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I'm exhausted. I'm having a hard time keeping my eyes open, and if i were smart i'd just go to bed right now. but i think i need to write this, i've been putting it off for a long time.
i keep telling people i'm having issues, and it's true. i don't want to stay in school and i don't want to drop out and the inability to make the decision has rendered me unable to make any decision whatsoever. i've considered many, many options. i've thought about coming home and going back to the community college here (it's the only school i've ever liked, and i get very very angry when people imply that community colleges are somehow inferior... it's a very common belief and i understand it to some degree... but i've been to a lot of schools and that's the only one that ever made me happy.) i've thought about "getting it over with" and come up with an elaborate philosophy (which i believe with all my heart) that tells me getting it over with is not an option... i've thought about doing it anyway, of focusing on the positive and enjoying what i can of school and doing the rest of it because people do things they don't want to do, and i shouldn't be an exception. i've thought about doing nothing, dropping out and coming home and staying in my room for several months recovering from the past several months. i've thought about getting a job and an apartment near my school, so i can be with my friends without writing papers. i have, more than anything, discovered that there are a lot of things i don't know. and i've decided that focusing on what i don't know is counterproductive, it turns "having issues" into more than having issues, it pushes me over the line between crying in the bathtub and cutting myself because i'm out of drugs. i've thought about giving up and going crazy. it doesn't seem like that could be a conscious decision but in effect it is. i've been fighting a constant battle to stay sane, to not fall apart, to remember that i'm supposed to be happy and that curling up in a ball under the covers is not an acceptable solution. i've thought about going back to my shrink, getting myself hospitalized, and then never getting out of bed again. i've decided that this is a fight that's worth fighting and i have to do it on my own terms. i've decided the most important thing in the world is to be happy in the time we have, and to never forget that that time could end tomorrow. i've decided that i can't be happy if i'm forcing myself to do something that makes me miserable. i've decided that school in general and the one i'm at now in particular is killing my spirit... i've been going there for a year and a half, and in that time i've stopped reading. my attention span has shortened to the point that i can't read anything but harry potter books. i've stopped finding interests, i've stopped going to the library, i've stopped doing all the things that used to make me happy in favor of spending as much time doing nothing and avoiding reality as possible. for the most part, i've stopped writing. i've stopped having ambitions. i can't remember what i did last week or last month, my life has turned into a blur of "hanging out" and smoking pot. and quite honestly, i don't think there's anything wrong with that last part. but i do think there's something wrong when the opinionated little bookworm can't even sit down long enough to read the newspaper, my mind is all fuzzy and i blame most of it on school, and i think that's justified. i left this semester with two incompletes, there are two papers i'm supposed to write by next weekend and haven't yet. everytime i take the notebooks out and try to work on them, i start crying. and it could be argued that i just don't want to do it, that i'm just lazy, that everyone does things they don't want to do and i'm just a spoiled little brat who needs to get over it and accomplish something already. but i don't agree with that. maybe it's just a symbol, maybe i'm blaming my unhappiness on school unfairly, maybe i want to drop out because it worked before, because the last time i was truly unhappy i dropped out of school and things got better. but i don't agree with that either. I've spent the past year and a half sitting through classes with professors who read out of textbook if they hadn't prepared and explained the textbook if they had. I sat through an urban politics lesson about the urban educational system the day after the columbine school shooting and it wasn't mentioned once. i sat through an entire semester of a congressional politics course and the issue of hilary clinton running for congress in our state was mentioned twice, briefly. i spent the two years before that in politics classes where american politics was explained in terms of the current presidential election, and economics was explained in terms of how many people in our class liked dill pickle potato chips. maybe i just have unrealistic expectations. maybe i'm expecting too much from an educational system that requires professors to spend as much time doing their own research as they do actually teaching. maybe i have a right to expect more. maybe i'm just complaining, and maybe i'm just making excuses. i resent it when people imply the school i'm going to isn't a good school. i think it is, i think they're doing the best they can with what they have, and i have taken a couple of decent courses since i've been there, and one really terrific one. but what they're working with is a lot of students who care more about finding the best party on saturday than learning and a lot of professors who care more about research than teaching and i think it's going to be like that any where i go, everyone is just trying to get it over with and get to the next vacation, the professors celebrate as much as we do when finals are over... and i refuse to just "get it over with" getting it over with implies that there is something at the end that i want, it implies that my life will somehow be better for having put myself through this year of torture. it implies that i will be alive a year from now to enjoy it. i refuse to live my life assuming that i'll live to be 70 and never acknowledging the fact that i might not. and because of that, i resolve to do whatever will make me happy. not what will make my parents happy, or what everyone thinks i should do, or even what i think i should do, but what will make me happy. I'm dropping out of school. i could tell you i'm taking a break, i could tell you i need time off, i've found that saying it that way makes people less angry at me, and that is precisely why i'm not doing it. I'm dropping out of school. i may go back. i may not. technically, i could take three years off and graduate with the class i went to high school with. that makes some people feel better, but i don't think it should matter. I'm going to get a job, and an apartment. I'm going to cut my hair and get a tattoo. I'm going to let my arms heal and resolve never to let myself get that unhappy ever again. I'm going to stop doing things i don't want to do just because other people want me to do them. I'm going to give myself complete freedom from reading what i'm supposed to read and hope that my attention span comes back, if i rest it for a while. I'm going to stop spouting philosophy and start living it. I'm going to hope that writing this as if i know what i'm doing will give me enough confidence to act as if i know what i'm doing. I know that there are a lot of people who aren't going to understand this. i know that i have a lot of friends and most of them told me to "get it over with" when i mentioned the idea. i think some of them are jealous of how close i am, i think others just think they're looking out for me. And they're why i wrote this. I'm in love with a beautiful girl who tells me i don't owe anyone an explanation, but i think i do, and this is it. so fire away, it won't matter, i've finally made a decision. ~me |