|
Yesterday, I woke up depressed. It was the overly analytical type of mood where I went over every single sentence in my head a hundred times after the conversation was over. "Why did you say that? You should've said this. You are so hopeless at this, Sarah. Why don't you just give up?"
It lasted all day, until 11:30pm, when I did give up. I shut the door, turned off the lights, got into bed, and curled up in a ball with the bear. And then, I started talking to myself. Out loud, in a whisper, I talked to myself for a really long time... more than two hours, I think. "Sarah, tomorrow you are going to wake up, take a shower, and start over. It's okay to be alone. You don't have to care what they think. You need to care what you think first. You need to like yourself first, because you are the only thing that matters." I talked to myself like that for about a while, until I started talking to myself in the first person- "I need to like me first. I'm okay. It's okay to feel terrible." And this amazing thing happened- I felt better. I don't know what made me do it in the first place, but it helped. And I came to the conclusion that I have two problems- I'm bored and I have no real friends. I know I'm bored. I'm tired of this whole college thing. I haven't heard anything interesting since I've gotten hear. There hasn't been a single thing that made me wake up the entire time I've been at this school. I don't really think it's the school's fault... I just think I'm done. I don't need this anymore, I need time to find out what I want to do and who I want to be, and I can't do that in college. There are days that I am absolutely terrified that I am never going to be passionate again. I can't even find a novel that I can sit down and read. Everytime I try to start a book I fall asleep, and that terrifies me. Who am I if I don't have the concentration to read a book? My whole identity is wrapped around books. It's not just that. I'm watching TV more, and I rarely remember what I saw an hour later. I am behind in every single one of my classes, and I don't care. I have a shelf full of books I haven't read that looked good when I bought them, and when I open one up I can rarely get through the first page. My mind wanders 24 hours a day. And I am turning into my mother. She always said I'm a lot like her, and I never believed her. How could I? She comes home from work and sits in front of the tv until she starts to doze off, and then she goes upstairs to bed where she reads one page of a book before she falls asleep. Something inside of her died years before I was born, and now it's dying inside of me and I don't know how to stop it. It's funny, really, how I alternate between saying, "I want to be normal, please just pretend I'm normal." and "look at me! I'm incredible, and I've done incredible things, and why doesn't anybody notice?" Once in a while, I will even admit to myself that I didn't get here by working hard, I got here by drifting. And once in a while I will even admit that I don't know anyone else who could get A's in the classes I'm taking studying the amount I study. Except for required assignments that were always due the next day, and practice tests for Chemistry the day before the test- I haven't studied in weeks. There are hundreds of pages of reading that I will never do. And once in a while, I will admit that I could pass any class in the schedule with my eyes closed. Most of them, I could get a B+ with my eyes closed. Does that sound conceited? I never admit it, because it sounds conceited in my head, and I would never actually tell anyone that because then I know it would sound conceited. But it's still the truth. There was someone in my health psych class that got a 44% on the test, and the average grade was a D. And I got a 92% by showing up to class and skimming the chapter summaries- I didn't even reread my notes. And that really disturbs me. Because even though it's nice to get good grades, and I try not to take them for granted... it's boring. And I am not at all sure why I'm still here. I've got another whole year of this before I graduate, and I'm not sure why I want to come back. Last night, when I was talking to myself, I asked myself, "Why are you doing this?" And every single answer I came up with, "Because everyone expects me to." "Because my parents really expect me to." "So I can say that I did it." They all sounded like they were for someone else. I couldn't come up with a single answer for why I am doing this. And I realized, I am really not doing it for me, and I should be. I should figure out why I want this, or whether I want this, and do it because of that. But the only thing I could come up with when I told myself that is, "I don't know what else I would do." ...and I don't really think lack of options is an excuse for torturing myself if I can decide I really don't want to do this. Because I could do anything. ...or at least I can in 7 months when I turn 18. But I could do most anything now. And I should probably know what the options are before I tell myself the most important thing is graduating in the year 2000 when I'm 18, because the closer I get to the the less important it seems. ...the other problem, that I have no real friends, is really my fault. And it occured to me, I'm not lonely. Logically, I think maybe I should be, and I am a lot of things, but I'm not lonely. I don't mind having "no real friends," I mind not having people to hang out with, and I mind when the people I thought I had to hang out with don't invite me. And that's my fault. They don't invite me because in the past I always said no and I never show any interest in doing anything with them. I'm going to try to fix that. And next year, if I come back, I'm going to live with mystery suitemates and I'll try again. And that thought last night completely erased all the bad feelings I had about having no one to live with next year. ...but I also realized that the people I live with have no idea who I am. And I have trouble feeling comfortable around people who have really normal life stories (i.e. "I have an older sister and a younger brother, I've always gone to the same school, I was a cheerleader in high school, I have a steady boyfriend, and we plan to get married after college.") ...when I'm sitting there knowing that they think I have a normal story too, and for some reason that really matters. It really matters to me that they don't know who I am and that they think they do, and really, I should fix that. I should either tell them or accept that they don't know because I can't expect them to guess. ...and it was at about that point in my chain of thinking that I fell asleep. And I woke up feeling 100% better. It's absolutely amazing. I can't explain it, except to say that maybe I finally accepted things the way they are... and I don't have to be here. If I don't like it I can leave. And that is my decision, I don't have to do it because everyone expects me to. And really, after all that, I think I still want to be here. ~me |