something to be thankful for...

NOT BEING ME!


as the whole world (except for the descendants of the Native Americans, for whom Thanksgiving - is probably one big F*** YOU in the face of their heritage and culture) enjoys the break to be with their families and friends, i am freaking the hell out about all manner of things future and looming.

I AM LOSING MY MIND. if hair were the physical extension of the mind, it's coming out in handfuls. i swear i am hallucinating, i don't feel alive most of the time, and even occasionally believe i am dead. (surely being the living dead counts...?) i've been having out-of-body experiences while riding my bike, when i had several close calls with cars that would certainly have killed me if dumb luck didn't intervene. example: i am riding my bike to the rec for my usual workout. i stop in the driveway of the arts center and look both ways for cars. seeing nothing, i prepare to cross the street. for some reason, i decide to hesitate for the briefest of moments, just as a white car comes zooming out from behind a row of parked cars. i feel the wake of its passing, the wind sweeping across my face. i can imagine its impact, as i ride into its negative space, imagining myself rolling out in front of it just as it was gaining speed, my neck breaking upon impact, my body broken as it's airborne to land in a lifeless thud on the pavement. i imagine blood and spit coming out of my mouth and eyes even while i ride my bike up to the rec and park it.

another time in the last week, i was almost side-swiped by a car on my way home from class, and as it passed by me, i imagined leaving my body behind in the spot where the impact would have occurred, and i imagined my self, the one still riding the bike, to be a ghost, or my imagination, disembodied, floating on in spite of death. (for about half an hour i wondered if perhaps i really was dead, and my existence was the result of brain flickers, a parallel existence that suddenly came awake to fill the void left by my bodied life...)

i'm losing what little self-assurance i had to begin with: i came home for the break to find out i got horrible GRE scores. even the analytical writing section, which i had hoped would be fine, turned out to be less than mediocre. there's no way i'm getting into grad school like this... and what's worse, i actually think grad school may be a better fit for me than Teach for America. how can i teach kids in poverty-stricken communities when i've never even lived in the real world myself? i'm still just a kid myself. and i'm not qualified to teach anything...

and they won't want me anyway, not given my recent failures in life in general and school in particular. even though senior project seems to be under way, it's just one thing in a slew of other things that are oppressing my life and freedoms. what's worse, this confluence of things has me paralyzed with fear, stunned with the inertia of having to begin against such weight, such sheer volume of things...

all this fear, this utter paralysis, of course gets me no where. and worse, it has me doing stupid things, such as sending this utterly pathetic email to my professor:


(the IAP referenced above is a project i was supposed to have already completed by now, but which i have yet to start, b/c it seems completely irrelevant and worse, time-consuming!)

all i want is to bind books and write things that make me (and others) happy. instead i feel half-alive but mostly dead...

blah blah blah enjoy your thanks giving
-stefan!e