it's 3:30 AM.
I want to be asleep. for the first time in weeks I *want* to sleep, and I'm *tired*. (I've had chronic insomnia for going on two months now.)
but you see, I can't. there's the TINIEST bit of tear gas in this room. just enough to make my eyes water, me sneeze a bit, and have the faintest inklings of a dull and painful headache.
I'm at purdue. and we just lost the NCAA women's basketball championship. to Notre dame. by two points.
so people rioted.
honestly, I'm sure they would have rioted even if we had won. tension has been running high here for weeks. and to top it off, it's April fool's day, as we all here at e2 know probably TOO well. but we lost, so that was their reason-of-choice to riot.
burning couches, cars, bonfires, even dumpsters. mobs running around screaming, mooning, breaking things, generally being drunk and loud. all kinds of general hell.
the police were called out. batons. crowd control "shields". dogs. and finally, tear gas.
and, finally, on the ever-present wind, it arrived here. it was fairly quiet here, an all-female dorm. but the dorms next door on either side were gassed. and, as happened to many people, it seeped in my window. JUST enough to be detected. and it got to my eyes and nose and throat.
so now I sit here, door open to the hall, fan on full, trying to blow it out of my room and away. and as I wait, all I do is think on why things like this ever happen anyways, these riots, surges of emotions, taken by the tide and the crowd. I'm trying to understand it. I honestly am trying to understand why people enjoy that. I merely can't. because the only thing I can understand now is I would rather be asleep. but because of all this, I am not.