(no subject)

I just filled out a survey about my college experience in the classics department. And I think I want to sob hysterically, or maybe travel back in time and take the bottle or the razor blades or the cigarettes out of twenty-something me's hands and give her a hug, a blanket and some perspective,

Today, it hurts to think of college. And I can turn it into funny stories or matter-of-fact statements or sour grapes, but there's still sometimes the feeling of taking a punch, falling off the swingset, a car accident, the moments in between blind panic and resignation.

"it is the nature of stone to convert bone"

I'm talking about my body with my therapist, and how I think it is something to be subjugated, defeated and blamed. And I think I think about my past in roughly the same terms.

I can make it my fault, I can make it all my fault. If I had known how to stop drinking, if I'd known how to study, if I'd known how to make friends, if I'd known how to seek more and better help. If I'd known how not to try so hard. If I'd known how to try harder.

I have worlds of sympathy for past-me, as long as I externalize her, think of her as someone I knew, but as soon as perspective flips and that's me back there, I become ruthless. And it all worked out, I'm here and now, I'm living a life I didn't even know how to dream of, with a marriage, a mortgage and a dog.

But my hands are shaking, and deep inside, I haven't rooted out the feeling that leaving academia was a weakness of will, a defeat.

She never had a chance. She had half a dozen time bombs ticking in her genes, she did not have the money or the education to run with her peers, there was nothing in Keene, NH that had prepared her for how cold the water would be when she jumped in and she never managed to adjust to the temperature. Of course she got lost, of course all her energy was spent on getting through each successive twelve hours, of course that didn't leave any room for learning much of anything. And maybe every college student felt the same, and they just coped with it better, or without shattering.

And I wasn't broken forever, and I was probably already broken when I got there. It's hard for me to gloss my college years as anything but a failure. Yes, I got the diploma and yes, i'm still alive, and both of those things were questions at some point. But I didn't make the lifelong friends, I haven't changed the world, I haven't published anything, I'm not living in a yurt or in a palazzo.

And there's a myth about art and addiction, about how truly\ good work comes from the doomed and insane, from people burning their candles at both ends. If there was all that sorrow, shouldn't I have made something of it? Instead, I guttered in my own wax and went out.

But, I relit myself and almost all the time, that's the important part. and once I get over this mood, I won't even need the qualifier. lap puppy, sweet tea and a Lush catalog.

(no subject)

I just filled out a survey about my college experience in the classics department. And I think I want to sob hysterically, or maybe travel back in time and take the bottle or the razor blades or the cigarettes out of twenty-something me's hands and give her a hug, a blanket and some perspective,

Today, it hurts to think of college. And I can turn it into funny stories or matter-of-fact statements or sour grapes, but there's still sometimes the feeling of taking a punch, falling off the swingset, a car accident, the moments in between blind panic and resignation.

"it is the nature of stone to convert bone"

I'm talking about my body with my therapist, and how I think it is something to be subjugated, defeated and blamed. And I think I think about my past in roughly the same terms.

I can make it my fault, I can make it all my fault. If I had known how to stop drinking, if I'd known how to study, if I'd known how to make friends, if I'd known how to seek more and better help. If I'd known how not to try so hard. If I'd known how to try harder.

I have worlds of sympathy for past-me, as long as I externalize her, think of her as someone I knew, but as soon as perspective flips and that's me back there, I become ruthless. And it all worked out, I'm here and now, I'm living a life I didn't even know how to dream of, with a marriage, a mortgage and a dog.

But my hands are shaking, and deep inside, I haven't rooted out the feeling that leaving academia was a weakness of will, a defeat.

She never had a chance. She had half a dozen time bombs ticking in her genes, she did not have the money or the education to run with her peers, there was nothing in Keene, NH that had prepared her for how cold the water would be when she jumped in and she never managed to adjust to the temperature. Of course she got lost, of course all her energy was spent on getting through each successive twelve hours, of course that didn't leave any room for learning much of anything. And maybe every college student felt the same, and they just coped with it better, or without shattering.

And I wasn't broken forever, and I was probably already broken when I got there. It's hard for me to gloss my college years as anything but a failure. Yes, I got the diploma and yes, i'm still alive, and both of those things were questions at some point. But I didn't make the lifelong friends, I haven't changed the world, I haven't published anything, I'm not living in a yurt or in a palazzo.

And there's a myth about art and addiction, about how truly\ good work comes from the doomed and insane, from people burning their candles at both ends. If there was all that sorrow, shouldn't I have made something of it? Instead, I guttered in my own wax and went out.

But, I relit myself and almost all the time, that's the important part. and once I get over this mood, I won't even need the qualifier. lap puppy, sweet tea and a Lush catalog.