Final prep stretch

This post comes to you from the floor of my empty apartment, where I have retreated alone in a bizarre attempt to avoid pushing away my family. Unfortunately, it does not come to you sponsored by British Airways or Google or Pepsi, or anything else that might enable me to meet my needs once the last step is finally taken.

But about retreating. In what I cannot fail to recognize as part of a pattern, I have spent the last 48 hours being unremittingly awful to my family. That's bad enough, but when you consider that they have helped me to move all of my furniture, clean the entire apartment, driven me all across town as I try to run errands and generally talked me down from the various cliffs I encounter throughout each day as a part of this process... I think there may be a special place in hell for people who spit in their collective relations' eyes the way that I have.

Still, this is how I cope with goodbyes. It's a cliche, but like all cliches that wouldn't exist if they weren't at least partially true, pushing people away is really the easiest way to make sure it doesn't hurt like the dickens to actually be apart from them. With my family, this takes the form of unjustifiable  aggression and sarcastic comments; I've chosen to simply ignore my friends, or to keep my interactions with them as shallow as possible, gradually stretching the fabric of friendship until the form is lost.

I know that this is what I am doing because it's exactly what I did the last time I moved away for school. You would think that if I found this process painful enough to justify a friendship holocaust, that I would not have willingly chosen to repeat the traumatic event. In that case, being a glutton for punishment doesn't really live up to the reality of the situation.

And yet what everyone unfailingly and unceasingly tells me is that this is a wonderful opportunity and that I will have an amazing time. And that they are excited for me, even after I have spent the evening making passive aggressive comments designed to drive them away from me. I have good friends, but they are not making this easier for me.

What should make this easier is the fact that my visa came! There it was, tucked under the doormat when I came to the old place to hide from my family. I don't even know how it's possible, but I have the same smug expression on my face in EVERY SINGLE official government photo I have ever taken. It's uncanny. 

Smug.

Still, now I can officially enter another country (well, Great Britain), even if the person checking my passport develops an immediate dislike of me.

I'm not sure what to do now. I'm supposed to buy a new laptop, which should be exciting because it would be nice to be able to watch videos with something more than, like, daguerreotype-level quality, but the whole prospect just makes me extremely nervous. I think I'm convinced that some sort of electronic snake-oil salesman is going to take me for a ride and I'll end up with two rocks that I've been instructed to rub together in order to boot up. And so there I'll be, rubbing my rocks together in Scotland while all the sheep look at me with superior expressions on their faces, making them dead-ringers for my passport photos.

Realistically, I know that things do not happen this way. But sometimes it is difficult to convince myself that the worst is not necessarily going to occur.

Dedication, not so much

I just realized that it's been a while since my last confession (probably because I managed to keep myself busy enough to stave off blatant efforts at self pity or interest mongering), and I am concerned that keeping this going may involve more effort than anticipated. I am not good at committing to things that require a high level of personal accountability, without some sort of tangible, quantifiable result or reward. Also known as a grade.

So here's what's happened: I bought a plane ticket, but haven't heard two peeps regarding my visa. Um, a bold move. I can tell I'm committed to this course because the $1,000.00 ticket seemed like a pretty good deal, compared to what I'm about to spend on tuition and a glorified studio.

Also, last week at work, which might be the most exciting part of this entire process. I am not corporate. I wish it hadn't taken me so long to accept it. I can't imagine a worse place to spend my life.

Also, most everything is packed up. It isn't really fun this time, though. Usually I love to pack, the real life Tetris aspect of it. However, packing now signifies leaving everyone I know to embark on a course that I still feel is far from the norm, and far from a good idea. The last time I did this, packed up my entire life to move halfway around the world, everyone else was doing it, too. There's comfort in knowing that you are only doing what the rest of the world expects.

As an aside, I just made the funniest topical pun ever. I'm supposed to meet boy at a bar, and I suspected he meant the Scottish bar where we got nachos before. So I asked, "The scotchos bar?" And I CRACKED MYSELF UP. But neither he not my roommate seem to find that very funny. Assholes.

It's been a really good night with the roommate. We haven't hung out much and we've both been really stressed, so it's been easy to convince myself I'll adapt okay to not living with her anymore. But it's been five years that we've lived together. In cat years, that's a lifetime, and in people years it's almost a common-law marriage. Packing up the apartment has felt a bit like a divorce, with all the talk of yours and mine, and who is going to get the vacuum cleaner. We've lived together very, very well, and I think that might be one of the harder adjustments I am going to have to make.

Not Bridget Jones

I promise, this is not a forum for the airing of my relationship and love life woes. But I like this guy so much and time is slipping away. It makes me feel a little bit like my lungs are collapsing. This is it and there's nothing going on. Opportunity lost.

Outside impressions

I was talking to a friend...I AM talking with a friend tonight...and I am trying to engage him in a discussion about our mutual lack of direction. However, he has informed me that Scotland, and a masters, most definitively counts as a direction. So apparently, despite how rudderless I may feel about this future, it is reading as a choice and a decision to others.

Which may be why I'm not encountering the sympathy I expect when I describe my future as something that is happening TO me, rather than something I'm doing FOR me. Maybe I need to actually own this decision instead of continuing to bitch about it. This might be what people mean when they talk about being a grown-up.

Incidentally, I've been looking forward to being a grown-up for my entire life, and what I'm beginning to realize is that being a grown-up might just mean subjugating your feelings for a greater or more logical good. Which sucks.

So the only conclusion I can come to is that I'm either doing adulthood wrong, or I haven't gotten there yet. Because if adulthood is exactly what I've experienced thus far, then it makes no sense that the human race has continued to exist. I would kill myself if I knew I had already achieved everything that I can hope to from this stage of life.

There's a group of people here who come to every fair and parade and public outing, asking people to sign petitions to assist with the voluntary extinction of the human race. I wonder, maybe they would have more luck if they didn't resort to talking about excessive use of resources and what humans do to the planet, but just asked "What are you expecting your progeny to live for?"

Because what answer is there? Either you expect their lives to be better, which makes you some kind of martyr (and how is that possible, that an entire generation of unhappy people can produce a happy one?) or, you have no expectation that things will be better for your child and so you are knowingly bringing another unfulfilled person into the world. And for what? The closest I've come to wanting a child is when I've been searching for someone to pay attention to me. Really, what I want is an audience with built-in approval, and is that worth imparting life?

Ugh, I'm just trying to be deep while I wait for the booze to work it's way out of my system. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, I'm drunk again.

Maybe not now. Earlier, definitely. I've begun to realize that I use alcohol as a way to loosen myself up to the point where I can express what I really feel...but then I don't drink enough to express myself to the people who need to hear it. Not that there are many of those; most of my issues are with myself, and lord knows there is a surfeit of conversation there. Surfeit of feelings, too.

Ugghhhhhh, I'm sorry. I promise, to whomever ends up reading this thing, I will stop with the angst. It's just, right now this is where I am and I almost feel that brain-dumping all of this is a better way to explain why I'm going back to school than trying to explain it would be. I mean, who can live with this sort of thought process? Even if school is only an over-priced distraction—Sesame Street for scholars—maybe it will break me out of the loop long enough to figure out what the real problem, and the real solution, might be.

I should probably put this to bed. I've achieved enough sobriety to feel confident that the room won't spin when I lie down, which is my usual yardstick. And I've probably already opened myself up to enough criticism from imaginary parties.

Until my next attack of false sagacity or intoxication...

Tequila

Since I've had a horrible day, and since what I have learned over the past year is that alcohol is an acceptable coping mechanism, I've been drinking margaritas. To put this into context, the previous sentence took me four tries.

Anywhoodles, in addition to feeding my south-of-the-border depression, I've also spent the night casting doubt upon:
a. my decision to go back to school
b. my ability to ever be truly happy in a situation that doesn't meet my every expectation/demand
c. the chance that the world will ever meet my expectations and demands and,
d. my ability to have a healthy relationship.

This last one is the most bothersome to me currently because, even as I stand to spend $40,000.00 on a less than viable career/future, it is also almost 10pm on a Saturday and I am STILL waiting to hear from the fucker I've gotten myself all worked up around. There are more issues here than I care to enumerate or explain, but let's chalk it all up to daddy issues and a severe lack of self-confidence, and let our imaginations run wild. Have you pictured the pathetic person that the above issues connote? Now add booze, heat and desperation and you have an adequate picture of my current state.

Also, I can hear my roommate talking to her real boyfriend, with whom she is bored, and I don't feel any better about my romantic limbo.

I'm almost ready to leave, just to kaput the whole boy thing. I'm losing respect for myself that I didn't even know I had left. I AM that crazy bitch.

I should probably not tequila and blog. Will take this into consideration.

Compartmentalization

I've been having a difficult time determining just what function this...thing...I've been writing should play.  Essentially my choices are between public account of my time away at school, and private diary-type record of my thoughts and feelings about the year to come. I suppose for some people that distinction might not be an issue, but I am uncomfortable making my true feelings about things widely known, and I think this particular format might be compounding that discomfort. There are lots of aspects of my leaving that I would like to be able to work through, but much fewer that I want people to know about. I suppose one solution is to keep this "blog" and not tell anyone about it, but that seems like some sort of violation of internet law. I could just keep a diary for myself, but frankly I fear that without regular interaction/appearances I will be forgotten by all of the friends I'm leaving behind.

Not that there are many of those. It is a mark of my shame.

The other problem is that, left to my own devices and desires, I tend to resort to blatant complaining. Since that's my most consistent way of interacting with my surroundings (dissatisfaction), it isn't out of the ordinary, but it could become..."irritating" is how most people I spend considerable amounts of time with have classified it. And with my second most likely default reaction to the world being feelings of guilt, I don't know that I want to consciously keep a record that I know is just going to irk people, and then be forced to feel bad about it.

I may also be overestimating the appeal of this thing to others, anyway. It's not as if the readership here is going to be particularly high, and I certainly have no way of forcing anyone to tune in, which would otherwise seem to be the quickest route to total impatience with me.

The fact remains that, for whatever reason, I want people to know what I'm doing, but not what I'm feeling. This will become especially true as I have my inevitable first-month meltdown.

I may need to rethink this venture.

Ack

Had a discussion with a friend the other night and, following my typical protocol of disguising/diffusing my discomfort with self-deprecating humor, explained my reasoning for this little cross-pond jaunt as essentially an epic temper tantrum against my lack of viable job opportunities...unemployment with field trip benefits. Hahaha. Friend asked point-blank, "Do you think that's such a good idea?"

Crap.

The wherefores

As time ticks down toward my departure date (predicated, of course, upon receipt of visa...application made, decision as yet unknown), I have plenty of time to think about why the hell I have chosen to do this. I know how it started...when a favorite professor approaches you in the middle of a boring work week and says "You know, you could probably be a candidate for a Rhodes scholarship," well, I'd like to meet the person who could resist that amount of flattery. As it turned out, however, I was demonstrably not a good candidate for any of the prestigious dog shows in which I entered myself, and was left in what was really the worst of all scenarios: accepted to two amazing schools, with absolutely no way to pay for either of them.

This makes me think that in almost all cases, total rejection must be better than partial. Think about it in terms of relationships...the closure of the total rejection...versus the agony of the lingering emotions and possibilities. There's a reason that being "off the hook" (outside of the world of hip-hop, which is where I fear I will always remain, and anyway I might be confusing "off the hook" with "off the chain" which really just proves my tertiary point here) is a good thing. Who ever wants to be on the hook?

Anyway, I was on the hook. On the hook for approximately 24,000 GBP. Let me tell you, that namby-pamby British reputation folds a bit once you get a look at their brawny currency exchange rate. Imperialism, indeed.

So I had six months to make a choice: stay here in the states, working in jobs that I don't despise so much as they make me despise myself, feeling gradually less and less of a valuable human being, or go back to school, to become literally less valuable in terms of my personal available funds and my potential measurable contribution to society, but get to inflate my own sense of intellectual self-worth.

In a move that would probably surprise people, I've decided (that alone might surprise people...but who are these "people" whom I feel know me and predict me so well? All of those people are gone) to take a chance.

Here's the way I see it: the next year of my life will probably determine the direction of at least the next five. With that kind of exponential effect, maybe it makes sense to invest such an enormous outlay (the amount of money I would spend in a year, times five), such an emotional wrench (all of the friends who have moved away in the last year, times losing everyone I know in the course of one plane ride...p.s., we are now using discrete math), such a ridiculous arcane topic (the unimportance of history times the fact that I plan to study the history of philosophical interpretations of history, circa the 18th century)...

I've lost the gist of that sentence. Situations like this make me worry about the current state of my brain, and it's ability to keep up in academic circles. I'm concerned I'll look like a draft horse laboring around Pimlico.

And yet, when I read books about the topic I've chosen to study, I realize just how unhappy I've been with the last two years, and what an opportunity for renewed satisfaction with myself that this next year represents. I have always identified myself, first and foremost, as a brain, and my sense of worth is (probably) inextricably tied to my academic and intellectual achievements, which is why I try very hard to avoid thinking about grade inflation, which would essentially invalidate my entire existence. So when I graduated and lost the opportunity to think on a daily basis, when I realized that my insufficient employment experiences, combined with a terrible economy and gutted job market, would deprive me of any hope of a "good" job in which I feel some level of pride, I was gone, lost.

Over the last two years, I have felt constantly as though I have been slipping away. I feel like a shade. Even people who don't know me seemed to recognize it—in the jobs I have had, I quickly become known as the quiet one, the one who flies under the radar, content to do her work without leaving a ripple in her wake. I have never been that person. But I am now. I am quiet now, because I find myself with nothing of value to say. And I'm literally fading, as my lack of self manifests in an inability to feed myself. I just don't have the energy to eat, and it's easier to be hungry than to chew. I realized the other day, reaching up to touch my back, that I have never felt "the buttons" of my spine before.

I'm being dramatic.

But the point remains that I'm unhappy now, and that great tradition of returning to school when nothing else is going right feels like a pretty good option now. As for why Scotland...who knows? Maybe it's Outlander's fault. I certainly wouldn't spit in the face of a Jamie right now, and if I did he'd probably kiss me for it. Sounds nice.

So it comes to this...I am going back to school with the ostensible goal of pursuing my doctorate and becoming a professor of history, but really for the more immediate goal of no longer feeling like a waste, in all senses, of a person.

Here's hoping.

There comes a point in one's life..

I imagine everyone has had one morning where you wake up, eyes bloodshot and crusted half-closed, body stiff from passing out onto the floor some hours previous, cheek red and lined from being pressed into the carpet, which is wet with your own drool, stomach managing somehow to clench and heave as it turns over in its toxic juices, and you struggle to sit up and, hiding your tender, tender eyes from the glare of that hideous morning sun, take a look at the detritus that surrounds you and think, Where the FUCK is that stamped biometrics paperwork?

That's right, I am mid-Visa application. Check back with me in a week, and if I haven't pulled my own brain out through my nostrils, I plan to explain how it is that I came to be in this sorry state.