a woman in crisis

i have not made many stupid, spontaneous decisions in my life.

but in the last two days i have made two extremely uncharacteristic, insanely stupid, totally crazy decisions. old me is looking at this current me, shaking her head and judging her harshly for putting herself at risk, for taking so many chances, for being so foolhardy with things like her body, her heart, her dignity, her sense of self-worth, her sense of hope. i feel so alarmed by this person i am becoming.

all in an effort to try to forget this consuming sadness that creeps over me more and more each day.

so much energy spent to lose myself in small moments where i don't remember how sad and lost i feel. but then i emerge from those moments feeling even shittier and more aware of everything, a sinking hole i will never emerge from as each day brings new depths to this despair.

----

ETA:
i know that some of this is due, in large part, to the fact that facebook has made it perpetually impossible to avoid seeing Ben's stupid face on my computer every day, particularly since he has taken to cavorting with women and friends of ours/mine/his so that i'm attacked from multiple angles, multiple times a day and reminded: he is moving on, he is seeing other people, you are a forgotten memory to him, he is happy and you are not.

these daily attacks on my fragile sense of recovery have had the following effects: profuse sweating, a nauseous feeling that rises from the bottom of my stomach and wraps around my heart and causes my heart to pound so hard i think it might kill me, a swimming dizziness in my head that i can only explain as all the tears that won't come out drowning my brain... i feel like i'm being torn down the middle, my skin ripped open and my insides turned to dust and tossed to the wind... like i'm being erased, that everything i cared so much about for the last 7 years mattered to no one but me, that i lived a silly dream and as i get closer to waking up from it more and more details are falling away, unable to be recovered.

the past is a haunting

Post traumatic stress: not just for war, she thought. She felt silly and dramatic for thinking that. But what else to call this incessant feeling? The ceased existence of what was once vibrant; the vivid aching realness of something disappeared. The feeling of emptiness- how did all those moments fill such a space in the heart and then just suddenly disappear?- and the fear it will never be filled again, a saggy receptacle stretched larger still with the weight of this sadness. The splintering of happiness into a million, haunting, ever-present but gone moments. The way a lyric in a song could cause her to recall an unwelcome feeling and send her reeling into a fit of despair in the middle of driving to buy groceries. Standing in her kitchen washing dishes, a phantom sensation of a caress on the shoulder would cause her to break and slump into herself, sobbing. Scraps of paper with hand scribbled notes, casually tacked to the wall now were precious artifacts of a bygone time, and would cause her to clutch herself for fear of fading away, crying on the couch until day receded into night, and she was still alone. Little ghosts scattered everywhere, peppered throughout the day. Every moment riddled with landmines.

Being among people had become an alien experience. She thought surrounding herself would offer a much needed distraction, a way to escape from the weight of her thoughts. But she felt the nagging tug of that darkness even more in the presence of others. The language of happiness, of excitement, made her feel foreign, lonelier than ever. Misery had become her skin, her parasite, the tug and comfort of a strait jacket.

mo(u)rning

she opened her eyes. 7:23 am. the sun was already beaming onto her face from the window across the bed from her, shining hot and bright from off the roof of the house across the driveway. the birds were perched as they were every morning for the last 47 days, heads cocked cheerily to the side, screaming their tiny lungs into the summer air. at least they were happy it was summer. at least there was constancy there. so much life and cheer in small animals, she thought. she imagined the thoughts of a little bird brain, wished for the daily happiness that caused small birds to sing.

her face was heavy and puffy, her eyes refusing to open despite feeling wide awake. perhaps it was her allergies, the endless crying that caused her face to swell like it needed an epi pen, or the incurable wakefulness. it had been 57 days since she had slept a full night. she'd toss and turn in bed, drifting between bouts of fitful sobbing and panicky night sweats. the crying helped to exhaust her enough to drift into a pretend slumber before the panic of her reality set in again and the muscles in her face, her jaw, her hands, her forehead would tense, she'd feel the weight of her existence crushing down on her like a steel clamp, and she'd be eyes open again, staring into the darkness of the night, thinking about a life spent like this and feeling afraid that she'd never enjoy a moment of calm and not-fear again. it felt like a life sentence, trapped in the cell of her body, a vessel for a punishment meted out for a crime she didn't realize she'd committed.

she would lay there in bed picking through the details of her life, hopelessly trying to find the reasons she deserved to be this unhappy. a Sysiphean task, she feared she'd find herself rolling that crushing weight around in her mind every moment for the rest of her life.

life imitates art

“But maybe all art is about just trying to live on for a bit. I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.”

– Banksy

i feel lost. like in the last few months my spirit has cleaved in two, the rotten depressed and dark parts remaining here while the other bits floated away, too light and airy and dreamy to be bound to these desolate remains. "O... these fragments I have shored against my ruins." sometimes i feel like i can see the other half of me off in a distance, or i feel like i am that distant self looking back at the miserable remains and pitying her. it becomes hard to recognize myself in a mirror. how do i get those lost parts of me back?

as a kid i would lie awake in bed at night, imagining death and the unrelenting continuance of time without being able to participate in it, of lives without my presence. of being forgotten. i didn't want fame, but i didn't want to get lost in time and forgotten. i think this is the fear that underlies the pursuit of fame – a desire to never die.

the other night i lay in bed, sobbing because i could feel that sense of dying, could feel my loosening grip on my dreams, ambitions and aspirations from when i was a kid. i used to want to be something unusual, to be earth-shattering. i wanted to be destined for extraordinary things. and i felt, as i examined my life, considered the turn of recent events, and the availability of options before me, that my life had become rather extra ordinary. and as i thought of an image of myself as a child and the image of myself now, i began to cry. i never thought it would come to this, to being another unhappy adult stuck in a monotonous lifestyle with dreary rituals and nothing beautiful to celebrate. is this what happens? we grow old and comfortable and stuck in daily procedures and stop imagining different possibilities? i'm 25 and yet i feel old, weary, life-deprived, sick of the limited options (watch a movie, take a walk, read a book, work / be a mother, teacher, accountant, secretary). i don't want to be just another anything.

when i was young i wanted to be a writer, a dancer, a storybook illustrator. i wanted to be a wild animal. i wanted to make everlasting art.

and now all i make is dollar bills.

spread some darkness so we can shine!

man, i love the holidays. i love the seasonal festivities and the excuse to be home with my family, i relish the occasional snowy blizzard that shuts everything down and makes you stay inside, and i love how dang happy and busy all the little animals seem to be. and dang-it, i love holiday food and getting all fat and happy and listening to smooth jazz at home with my parents as we are wont to do around this time of year.

what i do not love is the Holy Daze. the way people get around this time of year seriously freaks me the heck out. fighting in lines at the post office. ravenously consuming things at the mall at the Target at the Walmart at the whatever. the crazed looks on people's faces as they sit in traffic. the way people get all Animal Kingdom over a parking spot. it is INSANE. George Romero knew what he was doing. hungry zombies trapped inside a mall – does it get any scarier than that? emphatically no, and that's the same level of terror i experience whenever i am coerced to enter a mall around this time of year.

i think what makes the holy daze especially depressing is how obvious and conspicuous my/our suburban privilege becomes. and how even in the light of all this material excess, there's still a want for more. and how unachievable "more" can be. what i mean is, the kids and the adults in the suburbs are some of the saddest people you'll ever meet. and isn't that so spoiled, so excessive of them/us? like, gosh, they/we already have so much! and yet we're depressed in our warm houses, sadly crying into our chicken noodle soup or Starbucks coffee or whatever. we/they're living out our/their American Beauty tragedies. and yet, that is some real, non-neglectable sadness. serious stuff.

which is what makes this song so beautiful, so "exactly what i want to say," so... perfect. there is joy and an upbeat relentlessness to it, but what they're saying is really a cry for help and escape. they totally get what i'm trying to say about the Holy Daze. they're sad and feeling kinda weird about the whole situation but that doesn't mean they're not averse to dancing all those concerns to the side.

this is the one stand-out song on the Arcade Fire's new album that i just can't let go of*. i've been listening on repeat for practically the whole month and probably won't stop until i've escaped this suburban funk. this song makes me feel like it's possible.

keep dancing in the dark my friends,

stef

*but i still think their debut album Funeral was insurpassably their best work so far.

Michael Jordan

that's some heavy stuff, MJ. i dare say, you are too filthy rich to be a nihilist. i call shenanigans!

i wanna be sedated

hello and sorry for the lack of writing. something about June this year has me sedated. i've lost the passion for many things. eating and sleeping included. i haven't cooked anything for myself in weeks. i've been eating sandwiches and hors d'oevres for sustenance. carrots with whatever new dip looks interesting in the grocery aisles. for whatever reason (and i'm about to list possible reasons), i feel sad all the time. sometimes angry. this morning i feel angry (the morning commute is always good reason to feel angry, but this morning, it was because this huge bitch of a bus driver decided to cut me off and delay my arrival to school and then had the audacity to open her window and scream down at me. 71018. i vowed to report her. not like anyone will do anything.)

anyway, in the last month, a variety of things have happened. here, a list:

-my uncle passed away suddenly, and, for the first time, i found myself dealing with a combination of grief and guilt. any pause in activity would cause me to start thinking about it again and devolve into sobbing fits. taking a cue from Huxley, i found tv and the internet were the best opiates.

-wrapped up my year-long commitment to TFA. woo hoo.

-at 2 pm today, i will be pupil-free until august! i'm 99.9% finished with my first year of teaching!

-next monday will be my last day of summer grad school, because wednesday night i'll be in the air on the way to Istanbul.

-for the next month i'll be in France, Italy, and Turkey. (notice the banner change? that's what i feel the next month is going to be, lots of staring out of train windows.)

-leaving tonight for San Fran for my uncle's funeral. i'll see my mom and dad again, which will be good, i think. i need to see my dad and be sure he's doing ok.

-i need human contact. i miss having conversations that end with laughing. i need to be held and told things will be ok, i feel like i've been bearing this huge weight by myself and i'm going to break soon if someone doesn't help me.

-it occurs to me if this is what the working life is like, i don't want much more of it. i was having lunch with a colleague yesterday and i found myself drifting out of the conversation and thinking in a 3rd person way about myself, thinking about how weird it is that my brother must say "my sister is a teacher." when did i go from being just a sister, just a student, just a girl, to being a teacher, a "Ms.", a ma'am? i feel miles removed from where i've been.

---

the word sedated is totally appropriate for how i feel lately. doing yoga last night was, for the first time, mentally difficult, i couldn't find the energy or motivation to breathe properly. i've just been sitting around, feeling this weight sinking me. i keep thinking, i'm nearly done with this crazy year, i should be celebrating, i should be excited. maybe i'm depressed because i'm finding that's not true.

i want that feeling again, you know? getting really drunkenly happy and dancing around the living room, singing at the top of my lungs, feeling infinite and untouchable and uninhibited.

sorry. i'm sure a list of updates isn't what you come here for. i don't know why i come here any more either.

new lows

i am sitting on a towel on the floor of my bathroom, a pile of folders and papers and books beside me, trying to keep warm with a laptop in my lap and sitting as close as i can to the only heater in the entire apartment, a Thermodor built into the wall (i suspect my current use for it fails to meet its intended purpose – my guess being to eliminate bathroom odors? i dunno, that's based solely on the name and what i've heard about ppl lighting matches after taking shits: i was told the flame "burns the bad air" so you can't smell it any more, but i always thought that didn't make sense and was bad household science. anyway...)

i'm 2.5 weeks away from a blissful retreat to my home state, and only a few grad school projects away from the end of this forsaken semester, but this lump of (forgive me) shit before me is too huge to surmount, it seems. i am teetering on incompletes for 2 of the 3 grad classes and it is so fucking cold in my apartment right now, i can't get anything done. it's either crawl into bed, or sit on the floor of the bathroom next to the heater. and so it goes...

i'm fighting nausea and panic and utter depression and lack of excitement, and all from the floor 2 feet away from a fucking toilet. thank cheeses i'm the only one who uses it and i just cleaned it the other day, or this would be a really long miserable night indeed.

to the future!
-stephan!e

it must be fall...

back to showering in the late afternoon with the lights off, taking early evening naps with the music on, eating dinner alone in my room, shirking work to daydream constantly, and being helplessly and incurably nostalgic.

even with it being endless summer here, i can still feel my vestigial fall depression. like an invisible cord tying me back to the heartland. oh my old kentucky home...

---

[at the beginning of college, i couldn't stop listening to this song.
somehow, it's come to be connected to my first fall away from home.
listen: "Sparks" by Coldplay]

during my evening nap, the way i was lying on my stomach, the way my face pressed against the matress, the way i curled my arm under my head, the way i could distantly smell home, made me think, "this is what i must have felt as a baby." i could remember, somehow, lying in my crib at home, remember the softness of yellow fabric against my cheek, could imagine my now 22-year-old body as a 22-month-old baby, and felt saddened by the thought of all those years in-between. i have an image in my head now of how the movies depict the passing of time thru environmental changes – the furniture moving, the paint on the walls fading and cracking, the movement of cars and pedestrians outside, the leaves changing color and falling, growing green and spruce again – while the person of focus stands in the middle of a room, still, looking straight ahead and head on, changing only a little. i find this interesting. i'd like to measure my life in the movements my furniture makes.

---

that reminded me of a moment maybe two years ago. i was having dinner with a group of friends in the dining hall at school, and we'd been there for an hour, at least, a usual "family dinner" kind of affair. we'd all finished eating, but were just sitting there, enjoying one another's company. for some reason, i had pulled away from the conversation for a moment just to reflect. the weather outside was nice, it was just beginning to get warm out, and the sun was beginning to set. i was watching people walking to classes or returning to the dorms for the night. i was watching my friend Newman throw back his hair as he tried to eat a piece of toast with jelly. for some reason, something about the gesture – the look of unfettered glee on his face, his booming laughter, his awkward fumbling and negotiation of all that mess and hair – made me think that this was probably exactly how my friend looked as a kid, that this was someone's baby boy, that this was someone who had a mother who probably loved him very much, and probably loved to fix him peanut butter and jelly when he was a boy, would cut off the crusts and cut the sandwich diagonally, because he liked the shape of triangles better than rectangles. and now this boy, grown up and away at college, was eating that same favorite snack he loved as a kid, but probably thinking that it just wasn't the same as the one his mom would make him growing up. and i dunno why, but this brief moment, this smallest and most mundane of events made life seem very precious, and suddenly cruel. it reminded me that we were all kids once, and now, through great luck and perseverance, were growing up quite quickly into adults. i thought about the remaining year i had in college, and how terrified i was. i looked around the table at all my friends, and i imagined (or remembered) all of us as kids, imagined us small, helpless, scared, alone. and the idea both tickled and depressed me.

anyway, just things i'm remembering now that i feel fall is in my heart.

-stef

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UPDATE 10-22:

moment of doubt #103

why are fridays always the worst days of the week? why can't i get thru a week without having one really shitty day? why do i feel grateful now that it was only one really shitty day this week and not every day? is that a sign i'm improving, or just getting used to it?

today, tears. my lunch and my conference turned into one long, uncontrollable bawl-fest. the tasty sandwich i made was ruined with the taste of salty tears and frustration.

within 15 minutes during my lunch break: behavior incident report/reflection, parent phone call (to tell a concerned mother that her son skipped detention with me 2 days in a row, he now needs to come after school on Monday for tutoring with me b/c he is failing my class), a meeting with the science coach that devolved into tears and an unintentional commitment to 2 additional observations in the next week. = STRESS.

what didn't happen (that i really needed most in order to forget about my massive fails and so i could go into 6th period with a clear head): phone call to boyfriend. music. baby carrots.

but, i guess it's a sign of my growing callousness* to the situation that i didn't think about quitting. i just lamented the fact that this isn't getting any easier, and i'm not sure it ever will. (*i use the word callousness not to mean that i am not caring, that is certainly far from the truth. i mean it in the way that i think of callouses or blisters from breaking in shoes: it hurts at first, but then you grow this thick skin around it so you can't feel it any more and you can deal with it, keep walking. functional non-feeling.)

anyway, to give you a glimpse into my life, below is the behavior incident report/reflection i wrote before breaking down into tears. i keep a log of every incident, and it is now becoming apparent that the notebook i am using may be too small. i write in it almost every day. this is ostensibly ridiculous.

---

friday oct 17

i spoke with my student marvin after school and let him know that i wanted to talk about something. i told him that all i want for my kids, what i think about most, is their happiness and their well-being. i want to know that my kids will be happy and live good lives. that's why i'm a teacher. i come to school every day and want to see that my kids are succeeding and doing well in school, because those are the ones i know will be safe and happy when they are older.

i told Marvin that i think he's smart. he can do the work when he really tries and works hard at it, and that makes me happy because it lets me know that he has a chance at a good life. but, he can throw that all away, he can lose that if he doesn't do his work. he and matthew are both really smart and can do the work, but sometimes when they sit together they start acting like fools. they both need to learn to be in a class together and not lose focus on their work.

i asked Marvin why he was suspended on monday. he said someone was trying to start fights with him so he "socked em." i told him he needs to get his anger in check because if he doesn't now, he's going to have more trouble later in life. i told him that people who can't learn to control their anger go to prison, i asked him if he knew what that was like. he said he didn't. i told him that prison is a lonely place, you sleep on concrete, you don't get enough food, and people usu. die in prison. i don't want that for any of my kids, and i don't want that for him. i told him that doing well in school is his ticket out of that life, that it's his chance to make something better for himself.

i almost started crying when i told him that i want all of my students to have the best life possible. i want to make sure that they have all the opportunities they can, that they have choices. they might not realize it now, and they might even hate being in class, but they need to understand that i'm doing this so that they can enjoy their lives later. but i need them to work hard at it, because i need their help, i can't do it alone.

--

Matthew - wouldn't do his work, Ms. Cue came to me after break and said that Marvin and Matt. were sitting on the stair banister and she told them to get down for their own safety. she said they looked at her and just crossed their arms, acting dumb or like they didn't hear or understand her. Matthew pretended he couldn't hear her (that he was deaf). when i told him to sit down, he defied my authority. i got super-pissed, and told him once, told him again. then i told him to "sit his ass down." he didn't. i told him to grab his things and come with me to the office. i took his folder, and marched him down to the dean. we sat with Dean Dixon, and Dixon talked to Matthew about how this behavior needs to change. he is down there 2-3 times a week. if he can't get this under control now, he's going to have a ton of trouble down the road. Dixon and i explained to matthew that we are here to try to HELP him and he is taking it for granted, seeing our concern as weakness and trying to get away with stuff. we told him that if he chooses to take it for granted now, he would only suffer more when ppl don't care to help him later. we told him if he wants to avoid being homeless, he needs to work hard now and ensure his future.

i asked Dixon what happens next with M, what is the next step? clearly suspension is not a good route, he enjoys being out of class. i wonder now if he acts out on purpose just to get out of class. i asked what kinds of interventions we can take to help Matthew and get this problem under control. Dixon said he had called home before and would call again (matthew's father is ill and dean dixon talked to him about being "a man" and helping his mom take care of the family, why would he want to cause them extra grief?) and Dixon asked if i wanted him suspended from class or school. i said i'd like to avoid suspension if possible, but would like to refer him to a program, possibly anger management and work habits, Boyz to Men was mentioned too. Dean Dixon said he would try those things. i also told him to call the mom for me and tell her that if this happens again, i would like her to come in and sit with him IN CLASS until he can self-manage his behavior.

Dean came back to my room with Matthew after a few minutes and i was back in the room. dixon asked to speak to me to the side. he said he called matthew's mother, and all he could hear was the TV turned up really loud, she couldn't really even hear or understand him and he felt he wasn't getting thru to her. but he informed her of what would happen if matthew misbehaved again and he said he would follow up with her.

when he turned around, matthew was not doing his work again. Dixon asked him to get to work. Matthew said i cussed at him, told him to sit his ass down. Dean Dixon said he should have heeded my advice.

how do you stop this train?

( ( listen while you read ) )

The past week was filled with ups and downs. While I’m relieved that my hectic schedule is becoming more and more routine, that is also my biggest concern. Things are too routine. Things are hitting a groove, and I don’t want to run this track. Is there any way to stop this train? Derail? Jump off? Stop throwing in coals? I dunno, but I’m working on it.

Sometimes when I talk to my parents on the phone I get frustrated, too quickly upset, because they act like everything is ok. My mom asks me mundane questions, like “did you have a good day?” or “what are you going to eat for dinner?” and I get pissed off (and then regret it later) because those questions assume everything is easy, that the biggest thing I have to worry about is what I’m going to eat next. And though that’s not such an unreasonable concern, I feel like there are priorities that overshadow my nutrition. Like, the fact that I feel so desperately heartsick, the fact that I’m growing to hate my job more and more each day, that I feel so helplessly incompetent at my job, that I spend every weekday waiting for the weekend, and that I spend every weekend dreaming about a future far, far away, with a home, with laughter. A future where I don't have to wait for one hour of every day to be happy and watch the rest of it fall apart.

I’m a hopeless depressive. I think on some level I delight in misery, I can’t remember to just be happy. For instance, as I write this, I remind myself how silly and whiny I must sound to someone who’s lost a family member, friend or lover to war, disease, natural disaster, human folly. And I try to move on with my day, as if nothing is wrong. (Even as I write this, I think “is something wrong?” I can’t identify it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.)

Anyway, this whole thing was meant as an exercise to get me started writing so I could write a reflection for my grad class in Special Ed Fieldwork. The prompt asked me to “identify a challenge in the past week.” The question’s answered, but I can’t submit this. So, back to work…

-stephanie

Sisyphean punishment

image source

i'm beginning to suspect i've done something to deeply offend the gods.

why else would they have doomed me to such a Sisyphean task? i can think of no better phrase to describe my experiences thus far teaching 6th grade special ed math and science in south central LA: the long days and nights of constant worrying and physical stress, the huge gaps in achievement meant to be overcome in one year, the endless lesson-planning for classes the next day that don't even see full implementation because of my students' eruptive behavior, the false sense of achievement and hope when my students finally understand a concept one day, only to feel extra deflated and dispirited when they come back the next day having forgotten it all again, spending 3 whole weeks just trying to teach the bare basics of math, while the students constantly scream and yell saying it's "baby work" and still get all the problems wrong, giving up my breaks and my lunches and yes even my dinners to meet with students, talk with parents, grade papers and write new worksheets, only to come in the next day and have to do it all again.

HUGE BOULDER + HILL = ETERNITY OF FRUSTRATION.

i am quickly growing to hate my job. i spend the majority of my day waiting for the day to end. when not thinking about that, my thoughts turn to trying to calculate the remaining days before i am completely free of my contract and can walk away. June 2010 just seems like too long to wait...

i'm wondering where my train derailed... i came here with good intentions, to take a teaching job so i could help people and feel like i'm making a difference, to avoid a life in corporate america and a desk job with no sense of purpose, to avoid feeling miserable all day and hating my life and my work and never seeing the sunshine.

i never knew my dream job would actually turn out to be my personal hell.

and this is only week 4. there are 32 more weeks to go. (my students could not tell you what percentage of the year is finished. they could not tell you how many weeks total there were to begin with.*)

welcome to the jungle!
-stef


*there are 36 weeks in the school year (32+4=36). i'm only 11.1% done (4/36=.1111=11.1%)

searching for home

that's my room last year, 2 or 3 days before the end of the year. i took this picture in a fleeting moment before i ran out of the room to meet friends to eat lunch at the dining hall, and something about the light that morning, the way my bed looked, the wood of the floor, the look of all my senior project books stacked up on my floor, all read, annotated, and waiting to be returned to the library, made me halt, smile while fighting back the urge to cry. it was the first really gripping moment i remember knowing i would miss moments like these, these significant pauses before a sudden leap.

---

i've been dragging my feet around my apartment in Los Angeles for the past week, remembering how happy i was just a few days ago, thinking about how funny it is, these changes in moods, the feeling of safety and completeness suddenly rushing away from me, like a parachute that won't open, just a useless backpack – dead weight.

i find myself trying to preserve some memory, some trace of a past self, a past life, a vestigial existence, in order to live thru my present. i'm collecting all the salvagable bits and pieces – the smell of the linens on my bed, the warmth of sunlight thru tree leaves coming in my window, the look of shadows on wooden floor, the smell of an old book and the feel of a hardbound in the crook of my arm as i walk around town, the tune of a Billy Bragg song i used to hum, the slight hum of a harmonica – and trying to weave them together, trying to create a home from them, some shelter for my troubled mind, some comfort to retreat to when i forget how to fall asleep at night, when i get tearful and remember that there's no one home to eat my dinner with, again.

the time in LA doesn't move. it never rains. it never gets colder, so if it weren't for the shortening days, i wouldn't know that we were heading toward december.

i feel an onsetting depression: i try to celebrate small successes – a tasty self-cooked meal, finding textbooks online for almost $100 less than bookstore price, fixing the broken printer at home, finding my keys after absent-mindedly misplacing them, crossing the street without getting hit by a car – but i find i'm pretty good at realizing when i'm trying to fool myself.

it's funny: when i would go back to school in Oxford for the fall, i would always get bouts of seasonal depression with the change in weather. the sudden cold, the lengthening nights, the accumulation of work, all would make me miss the summer and my family, and home.

but today, and yesterday, and all the many days before, i've been wondering what life in Oxford is like, missing the closeness of everything, the convenience of having 20 or so friends in walking distance, of having constant company, of never feeling alone. i miss going to class and being pleasantly surprised to bump into a friend on the way over on my bike. i miss my bike. i miss classes i enjoy. i miss having friends.

i had a post in mind when i came here, but it seems i've already written it. over a year ago, i wrote these two posts back to back and they, as reflections on my present state, echo and project my distress.

i'm listening to Billy Bragg now, and i'm pining for home.

-stephan!e

just had the shittiest day.

no, make that: "having the shittiest month."

EVER.

i welcome june 2010 with open arms!

(but will settle for august 2008 for now...)

sleep-deprived and depressed,
stef

updates on the fly!

yo!

quickies:
-i started teaching 6th grade summer school English this week (this is only day 2 of instruction. huzzah!)
-it is going well and i love teaching and feeling like i did a great job when all my students are getting the answers on their assessments right. that is pretty cool.
-also: getting used to introducing myself as "Ms. Lee" and being called by that name. weird at first, fo sho, but def growing on me.
-as much as i love teaching and i love the kids, i am getting to hate the routine. and it's not a teaching issue, it's more of a corporation/management issue. i'm pretty sure that no matter how hard i try to love "the man" the more "the man" hates down on me. *shrug* i'm over it.
-totally sleep-deprived today. only got 2 hours in-between running to make copies, drawing posters, assembling work packets and writing 4 feckin lesson plans last night. this shit is bananas. teachers need to sleep!
-so much work to do tonight: grading tests and worksheets, entering data into a tracker, ANOTHER lesson plan and set of worksheets to make (WTF?!) and they also expect me to go to an evening session from 7:30 to 9?! i couldn't even stay awake during the day sessions...

in sum: being in california and not sleeping and maybe slightly because of my company, is wreaking havoc on my english.

WANTING TO SHOOT MYSELF IN THE FACE (cuz i've already shot myself in the foot!)
-stef

the army had half-a-day...

i'm not a huge patriot, but, i gotta say: i'm particularly grateful for the July 4 holiday this year. in fact, it may be finding its place as my favorite holiday of the year so far, because TFA is only doing half-a-day tomorrow.

which, thankfully, means a slew of awesome things for me and my currently lamentable social life:
1) i get to sleep in!! (i get to wake up at 7, rather than 5 am! WOOT.)
2) i don't have to wake up early and get on a fucking school bus (and then proceed to try to sleep thru blaring top 40 radio music. yes, it's like middle school all over again...)
3) i don't have to fight thru 9 hours of physical shutdown, and i can actually try to enjoy the teacher training sessions, rather than worrying about the next time i'll get to use the bathroom or having to sacrifice food or sleep time to get work done
4) i don't have to ride a bus back from training, which means i can high-tail it outta there as soon as we close, which means as soon as we close, i am grabbing my weekend bag and hitting it on foot, walking to the closest coffee shop to drink an iced tea and read a book, and taking a nap until my friend Mike picks me up for our July 4 non-patriot plans (we're both film nerds, so we'll be having a film night and maybe some Thai food... maybe heading to a hipster dance party in Echo Park)

with work being exhausting and not feeling like i'm in a stable, safe, or comfortable mental or emotional state, all i really want right now is to go home and be safe and warm and taken care of for a while. i want a bed that feels like it's mine and be able to lock myself in the bathroom and take a warm bath and listen to my music loud and run around barefoot and make myself tea in a clean kitchen. and of course, more than anything, i want my mom's home-cooked meals and the privilege of not having to explain myself to anyone or feeling like i'm constantly being judged. yes, that would be nice.

i'm going to spend the weekend with my uncle and aunt, maybe go for a long walk and think about things. when i started this post i was extremely happy and thursday felt like a friday and tomorrow felt like a weekend, but now i'm remembering there is work still to be done, confusion still to surmount, and now feeling insecure and unsure of something i never thought to doubt (and feared having to doubt the most) and there's no way home to see things right, so i'm facing the painful realization of being stuck.

-stephanie

THE FUCK?!!! (part deux)

i come home from school and begin the tedious process of unpacking all my shit just so i can repack it to move out to L.A. to begin my stint as a teacher.

and what do i need more than anything in the world right now? well, to be back among friends and some hugs, ideally, but i'll settle for some comfort music (the one song i can't get out of my head right now is "tonight, tonight" by the smashing pumpkins, and another S.P. song i don't know the name of but that i know i would recognize it if i could only hear it again, because i was overwhelmed with a feeling of forwardness, of no-looking-back, of immediacy and now, that flooded out the words, all i could hear was the beat and the swell of violins, a tolling bell, as i drove around in the infinite dark and expanse of cornfields in northern illinois, clutching the hand of someone i love, wishing we could drive forever and ever into that blackness and this song would never end and i would never have to let go, never have to say goodbye or even goodnight)

but i come home and plug in my harddrive, and what do i hear? an awful clicking, the whir of a struggling fan trying to bring my computer to life, and then the tinny sound of a clunky alert on my computer, telling me it can't read the disk and to eject it. wow, i want to vomit. this is the same sickening feeling i got in my stomach about a month ago when this happened the first time. and why should i be surprised? of course this would happen, i'm karma's biggest bitch. i want to vomit all over Bill Gates and Steve Jobs' faces right now, for inventing my dependency on technological happiness and for turning my life into invisible data, so easily corruptible and so easily lost. bastards!

i can't even begin to contemplate the scope of what i lost this time. (gag reflex). just about everything of value to me was on that stupid little lunchbox-sized piece of machinery, all of my writing, all of my plans for future writing, drawings, photos of friends and video projects (many still in progress), concert videos, memories of friends, lovers and family, and so many, oh so many good albums i may never be able to recover again. funnily, the only thing of huge value i did manage to save on my laptop was my recently completed senior project. and i don't even care about it, because i have dozens of hand-bound copies lying around my room right now. the materiality of it makes me ill. (gag).

i'm going to go the library now, i guess, to try to find a copy of the Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. and then i'm gonna put Billy Corgan on full blast on my half-blown speakers and proceed to drown my sorrows in lemonade and whiskey. and when i sober up again, i'm gonna invest in a typewriter. perhaps i shall become a luddite.

[edit: i go to the library website and find that, of course, both their copies of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness are lost and/or missing. such is my life these days...]

[edit #2: after looking at smashing pumpkins downloads, i realize that the song we were listening to in the car on the ride home was "Disarm."]

with infinite sadness,
stephanie

THE FUCK?!!!

48 hours before senior project is due: i'm sitting at my desk, listening to music and working on my paper. i have 10 documents open at once, maybe 3 applications. i'm pressing F9, which on a mac, lets you zoom out and look at everything at once, so you can find your bearings.

i zoomed out and it wouldn't zoom back.

i heard gears spinning, the clicking of some hardwear trying to find its place, a fan doing its best to keep the system from overheating.

3 hours later and my harddrive would be pronounced dead on arrival. when the guy at the apple store plugged it in to try some diagnostic tests, he said he couldn't even detect a harddrive on there.

now i have a useless piece of empty computer, which will cost close to $2K to recover the data from. and i don't know if my external harddrive got fried in the process too. i'm just hoping i made it away from this with just a small piece of my music collection still intact on that external...

i feel like the Universe's bitch right now. what did i do???!! i keep wondering why my karma is so for shit these days. maybe i hit a squirrel with my car and didn't know, in which case i'd like to formally issue my apology: i'm very sorry, it was nuthin personal, i actually love squirrels very much, if i could, i'd adopt the dead squirrel's family and let them live in my home.

just pleeeeaaaase, stop it with the bad karma!

less than 24 hours to go, and i am in some deep shit.

-stephanie

where is my mind?

i can't do it... i can't do anything. i can't write because i can't think, i can't think because i haven't slept, i can't sleep because i can't stop thinking, can't sleep because i can't stop writing...

there are miles to go before i sleep...

i know the end but i don't know how to get there.

this is what it must have felt like when Zeus's head split open and out came Athena. 

at wit's end

an email sent to my Senior Project advisors this evening:

Hi Bill and Bill,

I am facing a huge dilemma. I am nearing 40 pages on my senior project now, and the pages I have are pretty well-researched and -written, in my opinion.

However, the project I had planned to write at the beginning of this year is far from done. I could easily write another 80 or 100 more pages, there is just so much I have in mind to discuss and examine in the project.

However, I also know that in the time I have available, this is impossible. But, I don't feel good about turning the project in. It doesn't feel complete, even though I've technically written all the pages I need to write.

What should I do? I can't afford to stay this summer and finish the project, and really, I don't think 2 or 3 more months will really allow me to finish the project I had in mind. The scope of the project demands a book, and I don't have time to write one, in a week or in a summer.

If I reduce the project to just the first two chapters, I feel that my individual voice and perspective on the topic will be left out. But, if I try to write the chapters I have left, they will likely be under-researched and poorly written.

Please advise me, I am at wit's end.
-Stephanie