Don’t get me wrong, people are nice. Among introverts, I tend to be one of the more social ones. If I go more than a day without being around people, my enjoyment-of-existence level drops drastically, and if, heaven forbid, a pandemic hits, I’m toast. Like I was when I was sixteen, writing lonely songs and lying around in my bedroom doing math to keep myself sane. Rough times.
Yet, I’m not sure if it’s to do with my age or the fact that I’m studying in a different culture currently, but this year, my social energy has begun to develop more defined limits. Once I reach a certain point, like an old phone that’s given up on low-power warnings and shuts down at 45%, my social battery just blinks off and I’m suddenly exhausted. Not necessarily sleepy, I’ve noticed, just… done. Kaput.
Just recently, after finishing a phone call that ran long—like four hours long—my battery (not my phone battery, to be clear) had dipped really low. At the same time as I ended the call, some people from my school were also contacting me about helping lead two worship sessions, my reminders app was nagging me about booking my flight back to America, this essay’s deadline was coming up, and I had yet to write my monthly post for my travel blog. That to say, my battery swiftly nosedived into the negatives and I hadn’t even left my dorm room yet. And it was raining.
Nevertheless, it was dinner time and at this school, there’s a window of roughly fifteen minutes to get food before all the extras get claimed or packed away and you’ve missed the meal. So I grabbed my to-go containers and trekked to the dining hall to make sure I didn’t make my energy situation worse by fasting. Wanting nothing more than a moment completely devoid of human company, I didn’t stick around the dining hall to chat and took the less populated path back to the dormitory with my dinner containers and my umbrella in tow.
Except, when I reached the road behind the dining hall, one direction leading to the dorm and the other looping around the back of campus, an idea suddenly occurred. Might this not be a good time for a walk? With all my to-dos swimming around in my head like dirty dishes in a sink, I paused to assess the road around the back of the academic buildings—always empty and also a rather pretty boulevard. The rain pattering calmly on my umbrella and on the trees and in puddles on the ground swayed my decision: walk it was. No people out at this time.
My containers weren’t airtight and drips of soup slipped down my hand as I walked. My stroll started just as a car pulled up behind me, so at the risk of looking very strange indeed, I took the rest of the way to the boulevard at a scurry. Turning the corner, the road was empty. Then, as I was scanning the trees and buildings for a place to sit, I spotted a professor heading to his car and abruptly turned tail at another scurry to head back where I’d come. I already didn’t want to talk with anyone, and I especially did not want to explain my wandering around the back of campus alone, at dusk, in the rain, with my hands full of to-go containers.
As I casually fled, I spotted a bike shelter next to an academic building and tucked myself beneath the tin roof so a maple trunk hid me from anyone coming out the adjacent door. The ground was soaked, so I couldn’t sit down like a normal person, so I just… squatted. With my umbrella and containers. In complete silence.
Strangeness of strangeness, it was perfect. The rain pitapatted the tin roof, the air wasn’t too chilly or the evening too dark. And I was alone. Blissfully.
My salad grew warm and my soup grew cold while I crouched under my bike shelter for twenty minutes without uttering a single word. I hadn’t even brought my phone. It occurred to me that just like God led me out here on a whim to be by myself, I could literally ask God to keep everyone else away for a minute. So I did. And He did. (Grateful for that, by the way.)
And it was weird, but it wasn’t weird. It gave my clogged sink of a brain time to drain the dirty water and figure out what metaphorical dishes I could wash when. It was the reason, when I finally returned to the dormitory and settled in the lounge with my dinner, that I could laugh with my friend about sitting alone in the rain for so long while my food got cold.
So yeah, I run away from my problems but I swear it’s for good reasons. Sometimes stealing away to bask in nature is romantic, and sometimes it’s a matter of survival. I did finish all my to-dos, in case you were wondering, and my heart goes out to the quiet people who need to run away every now and then. Do it. Sniff the flowers. Stay alive.
Emilyn Shortridge (’25) spent her Calvin years studying English linguistics, Asian studies, and ministry leadership, and intends to finish her Asian studies program in Chiba, Japan, in 2026. When at home in Plymouth, Michigan, she thrives anywhere near fantasy novels, houseplants, hot tea, or her calico cat, Genie, but she plans to live and learn in many cultures before deciding which corner of the world needs her most.
