If I Could Give Ze World Une Song...

Plerp.

I have never experienced stress and anxiety like this before!  It's the kind where if anyone is even remotely lovely or warm or empathetic, I get misty-eyed.  I am transferring all kinds of inappropriate emotions onto people, looking for comfort from my professors, being snippy with sales clerks, neglecting my very best friends :( The old man is being hella amazing but even he's a little cowed in the face of all. this. stress emanating from me.  It feels like I have something a little radioactive in me that people far wiser and more experienced than I am can sense and feel the need to gently avoid.  It's...the sickening!  (Anyone watching this?)

I'm being dramatic, and can tell especially while writing it out, but honestly - having put so much work and time and money into this program, and having it be wrapping up March '16 (thank God), and being tested in a way that is like, "pass or you will FAIL" is difficult.  I think I'm making up some of the pressure, and being kind of awful about it in some ways (like blaming it on certain professors and whatnot) but still. When you have a weekend of two 12-hour hospital shifts coming up, and your thought is, "Geez, that's going to be nice!" - you know it's bad. My last few months at MoHo were a hellish mix of fear and anxiety that inhibited me from savoring the last little sips of my undergrad. experience and enjoying the people around me, and I'd rather not let that happen quite as bad with grad. school. I take such comfort in my friends and family who have been through stuff like this, and succeeded.

Also in the back of my head is papi, and it's also like this weird, radioactive thing.  Like, I don't ever want to talk about him/his situation/how my mom's handling it (not well, imho) to ppl that aren't already filled in or get my shorthand about the situation, but then when I do get a chance to reflect on it I have this well of crazy emotion come out of me.  Like, huge anger, huge sadness, huge frustration.  I'll be going home from Xmas to NYE so that should be good to be there, to have a presence as my original little family unit navigates the weirdness of it all.  Blerf.

Time for dranks at the end of this Sunday shift at 7pm, my friends!

If Only!

"Why do we love our writing teachers so much? Why, years later, do we think of them with such gratitude? I think it’s because they come along when we need them most, when we are young and vulnerable and are tentatively approaching this craft that our culture doesn’t have much respect for, but which we are beginning to love. They have so much power. They could mock us, disregard us, use us to prop themselves up. But our teachers, if they are good, instead do something almost holy, which we never forget: they take us seriously. They accept us as new members of the guild. They tolerate the under-wonderful stories we write, the dopy things we say, our shaky-legged aesthetic theories, our posturing, because they have been there themselves."

-George Saunders, "My Writing Education: A Timeline"

This is officially my reminder to myself right now, the same one that he gets from a mentor: don't lose the magic that got you into this program in the first place!

whuuu...

Feeling the Lurve Today

"Lone Standing Tuft"

Studying mental health, remembered how much I love this movie.  Feeling like I'm underneath the weight of my emotions and am observing them and their effects rather than feeling them properly.  I know it's a matter of being overly busy and a bit stressed (school, work, being unexpectedly out of town last weekend now this upcoming for my dad) but it's unnerving.  It comes in waves and sometimes I wish I had a big wooden head to crawl into and just hang out for a while. I have a day off tmrw and will prob bike/go to yoga in addition to life/work things so I'm not worried, just having a hard time "defying the foot" today.

Because I Can.

"Now we're like, 'Let's just go to Hooters and then play the show"

Put your hands up if you know you're gonna lose.

Might...

...be changing the name of the blog to DOWNERBLOG.  Or UPPERBLOG.  Not sure.



Most of us have had that moment around minute 1:20, right?

My mama said something really telling and touching and sad to me today.  And it was in a text, which made the weight of it feel even more incongruous to the situation, but she said "Go out tonight, look pretty and have fun somewhere nice - that has been my gift to you after all".  And I sat there and looked at it and thought: "Really?  That's all you think?" And I realize that that is true - my mom has gorgeous skin and a real smile and is quite beautiful in a way that I hope I can be someday too - but I would think of other ways - her strength, her loyalty, her warmth - of being what she has passed on to me.  If I am lucky enough to have a daughter someday I'd like to think that my gifts to her would be those type of things, plus a love of food, and a love of the little details in life, and hopefully of music and the mind.  But my mom was having a very hard day and I think she was feeling a little wistful too, underneath her anger, so I wont hold it against her or be too judgey, but still.