“I Think We Need Some Space”
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As I began to write this article, I realized the space bar on my keyboard jammed. I incessantly pressed on it to be able to complete my sentences, and with my increasing frustration at my thoughts getting tangled together in a run-on sentence, I took a step back and began to think about space. Space is a word I’ve seen manifest itself in many different definitions and contexts throughout my nearly four years in college.
When I first arrived at college, freshly 18 and filled with excitement and fear, I was introduced to the concept of “space” in the most literal way possible. I had an apartment—a place that was just mine. It felt exhilarating and daunting all at once. For the first time, I was given this pocket of the world to fill with my routines, belongings, and sense of self. Yet, as exciting as it was, there was an underlying confusion. What was I supposed to do with all this space? I quickly realized that having a physical space didn’t automatically mean I knew how to feel at home in it. I’d gone from home, a space that I was born into, not one that I chose, to this new area that I could shape in any way I wanted. But, was it really mine? Was it enough to fill it with stuff, or was there more to truly “inhabiting” this space? The questions lingered as I settled in. My new surroundings became a metaphor for the other, more intangible spaces I was learning to navigate: the personal space to make my own decisions, the emotional space to handle friendships and relationships on my terms, and the mental space to figure out who I was becoming.
“I think we need some space.” This was my second encounter with the word space, and it left much less excitement than the first. Unlike the freedom of my first apartment – all those empty corners filled with possibility– this version of space felt small and sharp, like swallowing glass. It came wrapped in gentle words but cut deep all the same. “I just need some space.” How could a word meaning openness suddenly feel so suffocating? This request for space felt so contradicting; aren't relationships built on closeness? The need for space felt like an indictment of who I was – too much, too close. I wondered if being less of myself would somehow make me more lovable. But time has a funny way of reshaping our understanding, of softening sharp edges into smooth curves. Now I see that “I need space” isn't always an ending – sometimes it's a beginning, a chance to let love breathe and grow. Similar to plants needing room for their roots to spread, relationships flourish in the dance between togetherness and separation. I think about my empty apartment during those first few weeks of college and how terrifying all that space felt, how desperately I wanted to fill every corner. Now I look at my relationships the same way I came to see my home: not every moment needs to be furnished with words or presence. Sometimes the most beautiful rooms are the ones with space to dance in, and the strongest connections are the ones secure enough to embrace the spaces between.
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The third time space introduced itself to me, it was a quiet revelation. Not the hollow echo of an empty apartment, not the ache of distance in relationships, but in the gentle unfolding of my creativity. It came suddenly, when I found myself in complete solitude, without my roommate at home and with no desire to engage with the media. The silence that would have once made me restless instead became a canvas. I found myself writing poems, songs, stories, all of the things I used to love to do as a kid. I began to understand that just like in my relationships, my mind, too, needed room to breathe. The spaces between activities, those moments I used to feel I had to fill with productivity or purpose, became my most fertile ground. It's in the gaps between classes, in the early morning hours before the world wakes up, in the intentional silences I now build into my days, that my imagination has the space to exist. I used to be so afraid to sit with emptiness for long enough that I never allowed it the space to hear what it wanted to emerge from within me. Now, I guard these pockets of nothingness like secrets, these spaces where possibility lives, where the scattered pieces of my creativity can finally find their way to each other without the world's constant interference.
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College is a space suspended in time, the place between childhood and adulthood. I find myself in this limbo state, untethered from the storylines of my past but not yet bound to the responsibilities of my future. Some nights, I catch glimpses of myself in fragments – the way I wear my mother’s old clothes but style them in ways she’d shake her head at, the way I love films like my brother but have personal favorite directors, the way I run like my dad but blast music he’d never listen to while doing so. As I become a mosaic of the people closest to me, I find the pattern is entirely my own. I'm watching myself emerge in the spaces between who I was taught to be and who I'm choosing to become. This in-between space of college, this pause between acts, has become sacred to me. It's teaching me that growth isn't always about adding things to yourself, but about having the room to unfold, to stretch into the edges of who you might be. I think we need some space, and I think I like it.
Strike Out,
Writer: Daniella Garcia-Novas
Editor: Layne Schulte
Tallahassee