I Need to Purge my Mind January 19, 2009

There are times, honestly, when I feel like my life is going to go down in a dramatic, flaming mass.  There are other times when I feel like my life will just go down quietly except for the people on the side clicking their tongues at me saying that I didn’t try hard enough.  There are very, very few times in my life when I feel like things will turn around and that my life will actually get better.  Whoever said that money doesn’t buy happiness was completely WRONG.  Money buys a whole lot of fucking peace of mind.  Something that I haven’t had for months.  I would be able to pursue my romantic ideas of saving up mental energy for grad school and reading tons of books if I wasn’t wasting so much mental energy thinking about how, once again, I’m not going to make enough money to pay all my bills and keep my credit score up so I can do things like get another car which I need or take out school loans if I need to or maybe buy a house someday and whatnot.  Lately, I’ve been really wishing that I would’ve thought about moving in with my dad after I graduated.  This is so stressful that I can’t move sometimes.  And I feel like there is absolutely no one that I can fall back on.  I have considered moving to my dad’s, but I can’t do that because it would leave my roommate in a tough spot, and I think that would be the last straw for our friendship.  I can’t also because I have absolutely no money to move, I have no clue what I would do with all my stuff or how I would get it all the way to the midwest, and I would have to start all over again to try to find another job.  Not to mention that my car would never make it all the way out there.  So I just have to deal with all this.  But I feel like I have failed and that I’m a deadbeat and that my life is not moving forward right now.  I would give anything to deal with the stresses of school again if I didn’t have to deal with this.  I’m potentially destroying my entire future.  I can’t sleep at night.  Not to mention that I’m so stressed that I can hardly read anymore; I only feel like watching movies.

Job:

I got laid off in November, and it’s been two months without steady employment.  I’ve been working, and sometimes it’s enough, but most of the time it is not.  I have not been able to find another job at all, and not for lack of trying.  I’m interviewing right now for a good job, and I find out whether or not I move on the interview process in a few days.  But I’m not holding out much hope, even though I’ve made it this far in the interview process.  I’ve been working part time at financial company, and I’m thinking about asking if I can have more hours, since they said they want to hire me back anyway and they want me around.  I need more hours.  Plus the law firm promised me hours but then said they were cutting back their payroll and they call me every once in a while to work for 5 hours at a time.  It sucks.  I know that most of this is because of the economy and that’s out of my control.  I couldn’t have known this was going to happen.  But it’s truly terrifying.  I call my temp agency regularly, so has said that it is sending out my resume to companies and is trying.  A local restaurant keeps stringing me along.  I apply for jobs regularly.  I just want to stop feeling like a slacker.  I want my paycheck to pay the bills.  What am I doing wrong?

Bills

Not to mention rent, electric (which has been insane lately), cable, phone, gas, groceries, the stuff I need just to stay alive, I also have my credit card bill and school loans are now due.  I got an email today saying that if I didn’t pay my school loan pronto, it would be reported to the credit agency.  So I called them and asked what I had to do to get my account to current.  The bill was over $500.  I almost had a cow.  I. don’t. have. that.  So I told them that I lost my job recently and that I’m applying to graduate school and I plan on being in school in the fall.  So THANK GOD they told me about this thing called forebearance, which means that I don’t have to pay my federal loan, only my small, private loan, until December.  That brought the amount down to $108 to get current.  I can do that, but it’s probably going to screw me over majorly.  At least that brings down the monthly payment from $250 to $50.  And my loan really isn’t that big at all.  It’s just there.

Car

My car’s transmission is gone to crap.  I can still drive the car, but I have no clue when it’s going to stop working, so I’m looking for another car.  Since I got rear-ended in November, I have an insurance check that can help me make the downpayment.  I also have money in money markets which I could use as well.  I kind of wish that I had a job nearby so I could walk so I wouldn’t have to worry about the car.  But I don’t so I can’t do without transportation.  I don’t think that putting a grand into my ghetto car would be worthwhile, so I figure I’ll just get  another one.  But this might be harder than expected.  I can’t afford another monthly payment unless I get this job, and most of the cars that are within my very small budget have things wrong with them like the transmission or the head gasket or the brakes.  I can’t afford to pay for repairs.  Plus there’s all the fees that come along with a new car.  I just might have to break down and get the transmission fixed.  But then I would have the crappy bumper on my car for eternity.  I honestly don’t know what to do here.  What would be the better option?  I’m pretty sure that either one, knowing my luck, will result in me getting screwed over.  I don’t hope that things will go right for me anymore.  If I get the car fixed, the engine will probably go out next.  If I get another car, there will be another big repair on it.

Grad School

Illinois was one big screw up.  They offered me the free app, so I did it, but I made sure they didn’t require the subject test before I applied.  I looked, and maybe due to my cursory review or wishful thinking or just plain blindness, I didn’t see that they actually did require the subject test.  I got an email from them saying that my application wouldn’t be complete until they got the scores, and I had to explain to them that I hadn’t taken the test.  It was so embarrassing.  I’m so retarded.  Also, some of my rec letters haven’t gotten in yet.  Purdue hasn’t gotten the letter from a professor who is always on time about everything.  I’m pretty sure she sent that at least a month ago.  So either it got lost in the mail or they’re backlogged on putting things into the system.  I called, but they’re closed today.  Purdue has a really good program in what I’m interested in, and I really want to go there.   I don’t know if this destroys my chances or not.  Also, when I applied to Vandy, it was last minute and one of my profs just never sent his letter.  I hope he still can.  Not to mention that this whole process is entirely expensive, and I don’t want to waste money on it.  I don’t even what to think about what it means for my life if I don’t get in anywhere, much less if I don’t get in anywhere because of stupid things like this happening.  I guess I could just chalk that up to my sucky life, realize that things will never go the way I want despite my efforts, and go jump off a building.

 

And this doesn’t even begin to describe other problems I’m having with my mother and with other people in my life.  I wish I could just go crawl in a hole somewhere, but for now I’ll just have to be happy with pretending that there’s nothing wrong with my life, go to Panera, and block everything out and read for a little while.  That’s the one coping mechanism I have left: denial.

Sometimes I Have Moments of Clarity December 16, 2008

I enjoy having days where I don’t feel like my life is falling apart.  Last night was kind of like that.  It helped that I got my paycheck and had money again, and so I decided to do something.  I was starving because I hadn’t eaten all day, so I went to the local mediterraean place and got a falafel wrap which was awesome.  I also rented the movie “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” at the local indie movie rental place.  I came home and watched it and made myself a gin and tonic and ate my damn wrap.  I was starting to feel good.  Then The Lawyer texted me and asked me if I wanted to go out tonight or tomorrow.  I said tomorrow, because for once in a long time, I was feeling ok about being by myself and I decided to take advantage of it.  And since I’m not working today, I figured it would be better to have something to do today.  So we’re going out tonight to a good Tex Mex place with cheap beer and then watching a movie and then fucking.  Even though all of that is good and he is good, I like having nights where I can feel ok with being alone.  It’s possible that the gin and tonic helped with that situation, but then again, I was feeling that way before I started drinking.  It also helped that I decided to get a sort-of-not-depressing movie.  Granted, the movie was depressing, but in a way that didn’t make me feel all despairing and like it’s never going to be possible to have actual relationships with people without there being betrayal and selfishness and feelings of aloneness.  I just got finished reading Tree of Smoke and I am in the middle of an intense Mad Men marathon, so I’ve been wigging out about all that and I hated it.  But I think my night of being contentedly alone made me feel a little better about the world I live in.

Plus Financial Company wants me back earlier than originally thought because they finally decided that the office is falling apart without me.  I start this week.  And I will still be working at Law Firm, so at least I’m going to be getting decent hours until the contract goes away.  It’s nice to work with people who actually care about me and value the work I do.  I think that’s why I just didn’t want to leave these people.  They, and the work I do for them, make me happy.  So why leave?  I mean, they thank me everyday, they’re teaching me new skills so they have less to do during the day, and I get to work in place I like with people I like where I don’t feel like my soul is dying.

Now I just need to stop reading depressing literature that makes me retreat into myself Jane Eyre-style.

The Problem With Being a Romantic Who Thinks She Should be an Academic March 12, 2008

I can’t deny my romantic tendencies.  I am actually thrilled to be taking a year to myself next year, so that I can indulge myself by reading whatever the hell I want and spending time staring out the window and thinking.  My plans also include a lot of trekking through nature and on walking bridges over rivers.  As much as I want to be involved in an academic life, I’m on academic overload as it is, and I need to take some time off from what is required of me.  I’ll have a job and whatnot (at this point the job itself is not clear to me) but I want to spend a year floating, with no apparent responsibilities that weigh on the rest of my life with their urgency and importance.  I don’t care if I end up being a secretary or a waitress or working some other inconsequential job, but I just want to have a life which can be light and free for a little while, until I have to get back to getting on with the rest of my life.  The thought of picking a school and a specialization and having it affect the entire rest of my life is frankly terrifying.  There is a part of me that wants nothing to do with a life where you constantly have to prove yourself as worthy of attention and respect.  Part of me wants to do something which would be equally as fulfilling and challenging but without the pressure of proving myself to anyone.  I’ve never been very good at the politics game, and my personality and feelings are very plain for anyone to see.  People used to value this honesty in me, but those people liked me, and they appreciated by translucency.  Now, I think it is something I hate, because in the real world, everything is fake and everyone has to pretend to be something they’re not in order to succeed.  For some people, this works out because they’re genius and everyone respects them anyway, or they’ve always been the kind of person who can fake personality and emotion in order to get along wherever they are.  I’ve never been this kind of person, and sacrificing my frankness for political salience is not my strong suit.  In fact, I hate it, so I end up hating myself in some ways for being so honest about how I feel all the time.  I hate personal facades.  So the thought of having to put one on for the rest of life sounds exhausting.  Maybe for a year I can feel somewhat free with myself and feel like I have no one to impress.  That would be so refreshing.

My honesty is so debilitating.  The last time I tried to be completely honest with someone and bear my messy soul to him, the gesture turned around and bit me in the ass.  Last night I wrote a letter which was tempered by the time that I didn’t feel I had to be someone different in order to make him love me.  I don’t think I’m going to send it; it was merely an exercise in self-expression which I think is some of the most beautiful and passionate prose (dare I say honest) I have written in a long time.  The time that I could be in solitude from him without the pressures that accompanied his presence really allowed me to heal and to think in a way that I don’t think I would’ve been able to otherwise.

 Not even to mention the crisis of academic writing that I am having at this time.  I think the reason why I loved fall semester of my junior year so much and the reason why I found the work I was doing to be so fulfilling was that it felt like I was doing something groundbreaking and important (not that it really was, but hey, a girl can dream).  Epiphanies abounded, and my writing was pretty good.  Dr. H insists that the reason why I don’t feel this way anymore is because I am reaching maturity as a student; I am becoming more of a teacher rather than a student.  But I’m not so sure.  Part of the joy of writing some things in those days was that I felt like it was a part of me.  That I was writing this academic paper for myself.  I wrote one of those this semester about evangelical feminism and whether or not the Bible completely fucks women over, and it turns out that I lost sight of my audience and it was probably an ok paper.  But the thought that passion has to be subordinated (or something) really is kinda blah.  Maybe it’s because I haven’t found something in literature yet that I can latch onto with complete passion AND write good papers about.  But in the end, if academe makes me retreat into myself and my own solitude (as Willa Cather so depressingly yet weirdly satisfiedly pointed out to me in The Professor’s House) then I’d like to be in love with my subject and have some passion about it.

And yet.  I read all these blogs from academic people who basically go through the same shit over and over again, blog after blog, and none of it really sounds appealing, because they talk about parts of them dying and whatnot, and that sounds really scary.  Plus most of them are hopeless at friendships and relationships and yet they keep doing the academic thing and they don’t know why.  It’s almost like I can see where my life is headed and I have no fucking clue why I would want to do all of that to myself and yet I keep heading straight for the abyss.  The abyss mostly involves eternal insecurity, loneliness and losing parts of my being.  There are romantic reasons for getting involved, and yet the academic part of it is supposed to squash all of that out of existence.  Damn, damn, damn!  I don’t know what else to do with my life, so this seems to be the clearest road.  Plus, I’m already a hopeless social retard, so I might as well enter the life that fits.  The only other one seems to involve building a hut on Walden Pond and hoping that I don’t find that I have not lived.