom that this realization comes to me all at once. We’re starting to share pieces of ourselves in breadcrumb increments, a little here and a little there, all the while praying, Please don’t leave me for the birds. He tells me his favorite color is red—I lock up this morsel and swallow the key.

Tonight, I bestow my breadcrumb in the form of poetry. He stretches out on the beige shag carpet, laces his fingers behind his head, closes his eyes, takes a slow breath, and at last nods that he’s ready. I begin to read with all the ardor, all the frustration, all the breathlessness, that I poured into writing this thing.

The last line comes and goes, and he’s still lying there with the same balanced expression he assumed at the beginning. My breath is stuck in my chest, my heart trapped in the cage of my body. Did he fall asleep? Was it that bad? Maybe it’s a good thing if he’s asleep——

“Read it again.”

Just like that, I’m winded. His eyes are still shut and his mouth has hardly shifted at all, yet the whole of his being seems to smile. And my world becomes red.

The Big Day comes. I’m with Joseph and his family, spring-breaking on the slopes of Colorado. Finally—the time comes to access Vanderbilt’s admission decision, and Joseph’s playing keep-away with my phone. He relents, of course, but not without a comment about my brown eyes and how it’s just not fair. A means to an end, I tell him, winking.

And then, in two short sentences, one beginning with “regret” and the other ending with an empty well-wish, my golden fortress crumbles. If Vanderbilt doesn’t want me, who the hell could?

Sure, I’ve been accepted to a few places, but they’re backups, last resorts—if all else fails. Worst of all, they mean I’m just like everybody else from my town.

I guess this is all else failing.

I mourn for myself into the fabric of his hoodie.

On day two of the drive home, I can feel Joseph’s slow, silent breath on my knees as he sleeps through Kansas or Arkansas or one of those places that all look the same. The final batch of admission decisions floods my inbox. Pretty soon they all start to look the same, too, and I almost stop checking them altogether. And then the scenery shifts.

“Welcome to Yale College.”

I read the letter three times beginning to end, staring awestruck at the blue—Yale Blue—logo, before rattling Joseph awake. I’m waving my phone in his face and starting to sob. The impossibility of it nearly suffocates me. I want to shatter the window and scream across the wheatfields: Fuck you, Vandy! Go to hell, Dartmouth! Kiss my ass, Brown!

His parents celebrate along with us for a moment. “Where exactly is Yale, again?” asks his dad.

“Connecticut.”

And then we’re quiet.

Joseph holds me and kisses me on the head, but he’s quiet, too.

One rainy summer night, we’re slow dancing in my kitchen to Chicago’s “Colour My World.” It’s made up of only one verse, with eight of its forty words devoted to the last line:

Colour my world with hope of loving you.

A pair of spoons sink into a forgotten tub of ice cream. No one else is home. And for two minutes and fifty-nine seconds, there is no talk of plane tickets or twenty-two-hour train rides or which sweaters to pack. For two minutes and fifty-nine blissful seconds, there is no Yale.

It’s move-in weekend, and we are one thousand seventy-four miles from home.

Joseph is running up and down the stairs bringing boxes to my second-floor suite. There it is—there’s that focus, that drive, that devotion. And here it is again as he’s rearranging furniture. Pinning posters to my walls. Taking me out for Chinese at 1:00 a.m. Sleeping as close as possible to me in the hotel.

In these few days, we fight more times than I can remember—in my dorm, on the street, outside the hotel, in the parking deck, in the courtyard, in seclusion and in public alike. We hash out every buried thing, every uncertain thing, everything we hate about ourselves that we can’t explain. I cry more times than I can count; he cries more times than he’ll ever admit. We throw words at each other that we’d never dreamed of saying. We patch it up in one shoddy way or another, each time coming back to how none of this would matter if we didn’t love each other so goddamn much.

We fight again, and then he’s leaving. I stand on my tiptoes and try to kiss him where he sits in my parents’ SUV; he makes little effort to bend down. He’d rather stare holes in the headrest in front of him than pass a glance at me. I start to cry again but glaze over it with a weak smile so I don’t worry my parents too much when I come around to hug them. Then, when I open the backseat door to tell my brother goodbye, I see that Joseph is not sitting beside him.

He’s behind me, looking like he might wilt. He falls into me; his arms grip me against his chest. The Yale t-shirt still smells like the store.

“I am so proud of you,” he’s saying. “You’re my girl. I love you always, my Katy.”

He hands me the one printed photo we have. We’re a wreck, the two of us. Too wrecked to kiss properly, so we kiss simply, we kiss again, and the car door shuts, and they’re gone, he’s gone, and I am so alone, and I am so free.

I have spent the last three weeks making this place into my new home. I have labored over the placement of string lights and the splitting of grocery costs. I have become great friends with the grand piano in the common room. I have been challenged, I have been pushed, and I have pushed back. I am more myself here than I have ever been.

Late one night in a sophomore friend’s suite, I’m in the midst of a monologue somehow tying together my new instrumental ventures and impromptu walks with professors and a number of other things that thrill me. She interrupts to tell me, “You’re refreshing to this place. You’re the kind of person we need here,” and I’m reminded of an email in which my admissions officer said something eerily similar. I’m still not sure I understand exactly what they mean—or if I ever will—but after hearing it for the second time, I’m starting to believe in something I aspire to comprehend: the power of my own two hands and the sturdiness of my own two feet.

I keep that photo, singular in both number and sentiment, tucked behind my student ID. It is my twenty-first-century locket, strung on a nylon lanyard instead of a delicate gold chain. Biking on the streets of New Haven and smiling at Yale Political Union mixers, all churning with people I’ve never seen before and a sprinkling of those I have, it is safe in the pocket of my jeans. It has spent whole afternoons in Sterling Memorial Library bathing in the serene solitude of a window desk on the sixteenth floor.

More and more each night, I miss running my hands through his thick black strands, once shaved close to his skin and now flipping up charmingly around his earlobes. When his breathing slows, I burrow my face between his shoulder blades and let his warmth lull me to sleep. I keep myself up some nights wondering when I’ll get a sleep like that again.

I think about the cobalt jar on my desk and all the folded letters I could fit in it. I think about the navy pennant on my wall reading YALE in broad letters, and I wonder how many more times I’ll say that name than I’ll get to say his.

I believe him when he says he’ll love me always, but I can’t help but wonder if he’ll look into my eyes one day and find that they are not the same shade of brown he remembers.

I turn my eyes to the sky above the courtyard as I wonder when all these days will come, if they will come over time or descend all at once, and as I become lost in the cerulean, I am also rescued by it.

My heart is red—my eyes are still brown—but now my world is blue.

#love #relationship #heartbreak #college #yale #yale university #university

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katkatcorf-blog · 7 years ago

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i called you closure

March 21, 2018

Florence, AL

Joseph*—

This is not an easy letter for me to write. There are things I need to explain, things I’ve been afraid to say or even to acknowledge until I had the time and space—both physical and mental—to explain them to myself. I hadn’t fully begun when I last saw you in November, and there are still a lot of things I’m trying to explain to myself. In telling to you what I do know, I’m hoping I’ll find some peace and you’ll find some understanding.

To start, I know it’s too late for me now, but please, for both your sake and the sake of every girl you’re involved with in the future, please learn that “no” is always enough. Even the feeling of no. Lack of interest does not mean keep pushing or guilting until you get what you want. You got what you wanted from me more times than I care to count. These are times I never want to relive, and yet for months upon months these times have been stealing my sleep, ceaselessly tearing me to pieces. I’ve started seeing a therapist to getting help in trying to reassemble these pieces, trying to stitch back together all the parts of me I tore apart to make room for you.

There’s one instance that stands out in my mind like a glaring neon sign. We were at your house downtown with your friends last summer after you played a gig with Andrew. I was tired, so I went to bed a little early. I woke up when I heard you come in. I remember squeezing my eyes shut and praying, Please just go to sleep, please just go to sleep. I knew what would be on your mind, and I was right. I turned away, over and over until I was on my stomach in the corner of that folded out red couch my family gave you, wrapped in covers. I pulled them over my shoulder, up to my chin. I made myself as uninterested, unavailable, and unpresent as possible. Over time, I’d learned that saying no to you just made you angry and, as an inevitable result, made life harder on me. So I’d trained myself to succumb—You love him, just make him happy—and, eventually, to be silent. I thought, maybe, just maybe, this time you would see on your own that all I wanted was to feel you close to me, sleeping, safe, at rest. I wanted that to be enough. This night still burns in my mind because it was the first time I dared to ask myself, What happens if I say nothing?

You took it upon yourself to remove the covers and my clothes and anything in between our bodies—just enough. I might as well have been another layer of bedding, another piece of furniture we moved from your parents’ house. In these moments, I was not a person to you. I was not a human being with agency. I was useful, and you made use of me however you liked. I remember laying there with my face in a pillow, totally frozen, thinking, He’s not even looking at me. Am I even here?

The shock set in. You showed your apathy for my desires as though it never crossed your mind that I might have an opinion in the matter, in any matter. And that’s when I knew there was nothing I could do or say that would make you see me how I wished to be seen, by you more than anybody in my world: real, alive, human, an intelligent, emotional creature with worth beyond what you could take from my body.

I lay there, thinking, This isn’t real. This isn’t happening. Who wants to believe that the one person who’s supposed to love you the most, who you trust the most, someone with whom you’ve imagined spending the rest of your days, will be the one to hurt you so specially, so penetratingly, so irrevocably?

I didn’t sleep that night; neither did I feel awake. Even when the light started to fill the room again, my body felt dead to me. I told myself again that you loved me. I almost believed it.

But I was stripped—not only of my physical coverings, but of my dominion over my own body and, worst of all, my own mind. I know you could see the deep anxiety I developed over the course of our relationship. How could you not? Even now, I struggle with anxiety to a degree I never experienced before we were together. My friends have found me on the bathroom floor, entirely sober, with no memory of how I got there. I have found myself in dark places I don’t want to remember—I’ve had flashbacks in which I can’t separate the past from the present, in which I’ve found myself back there, in the corner of that red couch, feeling you as though I never left and wondering if and when I ever will.

Joseph, that is not me. That is not who I am. That has never been me. But that is what I let you turn me into. Whatever anger and hurt I’m still healing from, I can never hate you. But you made me hate myself.

I gave up talking back to your snide remarks about my clothes, remarks disguised as “jokes.” and then you would make me feel stupid for recognizing them for what they were. Just like that night I was silent, those remarks made me feel like a piece of meat, and one at a time they butchered me into a creature constantly hiding, full of shame, questioning everything I stood for.

I grew less and less resistant to your control over the people with whom I kept in contact. I grew complacent to your jealousy of my time, even when it meant cutting off people I cared for and sacrificing precious moments with my own family before moving a thousand miles away. Just like that night I was silent, that jealousy and control made me feel like a possession, an object to be owned.

I mostly gave up protesting when you made decisions about where we went, how long we stayed, who we were with, what we were doing, without caring how I felt about it. I started to fade into the background in conversations with you and your friends. Just like that night I was silent, your disregard for my opinions, feelings, and wants made me feel helpless.

Voiceless. You chose silence for me before I ever had the chance to choose it for myself.

I forgot how to stand up for myself. I forgot what it felt like to feel empowered. I forgot what it felt like to be free—and isn’t love supposed to be the freest feeling? I forgot what it felt like to feel love the way it’s meant to be felt. I forgot who I was when I began seeing myself as a mere appendage to you.

The closer I got to moving away, moving towards a future I’d craft for myself, the more out of control you made me feel. And, god, that week in Connecticut. Again, you took something that was mine and mine alone, something I earned long before you came into the picture, something that I knew would fulfill me intellectually and beyond. You took it and twisted it into something ugly and grotesque that you could use—yet again—to get what you wanted from me, to make me feel whatever you wanted me to feel.

I experienced two of the lowest moments of my life that week. The first was on the corner of Wall and Temple, streets I now traverse almost daily and know as though I paved them myself, a place I cannot pass without seeing a ghost myself sitting there on that concrete wall. Broken and continuing to break. Telling you what a piece of shit I was, what a spot on the pavement, what a unfixable wreck, when the problem was never my trustworthiness but your perpetual, obsessive search for a reason not to trust me, even after you were the one who invaded my personal belongings and internal thoughts without permission. Promising you I would be better for you, I would fix myself for you, when all along my brokenness was the product of your grip. Begging your forgiveness without fully knowing what for, because all I knew was that relief from the pain of being at the center of your discontent was worth whatever it took to correct. Worth more even than my dignity.

Once you were satisfied with my penance, as with so many times before, you forgave me and we walked on. And as with so many times before, I lost a little bit more of myself.

The second of my lowest moments was the last night and morning in the hotel. I gave in that night even though I’d made a promise to myself a long, long time before that I would always be safe with sex. I had—and still have—too damn much on the line. A promise I’d broken twice before. (The aftermath of the first of those times remains another of my lowest moments—the inquellable fear, and worse, your utter annoyance with me and lack of reserve in expressing it. I felt like a flea.) Then, that last morning, all I wanted was simply to be with you. I didn’t need sex or even want it. Your presence alone was pleasure enough. But, reinforcing what I’d already begun to accept, I realized that my presence alone was not enough for you, and neither was my “no.” Not only did you have me turning my no into a yes just to keep you happy, you had me virtually on my knees again, just the way you liked me, begging and subordinate. And, again, I left myself there on that mattress while we scrambled to put on our clothes beneath the sheets when my parents returned.

They know none of this. They know only what they saw: their daughter—whom they raised to be independent, strong, and self-assured—wracked with newly developed anxiety and stumbling over herself to please a boy she’d fallen so madly, desperately, helplessly, hopelessly in love with. And they know what they see now: their daughter, reconnecting with herself.

Another thing, a relatively small thing, in light of what you’ve already read: just because I don’t live here anymore doesn’t mean I’m deaf, dumb, or blind. It’s been brought to my attention recently that there’s a rumor circulating that I cheated on you and that you broke up with me. I admit I was furious when this first got around to me. But now, I’m just sorry. It’s a sorry thing to feel the need to spread lies and sully whatever reputation I might have here, whether it was you or someone else who started the rumor. I have a hard time believing it’s the only such rumor floating around now, but I have an even harder time believing gossip is the sort of thing that will be best for you (or anybody) in the long run. Ultimately, though, it doesn’t affect me or those who truly care for me. Grow up, Joseph. You and I know how things went down, and there’s no altering that, no matter how many people believe differently.

You and I also both know it’s best we’re no longer involved in each other’s lives. For once, I’m putting my well-being before any obligation, existing or imagined, to relationships that have proven themselves unhealthy, toxic, manipulative, or abusive. I’ve learned—in a way only firsthand, prolonged experience can provide—that the four often go hand in filthy hand.

What you took from my body that night I was silent and every other night I said no and you made sure I felt the consequences, every other night I said no and you coerced me otherwise, every other night I said yes knowing it was the only way to avoid the discontent of the person I loved most, every other night I let you wear away another layer of my resolve—what you took from my body you also took from my mind. I am still fighting to restore it. I am steeling myself to the reality that I may be fighting for a long time to come.

Ask yourself, Joseph:

How can silence be mistaken for anything but silence?

Katy

*All names but my own have been changed.

#open letter #trigger warning #sexual assault #abuse #sexual abuse #emotional abuse #relationship

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katkatcorf-blog · 8 years ago

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smoke but no fire

by Kat Corfman / feature article published in The Yale Herald / 09.22.17

Settling into a corner table at Jojo’s, I open my laptop and start typing. My closest friend at Yale sits across from me with her iced latte and asks what homework I’m doing. This, I’ve noticed, is how we bond at Yale: not just by getting coffee, but by sharing our academic sufferings.

I tell her that, actually, I’m researching Tobacco-Free Yale. She laughs — she’s a smoker, herself — and waits to find out what the hell that is and if I’m going to try and convince her to give up the habit.

“Let’s clear the air” is no longer just an opening for an uncomfortable confession. Now, thanks to the Yale administration, it’s a slogan for a health campaign that President Peter Salovey calls “a journey to become a tobacco-free campus.”

In the Information Age, it’s nearly impossible to be oblivious to the dangers of tobacco: its direct link to various cancers is common knowledge, and nicotine’s addictive quality makes quitting a challenge. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the habit claims the lives of nearly 500,000 Americans each year, so it’s no surprise that Yale aims to eradicate the practice on its campus.

By introducing the Tobacco-Free Yale initiative as a campaign, rather than simply banning smoking, it’s clear that Yale was hoping to engage its student body in the process. But the administration’s sudden desire to get involved was woefully off-target.

In the fall of 2015, Yale’s campus was steeped in media attention over two controversies, both of which demanded direct and immediate response from the administration. What was then Calhoun College, named for the vehement 19th-century white supremacist, was the focus of numerous protests as students pushed for its renaming. Then, in October of that year, one Yale professor sent out an email encouraging students to dress up as they pleased for Halloween, regardless of potential cultural or racial offensiveness. This provoked additional widespread backlash and further magnified tensions on campus.

In the midst of all this commotion, as students grew increasingly frustrated over the administration’s lack of (appropriate) action, Tobacco-Free Yale was launched. Whether it was intended to be a demonstration of the administration’s interest in campus affairs or a simple attempt to divert attention from two considerably more precarious issues, the campaign instantly fell flat.

In November 2015, the month of the campaign’s launch, Yale held a kickoff event at the Schwarzman Center offering refreshments and free water bottles. Even if you missed the kickoff event, you may have seen the laminated posters around campus oh-so-cleverly imploring us to “clear the air.” But of all the students I spoke to, only about half of them even knew what the campaign was.

On the Tobacco-Free Yale website, there’s a link to the campaign’s Facebook page. Upon opening the page, the viewer is greeted by the header photo, which is a collage of “No Smoking” signs boldly declaring that “YALE UNIVERSITY IS TOBACCO FREE.” The page has a whopping total of 306 likes — less than two percent of Yale’s combined student and faculty population.

This publicity deficit is stark when we consider the wealth of resources at Tobacco-Free Yale’s disposal. The Yale Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science offered grants ranging from $25,000 to $75,000 for “projects that study tobacco additives and modified risk tobacco products,” according to the first article posted on the Tobacco-Free Yale website in October 2015.

But given the Tobacco-Free Yale campaign’s failure to gain traction among the student body, one may speculate whether Yale’s tobacco scene is prevalent enough to warrant this degree of expenditure or if these funds could have been allocated to more relevant, student-advocated projects. It’s not hard to conjure up a list of possibilities for how this kind of money could be spent — subsidizing textbooks or printing services, for example.

Tobacco-Free Yale can pour university resources into kickoff events and free food, but at the end of the day, how is this mass tobacco sweep being enforced? In a YDN article following the launch event, Yale’s Deputy Vice President for Human Resources and Administration, Janet Lindner, is quoted as having called the campaign an “outreach,” meaning that it will not involve “smoking police.” I approached a couple of Yale Security officers with the hope of getting a sense of how much enforcement there is, if any, when it comes to reducing tobacco use on campus. When I asked if they would ever ask a student or faculty member to put out their cigarette or to move elsewhere, one of them replied, “Would you?” I told him the truth: no, I wouldn’t. He nodded and shrugged. “It’s a hard thing to do.”

In order to get on the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation’s list of smoke- and tobacco-free colleges and universities, either smoking or tobacco must be 100 percent prohibited by the school. This would mean no designated smoking areas, no special exemptions or permissions, and actual enforcement of those rules. But, according to one Yale junior who asked to remain anonymous, it’s easy to smoke anywhere on Yale’s campus (except inside university buildings, as specified by state law).

President Salovey hopes that Yale will “become a model for other universities to emulate,” as he asserts in the Tobacco-Free Yale mission statement. If the university does become totally tobacco-free, it will be the first Ivy League school to do so, although Harvard launched its own efforts to become tobacco-free in 2014. One could argue that there is nothing wrong with wanting to be first, but perhaps this aim fuels further doubt as to the campaign’s motives.

There remains a much simpler explanation for the campaign’s apparent stagnancy. Maybe the fire isn’t catching because there isn’t enough kindling — perhaps tobacco use just isn’t a major issue at Yale.

The campaign’s website provides a plethora of statistics detailing the negative health effects of smoking, the benefits of quitting smoking, and a few statistical points about the smoking scene in colleges. But what does this tell us about our school?

Despite the Tobacco-Free Yale campaign’s enthusiasm for statistics, there has been no data collected on tobacco use at Yale specifically. The state of Connecticut, however, has one of the lowest smoking rates in the United States (13.5 percent in 2016), and its restaurants and bars are by law 100 percent smoke-free. Connecticut is also one of only two states that has not allocated any amount of state funds for the prevention of tobacco use.

Over the summer, incoming first-years are required to complete an online course entitled, “Work Hard, Play Smart: Making Mindful Choices about Alcohol and Other Drugs.” Because nicotine (the primary additive in tobacco) is a drug, tobacco is often lumped in with these categories. And yet, the hour-long interactive session, which is produced by Yale, makes no mention of it. Although the Tobacco-Free Yale campaign outwardly claims student wellness as its top concern, the initiative is not yet influential enough to merit inclusion in this mandatory course on substance use.

Since its inception, Tobacco-Free Yale appears to have had almost no effect on tobacco consumption. Yale views campus tobacco use as a problem extensive enough to have warranted multi-thousand-dollar grants towards its initial research, yet the campaign remains virtually invisible. While any reduction in smoking would undoubtedly be a positive development, Tobacco-Free Yale’s stagnation — especially in light of the campaign’s questionable origins amid campus-wide upheaval — may suggest a loss of interest on the part of Yale’s administration.

#yale #yale university #the yale herald #publication #news #feature #article #journalism #long-form journalism #tobacco #tobacco-free yale #tobacco-free #campaign #student #student organization

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