first meltdown of the year

i can't go on like this...

i feel so stupid. so many ppl go thru much worse than this. ppl go to war, ppl get cancer, ppl lose loved ones, ppl die. and i can't just sit my ass down for 3 hours and write my thesis, something i've wanted to do since i entered college and the only thing i have to do to make sure i graduate.

what is wrong with me?!

that's what i keep asking myself. i used to be so good at writing papers, i could sit down for hours and just write endlessly until i was done. i was so clear-headed, so facile with words, concise and cogent. i wouldn't outline or anything, i would just organize the paper in my head, sit down and it would come flowing out of me. it was like magic. i didn't even have to take notes on my reading, i could remember exactly where on the page i read it, could remember what page, and if i didn't, it would be no problem for me to flip back through the book and find it.

i don't know how time has shifted things in the opposite direction. now, i sit amidst piles of books, can't keep them apart, can't find a simple quote or even remember which book it was in, let alone which chapter or page it was on. i feel i am losing my mind.

i've watched winter become spring become winter become spring again. while nature was wantonly blasting thru the seasons, i've been watching her work at my window(s) and feeling older and lazier and more and more incompetent. i'm an old woman now, i can' t do this...

i feel horrible, not just because of these things, but because this thesis really is something i care a lot about. that's maybe why it's hard to do this "right." my friend Brandon described it once as feeling like he wasn't "good enough" to write his thesis. like, the topic required such care, such delicate treatment, that somehow he felt unworthy of handling it. like he wouldn't be careful enough, didn't possess the mental dexterity, didn't have the proper amount of time. and i feel all these things too, but also i'm feeling a little beat up in the process.

it's kinda like making love. i mean, what is this, if not an act of love? i wouldn't have picked something this impossible to condense into an 80-page undergraduate thesis if i didn't love it (right?...) you can't make love with someone(/thing) if you don't feel it loves you back. or at least that there's some chance of mutual connection. you ought to feel like you're doing things because you genuinely care about them, and that the things you do will matter. but really i just feel bullied and used. i am giving so much time and care to it, and it's always fighting me back. and then i'm struggling to be faithful to the task. i'm distracted by the weather, by film projects, by all the fun new literature i could be reading instead... this is an abusive relationship. i feel battered, my esteem is suffering, i feel ugly and inept, and lo, i'm suffering performance anxiety.

well, it's all intellectual masturbation anyway...
-stephanie