In Which I Move Outside of My Expectations

Hello all, it’s been too long.  

Many things have changed since I last posted, and things are still happening in these moments.  Mainly another semester has come and gone, and I received credit for 3 out of 4 classes.  There’s no getting around it; I dropped the ball.  However, to make up for that lost credit, I received two class credits for the price of one, so perhaps nothing of value was inherently lost.  I’m registered for Fall as a full-time student once again, and one more semester closer to graduating.  It has come to my attention that I will most likely be graduating a full 10 years after my graduation from high school.  Whether this disturbs or impresses me, I have yet to find out.  For now, a cautionary biting of the lip will fit the bill as I continue the journey.

But that’s really what I feel the need to talk about today.  I went on such a different path than I had initially imagined.  As I am writing in my “College Days” series—spoilers!--  things did not turn out as I thought they would.  I had imagined myself going to college and getting an Associate’s degree in something Art-related, maybe working part-time at a bookstore or some other quiet place, and then finding someone to settle down with and marry.  To me, marriage was always the end goal.  Of course I wanted to do that.  Why wouldn’t I—a straight, white, Christian girl with modest dreams and a conservative family—get married as soon as possible?  It’s every Disney Princess movie.  It was my end game.  Also keep in mind that I definitely had Special Snowflake Syndrome with a hefty dash of Sheltered Life mixed in. 

However, I had quickly found out that my expectations for my twenties were not going as planned.  It was such a messy, roundabout method of living that I ended up having, and I’m surprised that I am where I am today.  After my first semester of Art college, I was promptly brought back home (twice technically, but that’s another story) and instead of continuing school, I was given my first job at 18 years old.  That in and of itself still blows my mind.  Nowadays there’s no such thing as anyone just “giving” me a job.  I got that position, still the best workplace I’ve had to this day, because of my mother.  I sat with my head down, in shame, as the interview was conducted.  It was the worst interview I ever had from my part, and I still got to work there for almost 2 years.  There wasn’t even a part of this story where “I learned quickly” about anything.  It was painstakingly slow.  I didn’t answer my first phone call to the front desk until I had been there two weeks.  I was too afraid.  But that job helped heal me, and for that I’m eternally grateful. 

I went back to college at the encouragement of my co-workers and boss, and she hired someone new.  I spent 2 years in a local community college, taking half gen-eds and half electives.  It was the most liberal experience I had ever had, and I blossomed greatly.  I took drawing courses, piano lessons, health and exercise, theater and voice acting, and it was wonderful.  I was glad that I had some foresight to take Psychology, Sociology, Biology, English Literature, and Western Civ as well.  Between classes, I spent time with new friends, dated around a bit, and engrossed myself in my hobbies.  Summers were spent working odd jobs at game stores or temp agencies.  I started cosplay and DDR in my free time, though not at the same time.  I attended my first convention.  I babysat to earn money on the side.  My hobbies were anything but cheap.  My manga/graphic novel collection was explosively growing, as I bought up to 7 volumes in one weekend, every weekend.  And then it happened.

I moved to Okinawa.  Being in an active military family, we were bound to move sometime.  I didn’t want the fact that I was nearly 22 to deter me from going.  It had been a huge goal of mine to live in Japan.  I moved there in July of ’09, left behind many friends and a few broken hearts, and started attending school on base as soon as I could.  I was determined to get an Associate’s degree in Japanese Language, which the university offered.  To this day, it still surprises me at how cheap that place was.  As opposed to paying upwards of $300 for used, rented paperbacks now, I bought my full coursework and books at less than $100, brand new.   I went to classes at night and worked at the Base Exchange during the day for 32 hours a week.  The system was brilliant and full of opportunity.  Of course it wasn’t going to last.  In August 2010 I and my family were shipped back to the States, and once again I left behind my friends and co-workers.  I went from living the dream to leaving it.  It devastated me. 

From then on, I struggled hard.  Things were not the same.  “Where had my dreams gone?” I asked myself.  I was supposed to be married by now.  I was 23 and felt so far away from those goals I had as a teen in high school.  I persevered and enrolled in another university.  For those keeping score at home, this was my 4^th college in under 6 years.  But surely I was close to finishing.  At least over halfway, right?  I found out during the enrollment that not all of my credits transferred.  The course descriptions were “too vague” and I witnessed my hard-earned money go down the drain quite literally, never to return.  I was furious and beside myself.  No matter, I’ll just pick up where I left off.  Except this university didn’t offer the Japanese degree I was working towards, not even as a Minor.  I instead settled for being an English Major, as nothing else appealed to me at the time.  Since I was experiencing a reverse-culture shock and low-grade depression, I didn’t quite care what I did in school. 

Regardless, I met up with old friends from high school and made new ones.  I tried to get back on track with the marriage goal, but decided that I wasn’t going to disappoint myself anymore and put it on the back burner.   My current situation just wouldn’t allow it to happen, because at the time, my mother, sister, and I were sleeping on the floors of a tiny, two bedroom apartment in our old stomping grounds.  Our belongings had not been shipped by the military and wouldn’t arrive until that Spring, or another 7 months.  I attended university for 2 more years, failed many courses due to depression and social anxiety, which I do not take medication for.  In Spring of 2012 I was doing wonderfully in three English courses, reached Finals week, and promptly folded my entire chances of passing.  I was overwhelmed with the coursework expected of me and frankly didn’t seek help.

That summer I went back to full-time work.  I was dating a guy I thought would maybe, possibly, probably, might, and/or be husband material, and dedicated every fiber of my being to him.  We worked at the same company and through several spats and a month-long break, it was clear that he was not happy.  We split and in a planned retaliation, I moved away from home.  I continued working my job, hoping against all hope that I would get some kind of break.  Something had to happen, right?  I wasn’t wrong.  I ended up spraining my trapezius and forced to quit work.  It wasn’t a coincidence that I also quit because the same week, my parents moved away to be 7 hours south of me in my mother’s hometown.  Although I was quite aware that it was for work-related reasons, the child side in me felt abandoned. 

I spent the next 4 months in a very dark depression.  Nothing was worth doing anymore, not even getting out of bed.  I had enough savings to keep me.  I didn’t owe anybody a damn thing.  I considered myself lucky back then to not have the kind of friends that randomly showed up on my doorstep to drop by and chat, because what they would have seen would have horrified them.  I eventually got help, but the damage had been done.  My money was running out.  My hard earned savings was quickly dwindling away, all because my brain decided to turn itself off in some kind of rebellious aftereffect of my parents leaving the state.  I found myself thinking the same thoughts over and over again.  “If only I was married… If only I had someone that loved me to help me, I wouldn’t be in such dire straits.”  Why did I still cling to those ideals? 

Either way, I didn’t so much bounce back as force myself back in an upright position.  To do that, I re-applied to work at my most previous job.  I only lasted 3 months because of two more injuries I sustained.  I remember metaphorically throwing up my hands and saying “Screw it; I’m going back to school.”  So I did.  Luckily it wasn’t hard, as this was my 5^th time starting up the Education Route in my game of life.  And so here I stand today.  Sadly I’m back on the job hunt and there are no bites.  As of now I’ve given up the marriage goal, possibly for good.  I do not actively seek it and for all I know it has passed me by without my knowledge.  I think I have to learn to be okay with that. 

I have definitely had a different life than I ever anticipated in these past nine years.  It’s not strictly good, nor bad.  I don’t blame any one person or one event for what’s transpired, except myself.  But I’m not in such a state of self-loathing for that blame to give me guilt.  There are still very rare times where I can imagine myself in a bridal gown, saying the vows, wearing the ring, and all that jazz.  But not even in my dreams while I sleep do these images appear.  Not anymore.  If anything, I would imagine that it would be a hindrance as of now. 

I do not write this with a heavy heart, but perhaps a relieved one.  It’s the same feeling I got when I left my abuser.  It’s the same feeling I got when I left the church.  It’s a great burden that has been lifted, perhaps one that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.  Regardless, life doesn’t turn out the way I expect it to, and that’s okay. 

Until next time!

In Which I Returned to Foreign Language and Learned Something Else Entirely

I’ll begin this entry by saying something that the average person (in the United States anyway) might already know:  Learning a new language is difficult. 

That isn’t to say that it can’t be done.  However, if you want the best results, you must start young and you must learn by immersion.  I did not start young, but I began to learn Japanese in high school, I’m estimating around 15 years old.  It’s hard to really call it ‘learning’ though, because I simply wrote down a bunch of common beginner’s phrases and would practice saying them to myself out loud.  Somewhere in my old notebooks, there are pages and pages of all the words I knew and could pronounce with relative ease.  I had nothing to really help me except my own willpower, and since it was 2002, the Internet was still awkwardly blossoming, not really sure where to go or how to organize itself.  For my 16^th birthday, I asked for my first dictionary, and the first thing I did was read it cover to cover, marking words that I thought were interesting.  I thought it was funny that the entire entry for the letter ‘P’ on the Japanese side were all loan words from English (piano for piano), or onomatopoeia (pika pika suru – to glisten). 

While it wasn’t completely useless, as I eventually wrote down the phonetic alphabet of Hiragana and could start to recognize the characters on sight, it wasn’t until almost 8 years later that I got the chance to take everything I had taught myself and would put it to the test.  I moved to Okinawa with the rest of my family and stayed for a year.  The jittery happiness I felt for the 14 hour plane ride was something I’ll never forget.  And that happiness was mixed with a strange concoction of fear and nervousness when I began encountering actual Japanese people, something I had never done before.  Suddenly it felt as if those years and years of memorization and singing J-pop and recognizing phrases from different anime were all for naught.  In reality, it was true.  It’s like that with learning anything; if you don’t have direction or a solid goal, nearly anything you learn is going to be a bit… empty.  It’s kind of like wanting to be a lawyer when everything you know about lawyers is based on playing Ace Attorney.  In short, it’s not exactly ideal.

Regardless, I learned maybe 100 times there what I had learned on my own, and not only that, I got to put it to use nearly every day.  That year passed much too quickly and I returned to the States the next summer.  I spent the next 3 years away from the culture and language, and it wasn’t until 2 months ago when I started taking Japanese classes again.  While I don’t regret the decision to do so at all, I got that same jittery panic that once loomed over me back then.  Rightly so, because I realized how much I had lost in that amount of time.  While many phrases aren’t lost to me, I could barely recognize a lot of the kanji I had learned from my time in Okinawa.  Many of the phrases I had relied on to get me through the day seemed wrong or obsolete.  It was certainly a strange phenomenon to experience. 

One of the projects we had done recently was an oral presentation.  We had to give a script between 2-3 people, as if reading a play, all in Japanese of course, and bonus points for any new words or creativity.  The blue print of this presentation was Valentine’s Day, and it wasn’t until after I had written it and presented it that I had a different realization about myself.  The general script is two girls talking with each other, one chiding the other about her boyfriend not making Valentine’s Day plans with her.  Instead he breaks up with her, leaving her to find solace in her friend.  In the second and last scene, as they are about to get coffee together, the girl’s now-ex-boyfriend calls her and begs for forgiveness, wanting to start over.  Since her friend is there with her, she gets the courage to tell him no, and they leave to go play a game at her friend’s house. 

I said all that to say that foreign language is a strange thing, but it can really reveal a lot about ourselves that we didn’t know about.  I feel as if I had made this script outside of the expectations of the grade, and in doing so, took a peek at what I really wanted out of life. 

I’ve spent a lot of my years in difficult relationships, trying to find that One Special Person.  I’ve failed and failed and failed some more.  But something that I feel like I haven’t failed at is my love for this culture.  It may have not always burned brightly, but it has always been there, a dimly lit ember that has consistently glowed.  My real-life experience living in Japan will always be a testament to that love and the passion I have.  So I said all this to say that maybe the expectations that I’ve held over myself are not where my heart lies.  Perhaps it’s time to hang up the “Family” goal and go forward with the “Japan” goal instead.  

In Which it Was 2005 and I Began My College Days - Part Two

Read Part One Here!

I quickly found that out when I attended college for the first time.  It was a knock-off, over-priced art school where I would be educated in ‘Graphic Design’.  There were two things that they, the head teachers of the school that screened future students, were interested in:  Artwork and money.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Right around those last couple weeks of my Senior year – the ones where you just stop caring and kick back with a smug expression on your face because you’ve done the math and you know that you don’t have to turn in any more homework and you can still pass all your classes with a C+ – there were some after-school college fairs set up in the school gym.  Ours looked like a slightly more polished Science fair.  Every table had tri-folded posters glued with information, a bowl full of key chains or lanyards, and matching pamphlets spread in a fan pattern.  Of course I was only there to scope out what was going to be offered, and coupled with my outlandish ideas of how college was going to be, I didn’t think I would be so quickly reeled in. 

It wasn’t by any big name university either.  While so many of the tables of UK and UC were surrounded by dozens of my peers, I was observing from afar.  I had an agenda, after all.  Was I going to fall into the masses and choose to be content with the ‘normal’ path?   Or was I going to go with ‘the road less travelled’ and find something just for me.  Since I had that “Special Snowflake” syndrome, of course I felt like I was capable of going to a specialized school, custom-tailored to my every fantastical whim that, in my ever-so-innocent mind, was the answer to all my problems.

I should take this time to briefly note that this was the time in my life where I was heavily into art, and thus I carried a sketchbook with me at all times.  And I mean at ALL times.  Unless explicitly stated by my parents, it was my answer to ‘grab your purse’ or ‘put on your shoes’.  I never left without it, as well as a good pink eraser and a mechanical pencil filled with plenty of .05 mm lead.  And so armed with my trusty sketchpad and at least two pencils, I meandered lazily around the small table that held the representatives for the Art Institutes.  Sadly, this was not in the same vein as the Graphic Design schools that got advertised on television; rather they seemed like a cheap knock-off.  Oh, and by ‘cheap’ I mean ‘soul-suckingly expensive’.  It was a large chunk of change to attend just one semester, made even more outlandish by the fact that the entire student body consisted of roughly 30 people. 

Regardless, I was hooked from the very moment the rep started complimenting me on my art work.  The sketchpad I brought with me was opened to a page with a particularly detailed, shaded drawing, held close to my chest and yet those with a trained eye could spot it a mile away.  Before I could stop myself, I was taking home the pamphlets, application, and whatever other little table samples I could gather.  Probably Post-It notes or something.  I announced my desire to enroll into this “Art Institute” to my mother that evening.  I would like to think that my parents were supportive of me; after all, they paid for the major portion of my tuition that year.  My father had other plans, and his ultimatum was that I had to obtain my driver’s license if I was going to attend this school.  But first, we had an appointment to tour the school and speak with the Head teacher.

Upon arrival, I felt as if I were in a contemporary Art museum, narrow but pristine hallways lined with perfectly measured frames full of paintings and different crafts.  I was instructed to bring my portfolio, of which I had no idea how to put together.  I didn’t name my drawings, nor did I keep them safely laminated and separated.  They were all drawn on computer paper, haphazardly thrown into the same manila folder.  Some corners were bent, some of the more heavily shaded drawings were slightly smeared, but it was all I had.  The teacher, named Sandy*, took a slow, pensive look through all my work, noting all of their qualities and strengths, and making sure to throw in a “We can help you improve this part” every now and then.  Strangely enough, it didn’t occur to 17 year old me that I was being buttered up.  Instead I was drawn like a moth to a flame.  A very expensive flame with no use.  But again, I tend to get ahead of myself. 

All summer I practiced driving, and it’s worth mentioning that I and my family moved 14 hours south from this school I so badly wanted to be in.  It didn’t occur to me that going back up there would mean living up there, as obvious as it is to any onlooker with a quart of sense.  It never occurred to me that I wanted to enroll in a college that didn’t have any dorms, and that I was too poor to rent a place of my own.  Lest we not forget my previous entry in Part One, money was not a forthcoming issue to me.  Back then, I had nearly no concept of it, sad as it is to type.  I was truly living in a bubble my whole life, and so when this entire incident happened, it was like culture shock.  In the end, I felt stubborn and called it ‘dedication’, and I passed my driving test.  And soon it was the last week in August and my dad and I were making the trip to Cincinnati, Ohio, with all my belongings packed up.  I was to live with my cousin and her husband in their spare bedroom.  Finally, my dad left his treasured car with me to use as transportation for school, so long as I took care of it and maintained it, it was virtually mine. 

The days counting down to the first day of class were maddening, and I was experiencing something very strange.  It was homesickness, and yet I was basically in the same area I had grown up in for the last 7 years.  It didn’t take me long to figure out that it wasn’t only homesickness that I was experiencing, but a wild freedom.  This was not necessarily a good thing for a 17-turned-18 year old.  I drove around to pass the time, thinking that I could perhaps learn some of the roads and get some practice in driving more, because what could that hurt?  It didn’t take me long to hit my first vehicle at a stop light.  It was barely a tap, but the visible shake of the SUV in front of me, accompanied by the driver’s side door opening and a very pissed off looking man emerging within seconds, knocking on my window with one hand while his other held a smartphone, left me in tears.  I’m not sure if I had ever been yelled at by a complete stranger up until then, but I won’t ever forget his tone of voice and how angry he looked.  From then on I drove with more caution than ever, even on my own driving test. 

Unfortunately, getting into scuffs with other drivers wasn’t my biggest issue on the road.  It was getting lost.  I had no smartphone back then, and wouldn’t have a GPS for another 6 years.  I spent afternoons driving endlessly, not because I wanted to, or because I had extra gas to burn, but because I had no idea where I was.  I would get off exits and park at gas stations to ask for directions, and I even recall asking a middle-aged woman how to get back to Fairfield, and she looked at me as if I had grown another head.  Fairfield was literally one exit away, but I was literally going in circles at that point, doubting my sense of direction, and for good reason too.  I also recall trying to find some kind of logical way of memorizing the numbered roads around me.  “Surely,” I thought to myself, “If 74 leads to 75 eventually, then 176 will lead to 177 and so on.”  With this awful theory in mind, I set out to test it.  2 hours later, I ended up in Indiana.  But I think the most shameful part was the fact that I called my mother, who was 800 miles south of me, and when I told her I was lost, she spent another hour on the phone with me, with the help of Google Maps, leading me back to my cousin’s house.  Overall, driving in general was a nightmare.  I cringe just thinking about all the gas money wasted and all the needless fear I felt. 

Finally, a week had passed and it was time for school to begin.  I was finally living the dream.  I had all my art supplies ready, packed up in a big tackle box, and I was ready to prove myself to everyone.  Because I wasn't a 2^nd year, I had to park across the 4 lane intersection at Costco, so carrying all my supplies was a bit unruly.  On the first day, I called my mom to let her know that I had made it to the school in one piece.  I tried throwing in a joke about landing in a ditch somewhere, but she was not amused.  But I digress.  

Attendance was taken electronically, by inputting our personal code.  Sometimes I imagined that I was actually working for the CIA or the government, like in a futuristic film or sci-fi novel.  The first floor of the school was the art museum section, where student works were displayed.  The second floor held the classroom, which didn't feel like a classroom at all, since everyone not only had their own desks, but they were angled at such a way to make them like modified easels.  They were also sectioned off into their own cubicles.  Mac computers lined the back walls.  A huge copy machine was also on the opposite wall, but inside its own room.  The entire room smelled like wood, and paint, and eraser shavings. 

There were three teachers total, who all taught at the same time in the main room.  I say “taught”, but it was more like we were given a specific project, shown an example of a previous student’s work, and then told to make our own.  We were given 5 days for each of these projects.  The entire week, the three teachers milled around slowly, giving suggestions or comments.  Frankly, I remember loving every minute of it.  Everything was leisurely, and if I drew something that they didn’t quite agree with for whatever reason, I could always use the old “Art is subjective” card and they’d give in.  We would break for lunch, and as the weeks passed, I found myself clocking out and just skipping the second half of the school day.  I never got reprimanded, and as long as I was showing progress at my desk, showing the instructors my improvements, they didn’t seem to care in the slightest. 

Strictly speaking, I was happy in that environment.  I felt that at the time, creating art work was what I was meant to do in life.  I worked on my projects at my own pace, had as much help as I could ask for, and I could leave early with no penalty if I so desired.  What could possibly go wrong with that?  

Stay tuned for Part 3 if it intrigues you.  

In Which I Return to College and Accept My Depression

Free-thought Ramblings ahead.  You have been warned.  

Before I start, I'll apologize for being away.  Not that I've been missed, mind you.  It's plain to see that this blog gets peanut reviews, but I don't mind.  In a way I like it better like this; this way I can write anything and nobody really knows.  It's wonderful to have something that I can write freely in.  My last blog on Adventure Time was a spur-of-the-moment fun blog, and it's ironic that as soon as I wrote it, I considered writing more like that on the same show, and then Doug Walker of Nostalgia Critic fame starts a video blog with his site.  Needless to say, I continued watching the show and tuned in to see his impressions instead of jotting down my own.  Ah well, like sand in an hour glass...

It's difficult for me to start writing nowadays.  Even the little fanfic blurbs I write in private, never to see the light of day until their imminent perfection, are hard to continue.  What's the hold up?  Nobody will see them.  I haven't posted them online like I used to do years ago.  I don't carry around the hard copies in my school folder, dozens of typed pages stapled together like an important research paper.  The font is so small and the margins narrow, clearly to show that I had an epic novel on my hands, when in reality I only wanted to pair Main character 1 with Side character 2 instead of his love interest on the show.  And now, in 2014, they all sit on my hard drive, waiting to be clicked on and edited, waiting to be added to the Recently Opened category in Word.  So many stories found with fleeting inspirations in the wee hours of weekday nights when I should be asleep.  So many stories where creating drama was not only necessary, but fun!  Because who wants to have a cast of characters that love each other's flaws and are accepting of their mistakes and shortcomings?  Of course, I must be cautious in that this doesn't bleed over into my actual life.

With all this said, I have returned to college.  I haven't been enrolled in a semester since Spring 2012, where in a disastrous turn of events of my own doing, I failed 3 of my 4 courses.  Oh why, you may ask.  Why would such a thing happen?  Did someone in your family pass?  Did you develop a terrible disease, or did all of your belongings catch fire?  Were you kidnapped and whisked away and by the time the police found you, it was too late to turn in your Final assignments?  Sadly, the answer is no to all of the above.  It is here that I will reveal the answer twofold.

While I took all of my courses in stride, trying to take as many notes as possible and conferencing with professors outside of class, I remember the problem started with one small thing.  For my British Lit class, I had ordered the wrong book from Amazon.  It was 2,000 pages long, a monstrous tome of Chaucer and Shakespeare and... oh who am I kidding.  I couldn't even tell you.  But I found it impossible to use, as it did take a little extra time for proper citation and reading along in class.  Especially Beowulf.  I don't think I've come across anything more frustrating than Beowulf.  Regardless, I fell behind in my work and eventually dropped the class.  No matter, I've got 3 classes left.  It was completely doable, no problem.

Poetry was fairly simple, right?  I really enjoyed it for the most part.  Of course, poetry can be very subjective, and I just so happened to have a professor that strongly disapproved or perhaps just disliked rhyming schemes.  I really liked writing poems, even though the methods I had were rather... rigid, let's say.  I found iambs and trochees and certain meters to be appealing more than the watery, flowing, "let's put full-stops in the middle of a line" kind of poetry that she encouraged.  And yet I knew that to get the grade and to prevent harsh criticism, I would have to play the game.  And while I did just that, it was a matter of the final itself.  We were supposed to make poetry booklets, sewn by hand and decorated with art.  A book of poetry?  How could I possibly do that, when in class I had only written 4 poems.  A book with 4 poems is barely a pamphlet.  Clearly I needed to pump out at least 6 more, but I was overwhelmed with the prospect.  I remember sitting in my bedroom, all electronics off, an empty notebook, the sun shining through my window, and not a single inspiring muse came for me.  I felt locked up mentally.  While she found the prospect of iambic pentameter and AABB rhyme schemes to be constricting and lacking freedom, I found them secure and comforting, leading my thoughts on exactly what to say.  This was the only class I did not fail; however, I received a D and therefore did not receive any credit for the course.

Next was my English Studies class, which the department had just recently added at the time and made it mandatory for English Majors to take.  Out of nowhere you had a class that was meant for sophomores, and yet it was filled with Seniors in their last or next-to-last semesters.  It was terribly unbalanced and the professor that taught the course was a near-clone of my Brit Lit professor, at least in personality and class expectation.  Although I tried to keep up with her, she had me re-write my papers until they were to her satisfaction.  My final paper was supposed to be on Nabokov, yet another author that made my head spin with how confusing everything was.  I think it's a common phenomenon that these types of books are better read outside of classroom reading lists, because otherwise you get someone like me:  a person who feels very lost and confused at exactly what themes are presented, because the particular book we were reading was wrapped in layer after layer of "the meta" of itself.  I managed to finish the rough draft summary and the citation page, but never finished the final draft in the end.  I failed the course.

Finally there was Novel Writing.  This one I was looking the most forward to.  How could I not?  Isn't this what writers dream of?  It was a 400 level course that met once a week and we all took turns writing two chapters of our original ideas and by the end of the semester they would be honed into novel form and graded as such.  Arguably the easiest and most creative of my four classes.  It was extremely satisfying giving my classmates positive feedback as well as criticisms of the constructive type.  When it came down to Finals week, I had a set schedule for everything.  I had written down that my Novel Writing Final was my very last final, and therefore I had plenty of time to take everyone's suggestions and fix up my chapters to turn in.  No problem right?  Well it would have been, except that I had written down the wrong day entirely.  It was to be turned in the first day of Finals, not the last.  And like the procrastinator I am, I didn't realize this until 2 days beforehand.  I had nothing ready.  I remember being hunched over my laptop, desperately editing and backspacing and typing until 4 AM, when my final was due at noon, but I hadn't slept for 18 hours and then some.  I hadn't even touched the other half of my final, where we had to write a 3 page review of a non-fiction book.  And in the end, I gave up, turned off my computer and went to bed.  Naturally I woke up at 11:50 AM and said "Screw it.  Just... screw it."

Ultimately not my finest hours.  I'll also be sure to mention that I was seeing someone during that same week, and I used that time to forget about all the school work that I had half-assed or skipped over.  A week after Finals, I outright told him that I had royally screwed up and failed everything.  I thought for sure he would be angry, but how could he be when he hadn't even finished college himself?  Water under the bridge, but nonetheless I at least made it known that I had messed up, partially because of my stress, and partially because I was distracted by him.

Things are different nowadays.  It's been almost 2 years since that entire incident.  I've worked for most of that break at an Amazon warehouse, and that's an entirely different story for another day.  Basically it wasn't satisfying working there, and so I knew I had to go back to school.  I didn't come to that conclusion on my own though.  From last May until the present, I had been seeing a therapist every 2 weeks.   It was around the end of September that I started to really miss the prospect of school again.  I was so unsatisfied with my job, not to mention that I had what is classified as "Suicidal ideation" or just thinking about suicide because of that job and my situation.  I told my therapist that I needed some kind of guidance in life, something bigger than myself.  So I decided that I wanted to graduate.  It's something that I've been needing to do.  I spent 3 months jumping around, filling out paperwork, making appointments, writing appeal letters, and corresponding with the Dean of Students, all to get me enrolled and taken care of.

My depression has taken over my life.  I feel as if it's been deeply rooted and the only thing that I can do is move around when I need to, such as for school or for survival.  For now it's just a matter of living with this heavy shadow on my back and a dark weight on my chest.  I'm not on any medication, and although I've continued therapy, I'm not seeking help from anyone else.  I don't believe it's any secret to my friends, and it's extremely easy to use my crippled financial situation as an excuse to not leave my apartment.  Too easy, in fact.  All I know is that when I do finally get this thing off my back and out of my mind, I think I'll finally be able to enjoy life.  I'll be able to let go of my insecurities and fears.  I'll be able to find purpose in life.

So until then, I'll be down, but not out.  I may take the convenient paths, but at least I'm on them.  And I'm still alive and still making attempts for a better life.  Because every now and then, I feel like I could live without worry.  Wouldn't that be wonderful?