Big Fat Rat via FlickrThe dark days can really get you down. I like rain and I don't mind when the sun goes away for a while: what I'm talking about here is metaphysical darkness. It feels oppressive, as heavy as it is invisible. The world looks the same as it did yesterday but your mind can't seem to grasp the bright parts. All you can think about are all the things that are going wrong.
After many, many freakouts in the last three years, I've learned that my sense of balance is extremely delicate. I'm spinning a lot of plates on a lot of sticks, and as long as everything keeps moving I'm fine. Really fine. Fine to the point that nobody, not even my husband, not even myself, can tell how close to meltdown I am. Then, suddenly and (sometimes) through no fault of my own, one of the plates screeches to a halt. Everything crashes down. Suddenly I'm buried in rubble, screaming and terrified and completely unable to get out.
Sounds like fun, huh?
My primary social group is feeling this way this week. It's been building in various aspects of our respective existences, and I don't know that everyone else is handling it as poorly as I am. I hope they're not- but I fear they are. And I fear we aren't the only ones in the building. I feel like our entire community is designing for a nervous breakdown. The negativity spreads and infects (but that's another post).
Brandon Christopher Warren via FlickrSo for now I'm just trying to breathe. If the rubble was real I'd hope for rescue, but the metaphysical stuff is all me. I have to concentrate, move slowly, and keep the panic under control long enough to dig myself out. A few more weeks and the semester will be over. A few more months and law school will be. A year and I'll be in a job, making a paycheck, licenses to practice. When I look at it this way, Time might not be my enemy after all. Nobody can stop Time from marching by, and if it marches long enough all of this will be behind me.
You're right - in a year, we'll look back on this and we won't laugh, but we won't want to strangle ourselves/others anymore either (I'm not handling it well either, clearly). But it's not an easy thing to have to live through, waiting for time to pass, is it? And I hate that my life has been reduced to waiting for it to pass, instead of trying to enjoy it as it goes by.
ReplyDeleteP.S. HUGS! Let's get superdrunk, play games, go shopping, and have lotsa fun after this week ends.
I personally know how hard that type of darkness can be. I'm finishing up my summer classes after my first year. My girlfriend lives a couple hours away from me and I thought we were making the most of it. However, I've been so busy with school that I failed to notice how unhappy she's become, so in the middle of my finals, I'm trying to come to grips with the fact that a relationship that I thought had been headed for marriage might instead be coming to a close. I feel as if law school is stealing the most important thing from me.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how to cope so instead I just keep doing nothing when I need to be doing finals prep. I'm in a dark place and it sucks.
I was very pleased to find this site.
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