Here’s Hoping… August 12, 2009

I’m in my new place at my new school.  So far it’s been wonderful and exciting.  I was very nervous beforehand, and there were people that I was sad about leaving, but when I got here, that all changed.  It was really like magic.  Something in my brain snapped and I stopped being nervous and sad.  I feel like up until this point, my life has been one big struggle.  It has seemed as though not a lot has worked out the way I wanted it to, and I’ve had difficult relationships which I’ve had to leave behind against my will.  It got better when I moved out of the house, but it was still hard.  I struggled with depression during those years, first in high school, then part of college, and being at Evangelical Institution was so hard with its anti-intellectualism and narrow culture.  I can’t deny that a few people I knew while there helped me to get to where I am now, but being there was so difficult; the difficulty being elucidated even more after leaving.  Then I had one of the most difficult years of my life with my job and leaving a wonderful boyfriend and not having enough money to live.  It was a very dark year of my life except for a few bright spots, but I made it through without medication.  I guess this testifies to the strength that I have learned over the years.

But now.

Everything has worked out for me.  As I look back over the process, I can see its miraculousness.  I got into a program that I fit into very well, a program that wants me and the research I want to do.  It’s paid for.  I’m getting paid for being a student.  I managed to get just enough money to get here and not to have to work the three weeks prior to school starting.  I sold my car.  Things are just happening.  I feel in control of my life and my money for once.  I am meeting cool people and making new friends.  I have a great teaching assistant position teaching something interesting.  Most of all, I will be doing something I love, working toward a goal, in a place that I like.  It all feels right, in a way that nothing ever has before.  I feel like good things are going to happen, that my life is finally beginning, that I can do anything.

I know the semester hasn’t started yet, and there will be many challenges to overcome over the next few years.  I will be working hard, and I will probably get stressed out a lot.  But I feel strong enough to handle it.  I know that I supposed to be here, and that gives me the toughness to just do it.  Even though last year was insanely difficult, I think I learned a lot about myself that will help me get through school.  I know all of this sounds hokey and inspirational and crap, but I can’t help feeling this way when something is finally going right in my life.  And not just a little part of my life, but the whole entire thing.  So I really hope this lasts.

I’m Not Sorry There’s Nothing to Save May 3, 2009

A lot of things seem surreal right now.  Grad school, a certain four months of my life, and just, well, life.

I remember having a moment when I was five years old when I felt like I was outside of my body.  It wasn’t like I was floating above my body looking down or anything weird like that, but I remember having the distinct feeling that I wasn’t really living my life.  That I was just an observer to someone else’s life, and that this five-year-old body that was getting out of the car and walking through the garage wasn’t really mine.  I can remember standing there thinking this.  What the fuck kind of five-year-old thinks things like that?  I remember having more moments like that and I still have them now.  Sometimes I feel like my current apartment really isn’t mine and I’m not really living in it.  Maybe it’s because I’m sort of living an in between life right now, but it’s really strange.

Grad school is starting to feel surreal.  It’s actually happening, but I can’t help but think that it’s not actually happening.  I have visions of getting a letter from the school saying that they changed their minds and they don’t want me to come anymore.  I know that’s stupid, but it doesn’t seem to be unique to me.  Another girl I met at the recruitment weekend has the same kinds of thoughts a lot.

I finally got my enrollment package in the mail yesterday.  I signed up for my email address and what not, and soon I’ll be able to enroll in classes.  I had a little trouble just because stupid Evangelical Institution screwed up my transcripts.  I had to send new copies.  That might be why I haven’t really heard from the department since I accepted its offer.  I’m not really sure how this is supposed to go.  I think I’m supposed to hear from them regarding the precise class list and my teaching assignment.  I’m just not sure when I’m supposed to hear from them.  The other girl that I know already got her assignment, but she’s Ph.D., so I’m not sure if that has anything to do with it.  It’s probably because of my transcripts.  This just makes me worry more about my terror of the department renigging on its offer.

It all feels really surreal.  Honestly, I didn’t expect anything to turn out this well.  I didn’t think I was going to get funding.  I’m too hard on myself.  At first, I didn’t really want to apply to this school because of its location, but the more I looked into their program, the more I liked it.  And it’s crazy how well I fit into it.  The Graduate Admissions Director, when I visited, rattled off at least three reasons why he thought I would be a great fit in the program.  It’s exciting.  After four years of feeling really illegit in my undergrad studies, for whatever reason, I finally feel legit, like I’m supposed to be a part of this world.  I’m confident but scared shitless at the same time.  It’s a lot of pressure, and I’m worried about being prepared enough.  Did Evangelical Institution prepare me for grad school?  I have a feeling probably not, which is why I really need to beef up on theory this summer.  I feel good about my research abilities, ok about my writing abilities, and fine about my ability to handle the workload.  Hello, debate.

Overall, I know that I’ll be glad to be doing something that feels purposeful and is something that I enjoy.  I’ll enjoy being around other people like me, who are ambitious and smart and literate.  I didn’t get much of that in undergrad, and god knows I’m not getting that now.  Med students are a different breed of smart.  Will it feel real when it actually starts happening?

The other thing that feels totally surreal is the four months I spent with The Lawyer.  When we broke up, we totally cut each other off.  I haven’t heard from him since then, save for the letters we exchanged afterwards.  I’ve seen him around the neighborhood ramdomly, twice I think.  Everytime I see a fucking black BMW I freak out.  But the four months I spent with him were really great and then all of the sudden they were gone.  I’ve never really had an experience like that, and I think it sucks.  In fact, I’ve never been broken up with.  I’ve always done the breaking up, so I was in control and wanted it to happen.  Not the case this time.  Mostly I really hate not being in control of things like that.

But the other night I had a really long and dramatic dream about him.  I hate dreaming about exes.  Hate hate.  It ended with me running into him and we tried talking.  He started yelling at me about something.  He wanted me to leave him alone.  I wanted to know why, and he finally admitted that he needed to get over me, and I wasn’t helping by showing up.  How fucking awful to have a dream like that.

It’s also really strange how you can be fine for a while and then all of the sudden the ex will start making sudden appearances in your thoughts and in real life.  I’ll start thinking about my ex and then all of a sudden he will show up in my life.  Nothing, and then everything happens all at once.  It happened with The Jerk all the time.  It was really uncanny how he could almost read my thoughts and contact me when I was feeling most vulnerable.  It freaked me out.  Well, I’ve been thinking about The Lawyer this weekend for whatever reason, and today I saw him.  I was walking to the grocery store, crossing the street, and it was him in his car which had to slow down for me as I was going across the crosswalk.  How does that happen?  And then my knees started getting weak and I couldn’t walk.  I was wandering through the grocery store trying to focus on what I wanted to get.  I think I made two circuits before I finally got it together.  I have weird physical reactions when things like that happen related to The Lawyer.  I literally start shaking if I see him around the area.  I puked the night we broke up.  I couldn’t eat for a month after that.  I lost 10 pounds.  I would start gagging everytime I would brush my teeth which coincided with the lack of appetite.  It pisses me off.  He was great, but he was so ultimately WRONG for me.  Why do I have these reactions?  This has never happened before in my life.  He made sure to say that he wants to know where I end up as far as grad school, so I guess I’ll email him and tell him.  I’m trying to decide if I want to meet him for coffee before I move.  I think mostly it would be weird, and who even knows if he would want to, but I think it would make things less surreal.  But then again I’d probably have weird physical reactions and start shaking or something.  I really don’t know.  There are times when I really enjoy being single.  I feel awesome and powerful and happy.  But every once in a while thinking about him makes it harder.  I had no clue when I started dating him that I would like him as much as I did.  Sometimes I just hate dating.  But there’s really no middle ground for me.  I just want to fucking move away already so I don’t have to walk around fearing that I’m going to run into him.  Seriously.  When will it end?

I guess what I really hate are my emotions.  I hate the fact that someone can do this to me.  That they can come into my life and ruin the illusions of autonomy that I have.  I hate that they make me physically ill.  What I really don’t understand is that I can know rationally that someone is wrong for me, and yet still be affected by him.  If we had the chance I would not go back to him, but I still think about him.  What really blows my mind is that I can have the excitement of grad school ahead of me and still wish that I was waking up next to him, feeling him wrap his arms around me as he woke up, pulling me closer to him and then kissing me before he got out of bed.  Why would I want to retrogress for physical affection?  IT MAKES NO SENSE.

I guess that’s why I’ve taken to demonizing him in my mind.  I try to think about that conversation we had about children and how he thought it’s important for the mom to stay home for the first few years.  That helps to allay the longing.  Picturing myself as a lawyer’s wife watching the kid at home while he goes off to try to become a judge and doesn’t get home til 8 pm really takes the romance out of it.  I guess I could just make up stories in my mind about how much he (doesn’t really) sucks.  I always reach this point where I want to sit the person down and just scream at them and let out my frusturation.  I’ve never been good at on-the-spot anger, and it’s something I really hate about myself.

And jeez, the motherfucking lyrics to this song.  My Spring playlist is actually really fucking depressing.  I just try not to listen too much to the lyrics.

Perpetual Childhood May 5, 2008

Is it possible to ever feel adult-like?  This is the question I have been asking myself lately.  With all the masses getting married this summer, and me with no prospects, I still feel like a little kid.  I think it’s one of those life steps that when other people take it and you don’t, you get left behind.  And it sucks.  Plus, since I have zero time to do dishes and clean my apartment because of finals madness and whatnot, I feel like a crazy mess who has no control over her life and can’t even find her damn readers award plaque because it got buried somewhere.  And I think the taking a year off thing makes it even harder for me to feel adult like.  While I’m looking forward to the floatiness (which I suppose is mutually exclusive to adulthood), the nebulousness adds to the feelings of being left behind.  I don’t know what to say when I get asked what my plans are.  “Ummmm…. I’m going to read.  And work.  And apply to grad schools.  Yup.”  But then again, adulthood is such a nebulous thing too.  Where’s the brightline?  When do you become “officially adult?”  When you graduate?  When you own something like a house?  When you get married?  When you go through menopause?  When you have children?  Fuck.  I don’t know.  Maybe what I’m missing in life is actually having one.  Moving on to my new life and getting out of what I’m currently doing.  Maybe it’s not so much the adulthood as the life events that I’m missing out on.  But I suppose that’s what happens when you’re a hopeless recluse like me who lets the dishes pile up while I pretend to write a paper which sucks.

There are times when I feel like the normal things that make up everyone else’s life are missing from mine.  Like a family which actually does things together and stays in touch and helps each other out.  Like boyfriends.  Have I ever had a real one?  Not really, unless you count Summer of ‘06 guy, which was only a month long and I lost interest fast.  And God knows we don’t count Third Eye in this list.  Also, couches are missing from my life.  There are no stable relationships in my life.  Well, I lie.  I do have friends who are very close and have been around all through college.  So there are those stable relationships which make me feel more normal.

I think what this comes down to is:  do I embrace my life as it is and make do, or do I try to live up to some ideal of “normal” life (which I will always fail at)?  Perhaps the question should be: why do I care?

I Have Lost All Motivation April 21, 2008

I have a research paper which is due tomorrow and which I have not started.  This is bad news considering I have a million other things to do tonight too.  But senioritis is biting hard and I feel absolutely no urgency to get it done.  I know I will finish it, but I’m not looking forward to the hellish night ahead of me.  Plus I keep falling asleep while I’m trying to read. 

I bought my regalia today, which is way too expensive.  I’m going to end up wearing a lot of crap (hood, stole, two sets of honors cords, two separate honors medallions).  Since I’m almost there, it’s hard for me to concentrate.  I really want to be done, but there’s waaaay too much to do before then.  So I guess I better get typing.

*Edit* at 2:20 am. 

I feel the need to periodically update with page lengths and times when I am writing papers I do not want to write.  Tonight, I finished up my research and then slept a little and then took out the dog I am dogsitting when he walked over to the couch and started whining and spewing stinky dog breath in my direction.  Then I wrote 4 pages in half an hour and now I am taking a break.

I’m Now Super Depressed April 16, 2008

Walking through those glorious stacks just kills me.  Every time.  They have super old leather bound volumes.  They have brand new books about relevant literary topics.  I swear I paid only $.15 for a bottle of water.  The coffee is better at the Panera nearby than in Lameburg.  It takes everything I have in me to come here and look at all the people and the books and the grand entrance way into the library filled with earnest-looking students and not want to kill myself.  Why did I end up at Evangelical University?  I have to think there was a reason, otherwise, I would seriously kill myself for picking a school with half the books that are contained on one floor of one library in university of my dreams.  I’m going to continue sipping on the better coffee and get some work done.

These Will Be the Longest Three Weeks of my Life April 15, 2008

I’m so ready to graduate.  It’s in only three weeks, and it couldn’t seem farther away.  I have two research papers due, both next week, neither of which I have started.  I don’t even know what I’m going to write about for one of them yet.  Oh well.  I’m going up to university-of-my-dreams tomorrow to do research.  It’s so ridiculous that this school is probably less than half the size of mine and they have at so many more books than we do.  Our library is a floor of books from the sixties; their library is a system with multiple buildings and 10 stories of books in the main one.  Every time I go there, I get super depressed.  But, ILL is pretty much ruled out at this point, so they better fucking have the books I need.

I made a to-do list today, and I have to work my ass off for the next week in order to pull all of this off.  It’s not going to be fun.  At this point in the semester, though, I’d rather be lazy and just let graduation come.  I think I should probably send out announcements, which are good for only one thing: money.  Plus, the family on my mother’s side practically has forgotten that we exist.  So, I should remind them that it’s that time again to send some cash.  

I just don’t want to think about the mountains of work I have to do this week and next.  Incidentally, my idiot boss just decided that he wants to start giving me hours again, and I’m working two eight hour shifts in a row this week, on Friday and Saturday, prime homework days.  I can’t argue because I need the hours.  But, seriously, I hate my fucking job.

But when I hand in these papers, it’s going to be celebration time.

In other news, I called my roommate today to tell her that it’s her turn to pick up toilet paper.  She called back and said that she would get some.  Well, she’s not here and neither is the tp.  Knowing her, she will never get it and I will, once again, have to get it myself after it runs out when I poop.  Which is what happened tonight.  Maybe I should get it and only bring it in the bathroom when I use the toilet.  That would be a good strategy.  But just so annoying to do.

Correction April 15, 2008

It turns out that I will be attending the English awards ceremony.  As much as this sounds nerdy, I’m pretty happy about it.

I Don’t Think I’ll Need to Show up to the English Awards Ceremony March 30, 2008

I’ve been working on my thesis today.  As usual, I have put it off for a few days.  All the while, it haunts my waking and sleeping hours.  When I actually start working on it, I think, “Oh, this work really isn’t as excruciating as I thought it was going to be.”  And then I kick myself for putting it off.  You’d think I would learn after doing this for the past three months.  Alas, old habits die hard.  I finally got the last revised version from the first reader of my committee.  I had gotten the revised versions from my chair and second reader about two weeks before I finally got this one, and this reader wants me to reorganize the whole thing again.  I tell her I already did and my thesis chair likes the reorganization, so at least I don’t have to do that.  But I was already kinda pissed because I couldn’t get the damn thing done and given back to the committee to go over again because I was still waiting for her.  Now I have about a week to finish the whole thing.  It must absolutely be done and signed off by all my committee members by Thursday at 3:35.  Small edits will happen after that, like MLA crap and typos and whatnot.  But it has to be done by then.  My first reader even wanted me to read another whole book and integrate it into my thesis.  I also told her that was not happening.  (Why didn’t she tell me when I gave her the proposal a year ago?)  Some of her edits were kind of annoying, but most were very helpful and toned down the cumbersomeness of my writing.  My own writing is rather annoying at times.  I can usually write my sentences a lot simpler than I do.  So I’ve been working on that.

I just know that I’m really glad this thing is going to be over in three days and that I can be done worrying about the whole thing.  On Thursday night, I’m getting drunk.  That’s all there is to it.  I’m just gonna get plastered and stop thinking about my topic.

Oh, The Thesis March 5, 2008

I am currently working on my undergrad honors thesis, and the second draft is due tomorrow at 11am.  I have about 45 pages of what is probably crap at this point, and about 30 pages left to revise, plus some more revisions that my thesis chair asked me to do.  I have been putting it off (although I have done work on it since the last draft) and now I wish I hadn’t, but I have been so busy with school and Corporate Crap that by the time I get some time to spend on the thesis, I no longer have energy.  Thus.  Here I am.

I had grand intentions for the research part of my thesis last summer.  I had plans to have the whole thing knocked out before the summer was over.  That did not happen, of course, and I had to do a ton of work at the beginning of this semester, which left me with an ok paper and an epiphany half way through writing it more than a week after the first draft was supposed to be in.  I’m worried now because I have potential grad school recommendation writers to impress, and I just want to graduate, dammit.  I think that the paper will end up being good, but all my stupidity along way may hurt me.

I tend to get overwhelmed when things get big and seemingly out of control, and that’s what this thing felt like all summer because I put a lot of pressure on myself to write something *genius*.  So I put it off and procrastinated because I didn’t have confidence in my own abilities as a student.  I annoy myself so flipping much.  It’s kind of like when I started crying today for no good reason and then was yelling at myself while I was crying which made me cry more.  I keep trying to convince myself that Yes, you are capable (you stupid bitch) you are capable of writing a good thesis!  And living up to everyone’s expectations!  And impressing the shit out of those people who will write recommendations for you!  And making it through two more months of the most emotionally tumultuous years of your life!  My counselor told me that what I believe about myself will ultimately shape my actions, and blah, blah, blah, which was good and something I needed to hear, but I think I’ll stay on the anti-depressants, too, thank you.  I’m worried about my mental state post-Lexapro.

 I think what it comes down to is that I’m too. damn. hard. on myself (duh) and that I need to chill out and just do my best.  Ultimately, my thesis chair thinks I have a good paper, and I still have one more draft to go.  I can turn out a good paper, and I can make it through two more months without reverting to heavy drinking.  But seriously, can I graduate yet?