Macy Gault: DC Dreams and Disillusionment
At age twelve, I sat on the edge of the reflecting pool in front of the US Capitol and swore to myself that I would come back and live in DC when I was old enough. For most of my childhood, I dreamed of moving out of my hometown, not because it wasn’t a lovely area filled with people I loved, but I knew I still needed to find myself, and moving away was the solution. I wanted to change and grow into a new woman, but I couldn’t do that while staying in a town where everyone knew me since diapers. As the youngest in my family, I was better known for my older brothers and my parents than anything else. I needed to chart my own course, and at the age of eighteen, I finally did it.
College was the beginning of the new me. I was more confident, educated, and free. Less suffocated by who I was in my youth, I found ways to make a name for myself in my college community. Since moving away for college turned out to be the perfect choice to better my life, I figured moving even farther away after college would produce the same or greater result. While my main objective was to see life outside of South Carolina, I always felt a calling to Washington, DC. When anyone asked about my favorite place on earth or my favorite moment in my life, I would always say sitting at the reflecting pool in front of the capitol in DC when I was twelve. Sitting there, my whole life was in front of me, full of possibilities and subtle promises of potential greatness. I always fantasized about moving to DC, and during my Junior year of college, I seized the opportunity to claim my destiny and come back to DC.
I applied and was admitted to the Washington Semester Program (WSP) for the Fall semester of my senior year. Finally, almost ten years later, my twelve-year-old dream was going to become reality. I secured a job on the hill interning for SC Congressman Tom Rice. Almost like the universe planned it all out, my apartment and my work office were both steps away from the very Capitol reflecting pool where I manifested my future life in DC. After a summer of planning and anticipation, I finally moved to Washington, DC with lofty expectations and naive misconceptions.
Soon after arriving, I started to realize my fantasy of DC was exactly that, a fantasy. I started my job on the hill like most other hill interns (“hillterns”), with a thirst to prove myself and no clue what kind of work environment I was stepping into. I was surprised by how quickly the grandeur of working on Capitol hill faded. I was doing normal office work, answering phone calls, and yearning for my solitary hour-long lunch break. In all honesty, I expected more. While other interns were hardworking and pleasant, I never made a strong connection with any of them. It was almost like I didn’t know how to act in such a larger-than-life political sector. One of my favorite aspects of all my past jobs is the human connection. With covid regulations looming, there were few guests in the Capitol. Sometimes, I would walk down the daunting halls filled with other interns and staffers and feel so unimportant, like I could just slip away and no one would ever know I was there. The truth is, I could have. While I produced good work and was well-liked by my staff, I felt like it was all void of meaning. I was not Macy Gault working at The Capitol, I was just “the intern” who would later be easily replaced by another eager student with a similar resume and naïve dreams about life in DC.
The workplace atmosphere was not the only disappointing aspect of DC. I also struggled with making connections with my peers outside of the workplace. While I met some friendly people in DC, I didn’t make a habit of seeking people out. I made friends with other students in my WSP cohort, but when that finite group was not available, I was left with no one. I know now that I should have reached out, tried to get connected, and meet new people. It wasn’t until the back end of my DC experience that I realized just how distanced I felt from everyone around me.
My loneliness multiplied when I thought about my family and how much I missed them: the birthday parties, the family gatherings, the inside jokes. These losses started chipping away at me, leaving inside me a void of human connection. Without any kind of found family in DC, that void never went away. Months into my visit, I got a phone call from my mother telling me that my uncle unexpectedly passed away from covid. I remember trudging out of my apartment building and wandering down the streets trying to make sense of it all. How does a healthy man in his late forties just die? How could my cousin, who is like a sister to me, just lose her father at the age of sixteen? Worst of all, how could I justify not being there for my family or the funeral? I didn’t have the money to fly home. I couldn’t be there for my loved ones in person.
Almost like fate, my absentminded wandering led me to the very reflecting pool that once represented so much hope and possibilities to my twelve-year-old self. How distanced I felt from that little girl with big dreams of DC city life. I missed my family and I needed to be somewhere with people that brought me joy. It was at that moment that I felt the most homesick. I knew parts of me loved the city, but the distance between me and everyone around me left me feeling alone in a city full of people. I wanted to blame DC and my younger self for my pain. What did the twelve-year-old version of me know about what I wanted, where I should be? DC was not the perfect place I conjured up in my mind. I needed to finish my time in DC so I could find my happiness again.
On my plane ride back home for Christmas, I found myself tearing up when I could see South Carolina below. It was nighttime and I could see the spaced-out houses with gaudy Christmas lights all over. Flying over the city of Washington felt so impersonal. There were so many beautiful lights, but they didn’t mean anything to me. I didn’t know those people below. Despite living there for four months, I never let myself find something or someone to truly miss. When I flew over the houses in South Carolina, I felt a connection to them. I felt like I knew each family that those small spaced-out lights represented, and I yearned to be back with my family, my own little light.
Coming home for Christmas with my family was exactly what I needed. After taking time to reflect on my days in DC, I realized how much I gained from my time there. Even though my time in DC did not live up to my fantasies, I learned that the place you live is what you make of it. Happiness has much more to do with the people around you than the area. I will never count out living in a city again, moving out of the South, or even living in Washington, DC. The area was never the reason for my disillusionment. What plagued my time in DC was not seeking out human connections or surrounding myself with people I love. Picking the right work atmosphere, making friends, and surrounding yourself with loved ones are as essential as climbing the latter or moving to an area with a vibrant nightlife. My best memories in the city were the days spent with the few friends I did make. In the future, I now know that I have a tendency to isolate myself, and I have to distance myself from that urge. I’m thankful I learned this during my four months in DC instead of after graduation when I enter what they call the “real world.” My journey was nothing like what my twelve-year-old self planned or expected, but it was most certainly the journey I needed.
Macy Gault is a senior history major with a minor in Pre-law from Gaffney, S.C. She completed her breakaway experience within the South Carolina Washington Semester Program interning in U.S. Congressman Tom Rice’s Office in Washington, D.C. during the fall 2021 semester. She will graduate from Lander University's Honors College in May 2022, and she plans to attend law school after graduation.