Who Are You Lighting Up For?

June 27, 2026 Modern LonelinessQuiet PerformanceDorm LifeSmall RitualsSelf-Curation You bought them on a Sunday in late October. Twenty minutes of scrolling through a feed that knows you better than your mother does, and the cart filled itself. LED strip lights. The kind with the little remote that promises to turn a cinder-block dorm room into something you might actually want to sit inside. You told yourself it was practical. You’ll use them as a desk lamp for late-night studying. You’ll use them as a night light so you don’t have to fumble for your phone across the dark. You’ll use them because the overhead fluorescent in your room flickers in a way that makes your temples ache, and at least these won’t flicker. At least these will be yours. The package arrived in a brown plastic mailer with no padding. The strip coiled inside like a thin plastic intestine. You unrolled it on your comforter and the adhesive backing peeled away with the soft ripping sound of tape pulled off skin. You pressed it along the back edge of your desk, smoothing it with the side of your thumb, and there was something almost tender about the whole thing — this small act of fitting a piece of your imagined life onto a piece of furniture you didn’t choose, in a room you didn’t choose, in a building full of people you didn’t choose. You plugged it in. The room turned violet, then a deep bruised blue, then a pale washed-out pink that reminded you of something you can’t quite name. A hospital waiting room. The bedroom of a girl you went to high school with, photographed from the doorway. The first time the light came on, your chest did something tight and small. Not joy, exactly. More like recognition. Like you had finally bought the version of yourself you had been scrolling past for months. You stood back from the desk. You sat down on the bed. You stood back up again. And nobody was there. Tuesday, 7:14 p.m. You are sitting on the concrete step outside the side entrance of the dining hall, your phone in one hand, a granola bar wrapper in the other. The air has the metallic taste of late autumn and the parking lot lights are already on, throwing long yellow rectangles across the asphalt. You are thi