Today is one of those days where it feels as if this fight isn’t worth it.

I’m thinking about OLB; we’re sharing a room in Chicago (stupid. I don’t want any comments on this. I know) and a 13 hour drive there.

I don’t think he’s a bad person, but part of me is angry at him, even though I don’t have the real right to be. He showed up in my life at a time when all the bad (drinking, depression, etc) was accelerating. I showed up in his life 3 months after he broke up with girlfriend of 10 years. Bad timing all around. It isn’t his fault I was isolating myself from everyone else in my life the same time I was actively seeing him. But I also hate that I have to feel all icky and guilty, even if it’s only in my own head, about wanting the emotional component with him, even if it was for the same reason. See, I know it’s lame for me to talk about how totally right and comfortable and awesome it felt to be wrapped up in his arms, because it did, and I certainly can’t say that for anyone I’ve been with since the Ex-Ex-Ex. But it was just so incongruent that that comfort came without the emotional component even though I logically recognized all the reasons why romance was certainly not going to be part of our arrangement.

And I’m (mostly) okay with the fact that things didn’t (and weren’t going to) work out between us, but I just want to find some way of saying something before we spend a day together trapped in a car, because we have never talked about any of it, not really. And while him, being him, probably doesn’t feel the need, I being me, do, and I’m thinking if he has a problem with me saying “this is something we need to briefly discuss. Deal with it” then he can go deal with it on his own.

The Dar Williams song “Mercy of the Fallen” makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry because in that song it is too palpitably Summer 2004. I hear that song and I’m driving up Glen Ave and it’s dark, and there’s an Iced Skim Caramel Machiatto in my cup holder, because I stopped by work that evening, because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I was sitting on my roof (my new favorite place) and that song came on over my shuffle and I wanted to throw my laptop off the roof.

Then I put on JBJ’s “Welcome to Whereever you Are” and it’s October of 2005 on the promenade in JC, where I was feeling pretty much the way I am now. Sitting on a bench, looking across the river. I still look across the river now, it’s just from the other side.

It’s growing pains. That’s what it is; or has to be. I was pretty firmly entrenched in growing up, but then I had to be all intellectual and go off to grad school and now I have to start over. There’s this expression in the last of the Jessica Darling books about how NYC lets you NOT grow up because instead of cooking, you get take-out, and instead of doing laundry, you can send it out, and you can take a cab if you get too drunk, and you never buy, you rent, etc, etc and despite the fact that its chick-lit its some pretty accurate truth.

Michael called me this morning and we talked about this phenomenon of impatience and frustration and waiting. Michael will occasiaonally frustrate me due to his inherent optimism/faith etc, but lately, he’s been my rock. I tell him things I can’t imagine telling anyone else. Despite the fact that we have seen each other IRL a small number of times since I transferred out of Hampshire we have apparently had a big influence on each other.

A Dashboard Confessional song comes on. It’s April 2004 and I’m floundering. I just dumped my boyfriend. I’m trying to find love with my crush of 2 years who is suddenly interested in hooking up with me. I am being profoundly stupid, generally, and getting my heart broken because seriously Rachel, hooking up with no strings is what people DO in college, and HWSNBN never indicated anything but.

So there are a lot of songs that there to remind of stupidity, and sadness, and ickiness and blah. And when I’m missing a piece I can always go to iTunes and download. Curse and bless technology!

Right now, I hope I’m just having the problem Michael diagnosed: that I’m in a weird place in the growing up process and nothing is settled and that’s why I’m all on edge and nonsense.

But then, it’s 6:30 on a Saturday, and I should be getting ready to go out or whatever, but instead I’m wearing a hoody and underwear, and I don’t want to do anything. I don’t even have an appetite. And all I’m going to do is maybe have some crackers and watch TV.

I’ve traditionally called March-April “this time of year,” and in doing so may have missed the fact that it’s actually October that finds me in a funk. I don’t know if “Seasonal depression” is an accurate description, (or if there is a danger of seasonal depression becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.) but man, what the fuck, self? Have you not you usually spend October all cranky and on edge and meh for usually no good reason?

Sure there’s been a lot of good in my life lately, enough to cause lots of moments of giddiness and self-affirmation bullshit.

But finding myself wanting to crawl out of my own skin for the fourth morning in a row, and remembering I felt this way last October, and the October before that. And hm. Because I’m self-absorbed, I’m reading over the Octobers, in my archive, and I found this  written one year ago today.

It’s incredibly frustrating to me to just not feel like doing anything. I’m back in Astoria, back where I belong, have a great job, great apartment, etc, etc and all I want to do is curl up and watch Saved! For the millionth time.

I want to force myself to be social to see if I snap out of this. but on the other hand, the absolute last thing I want to do is be social after work. I think about the little things I have to go home and do like clean up and pick up all the change on my floor and thinking about how I have to do little things like that makes me squirm and want to scream.

This is also frustrating, because NaNo is coming up, and I really want to participate full-on this year, and actually go to the meet-ups and write-ins. I want to write the story that’s been following me around for so many years, even though it may be ridden with cliches and horribly maudlin. Basically, I want to tell the story of not wanting to get out of bed in the morning, and what happens when you get out of bed. But it would help me out a lot if lately, I wanted to get out of bed in the morning. Not that I’m horribly depressed or anything, because I’m not. I don’t know what I am.

So maybe it’s time to do what I did after I wrote that entry. Get back into therapy. I have good health insurance starting November 1st. And past experiences with therapy prove that I am indeed one of those schmucks for whom therapy works. Part of me hates that I “need” therapy to stay at an even keel, but…if it helps, I’m going to do it. I like myself too damn much when I’m happy, and healthy, and productive, and peaceful to deny it to myself just because I’m a little hung up on the stigma of therapy.

The $12 a week a pay for it is way cheaper than alcohol as self-medication. That G-d for my amazing benefits package

I am so unnecessarily bitchy and angsty right now. I hate Chicago. I grew up in suburbia and spent a year in NYC, but I am annoyed by my comparatively “street smart” skills. I’ve always been told I look pissed off all the time; just my normal facial expression, and that that’s why I never get heckled. But I’m sick of living in a neighborhood where I can get mugged or assaulted by a 16 year old. If I’m paying this much rent, I don’t want this type of neighborhood.

I hate this apartment; it’s a rip-off, and its directly over the trashroom so by the time its pick-up day the smell permeates, and it faces a giant Soviet style apartment complex that is full of sketchy tenants who are loud at night.

I hate what Uchicago has done to me. 9 months ago I was happy. I wouldn’t qualify myself as unhappy right now, but I’m all angsty and unsure about the future and that nonsense, and its like WTF was the point of an MA program, when all its done is left me  behind my peer group in terms of job experience?

I woke up hating the universe this morning, and subsequently hating myself for hating the universe. I hate feeling this way, and a large part of why is because I know how it is to feel differently.

I just miss being so ridiculously happy. I miss feeling high on life — it’s a hard high to come down off of. And feeling like this segues into a whole other mess of random tangents and insecurities and blah.

I derive a weird form of comfort from the fact that I can just admit all this nonsense instead of painting pretty pictures. I’m Not. Happy. It’s so much easier to just admit that rather that expend all my energy trying to pretend I am, because then I can just go about my day and feel more normal, or something. I’ve gotten over taking myself seriously on Depression. It’s just another one of my quirks that pops up occasionally and has to be dealt with. That attitude keeps me from getting too sad and nonsense, forces me to laugh, and reminds me that I’m still pretty okay.

Positive Thinking/Things That Make Me Happy
-I’m wearing navy today. Navy makes my eyes look pretty
-I’m meeting up with some people from my Methods class for lunch/study group today. We’re going to try and make it a regular thing.
-In doing my reading for another class, it was nice to realize that my OCD habits in my IR class paid off — three years later, I still remember useless things like what the Treaty of Aix-Chappelle settled and the significance of the Conference of Berlin.

That’s true friendship people.

But I Believe I’m Worth Coming Home To

My grades aren’t that awful; my first semester grades from Skidmore were worse than these, and I’m not even so concerned about the numbers on my transcript (because I can get by, I can still got to grad school if I want…I hope) so much as about this pattern I’m in, this terrible pattern of sliding backwards and caring less and less. I’m so deeply sick of everything. Work has always been my stress relief, where I buried myself when I was lonely and needed to keep from falling apart.

It’s not that learning doesn’t seem meaningful to me anymore. It’s just that when I look at my college career and how I’ve spent it, I feel empty, like, what the fuck have I done in the past 3 years that will be of value to me a year from now, or even six months from now? Very little. Graduating in a few months is terrifying, but I’ll die if I have to stay at Skidmore any longer. The past 3 years haven’t been good. They haven’t been awful, but they haven’t been good, and since leaving Hampshire I haven’t let myself ever admit that. I’ve toughed myself up, hardly ever cried (the last month excluded) and I’ve survived on caffeine and anxiety and pride and drive.

I wrote an LJ entry back in December, only a line long “I have never wanted something I can’t have this badly in my life.”

I still want what I wanted then, and despite evidence to contrary, I’m no closer to getting it. It’s all I want, all I can see, it’s like I have blinders on, and the importance of everything else fades because I know deep down I’m still weak enough to give it all up for that.

This has all come at the worse possible time, second semester of my junior year. THE time to make myself look as impressive as possible, and I blew it, and I only half care. This summer I need to work my ass off, make some money, try to forget what I need to forget, let go of what I need to let go of. I need to stop crying, to stop feeling, to stop being such a fucking mess. I need to stop over thinking, hell I need to stop thinking. I need to work as many hours as possible, even though I’ll stare off into space and daydream when I’m making cappuccinos, entering data, wiping down countertops and making photocopies. I’ll daydream, but at least I’ll get paid while I’m doing it. I need to ride out this lazy phase, throw myself into reading ‘intellectual’ books, take some OCD notes, rearrange the pieces of my academic life, and hope and pray the rest falls into place.

I need to follow through on this, but I’m terrified I won’t be able to.