Tell It Slant

First, let me apologize for the depressing nature of my blog lately. But, in the absence of church-going, I’ve had to rely on talking about my ‘feelings.’ It’s going well, don’t you think? Except for the complaining all the while. I suppose it’s to be expected that there is a little bit of anguish for each ecstatic instant.

I got back one of my term essays today; I had (finally!) handed it in four months late. Since I’d passed the course, I figured I couldn’t have bombed the paper. Therefore, I was curious to see exactly which part of this thing I’d written was actually acceptable. I was expecting soooo much criticism…but actually my professor was very kind. It was simultaneously good – phew, I can relax – and disappointing – my certainty that the paper was crap was squashed, a ribbon at a time. Which I suppose is also good. I think. It yet remains to see.

Truthfully, I haven’t really liked anything I wrote last year. Well, originally I liked my paper on the Symbolic as a metaphysical reality grounding all possibility of meaning, but then I re-read it and had no idea what I was saying. Well, I mean, I knew what I was saying, but it felt like my knowing was so superficial. I guess that’s the problem with being a theory-whore: in the moment there’s a huge payoff and it feels great and important and intoxicating, but afterward I feel like I’ve woken up next to something I don’t recognize. You should see my Heidegger papers from during my Literature degree. Not my best moments, to be sure. I feel like…not myself, like myself sideways. I feel like…whatever I’ve managed to painfully create has been nothing more that a few disjointed moments of colour on an otherwise blank canvas, soundless as dots on a disc of snow.

Maybe it’s a palimpsest…like the stillness in the air between the heaves of storm.

I don’t know why I care so much about schoolwork; from an outsider’s point of view, and in the long run, it doesn’t really matter. I feel like I’m searching for something, trying to unlock some magical thing that’s going to make me feel better again; that I could not breathe without a key.

I wish I could be more myself again. Everything seems off somehow. It’s like being in a room where everything has been moved an inch out of place. You know something’s wrong, you feel disconcerted, but you can’t quite say why. Myself felt ill and odd…There’s something missing, something empty…I don’t hurt: not exactly. I guess I feel like I’m in the space where pain has an element of blank, where it’s the sense of something…like the ground has shifted where my life had stood. The feet, mechanical, go round…maybe if there is a way to stand still somehow, stop everything just for a little while, your breath has time to straighten.

In other news, I skipped church on Sunday. Again. Definitely not the will of the Inquisitor. I’ve got to find a way to get excited again, so that not everything feels like just one more thing I have to do. There are days when everything feels like a chore, when everything I do is a job set by some sort of boss – even happy things like praying feel like work, all sorts of things…whatever is driving this feeling and brushing my joy away, she sweeps with many-colored brooms. To let you in on a secret: given all my…ahem…medication-induced issues (see above), I should be kind of proud I’m somehow managing to walk around and do all these things while appearing normal. Well, no one’s spontaneously said anything, so I assume I look normal enough. I should be proud, but of course I’m not: that is not the way of me. Of course, after this beautifully incoherent post, I’m sure the mirage of normalcy is fading quickly.

Also, while I’m sitting here thinking about writing this blog, I think I see one of my teachers walk by the door. He’s pretty fuzzy-looking, so I’m not sure. I’m not sitting very far away, either. Yep, my vision is getting even blurrier – a side effect. This is not ideal. This situation is becoming untenable. I can almost see hope flying away into the distance. Hope is the thing with feathers. Not that I can make them out.

I guess I feel like time is running out in my little universe of maintaining my world while simultaneously getting this thing sorted out. It’s been suggested that I take medical leave…but if I break my inertia I’ll never get through this school thing…and, after all, a wounded deer leaps highest. And, since I didn’t fail out of the program, it would be a waste not to press on. I know that if I can just make it through this difficulty, this feeling of disconnection and distance, of confusion and unclarity, of alienation…I feel that darkness is about to pass.

I just really hope I’m doing the right thing. Aside from this marginal blog, I haven’t talked seriously about this whole disaster with anyone. That really wouldn’t be fair. I want to be a happykat, not a sourpuss always caterwauling away about my life…issues. I really hope that going forward as planned, according to schedule, isn’t going to be a bad idea leading to some sort of burnout or something. While I absolutely don’t want to give up, being the most stubborn person in the world, I don’t want to make it worse because I could not stop