last year's language
The trouble is that I've been subconsciously dreading the end of the year -- because here we are at the end of the year and I haven't anything to show for it.
I feel I've gone backwards this year -- my mental health has been rather less stable than its been since I started therapy, probably, and the outside factors have hardly helped. My absolute worst fear, the one that seemed too paranoid even for me, came true, and not a single school accepted me, and after being rejected over the phone by Duquesne and then being unceremoniously fired from my three-day job shortly afterwards, I don't think I ever really recovered. Logically, it stands to reason that I could go forward to other, better lives, but I don't believe it any more. I can't bring myself to believe that things will get better, or that anybody really wants or needs me for anything worthwhile. I've been seriously romantically lonely for the first time in my life (in a book I would at least be lonely on account of unrequited love, but no, I'm trapped being lonely and doubting my ability to even fall in love with a real human being or ever being in the position to try), I keep getting physically sick (which has to be connected somehow because I rarely get sick), it's the first year I've failed at NaNoWriMo, it's the first summer in two years I haven't been with my best friend, and nothing about me or my situation seems to have improved or grown since last winter. I've figured out a few things about myself and how I work and how to deal with it (sort of), but they're mostly things I ought to have figured out at sixteen or seventeen. I feel I've stopped maturing beyond seventeen anyway. I've felt so disconnected from other people and from life and things I ought to do all year, like I'm only skimming the skin of the world, and when I'm more lucid I realise how much I've seemingly ignored people or not done things I ought to have but then it's too late to fix them anyway and I just feel sick and have to shut myself down just to make the unfixable feeling stop.
I'm lonely and sad and hungry for magic and I just want this year to be over because I am so tired, but I'm afraid of its end and me left empty-handed trying to explain to everyone.
There have been good things, and I have to catalogue them because it isn't fair not to -- my birthday, with tea under a tree hanging with ribbons and balloons, and our sojourn in the October woods, and shenanigans with Sarah and Hannah and philosophising under the stars in the middle of the night, and falling hard for Fringe and Moulin Rouge! and Tangled and Alberto Manguel and Sarah Rees Brennan all over again with The Demon's Covenant, and Saturday afternoons with Doctor Who and a pot of tea, and coffeeshop Friday nights, and half-inventing a delightful recipe for cinnamon streusel muffins, and the thrill of coming up with an entirely new story even if it all went to hell in November, and buying books with Amazon credit when sadness struck, and the Dublin Irish Festival and plum wine, and the fact that I truly do know the greatest people on this planet.
I wanted to badly to ring in the New Year far away from here, somehow -- dancing the night away under a strange sky, perhaps, or getting terrifically and delightfully lost, or stuck in a massive library with nothing to do but hunt. Doing something unexpectable, un-routine. Possibly with other humans. But we have no real plans for tonight, just the usual standby of foodstuffs and unspecified movies, and as we haven't done anything special for any of the holidays this year it just makes me feel lonelier and I don't know what to do to make it better for me.
Every year, I think that the resolution of my heart, whether or not I acknowledged it, has been: become less unhappy. So. There's nothing for it but to keep trying.
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language.
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
-- T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"
I feel I've gone backwards this year -- my mental health has been rather less stable than its been since I started therapy, probably, and the outside factors have hardly helped. My absolute worst fear, the one that seemed too paranoid even for me, came true, and not a single school accepted me, and after being rejected over the phone by Duquesne and then being unceremoniously fired from my three-day job shortly afterwards, I don't think I ever really recovered. Logically, it stands to reason that I could go forward to other, better lives, but I don't believe it any more. I can't bring myself to believe that things will get better, or that anybody really wants or needs me for anything worthwhile. I've been seriously romantically lonely for the first time in my life (in a book I would at least be lonely on account of unrequited love, but no, I'm trapped being lonely and doubting my ability to even fall in love with a real human being or ever being in the position to try), I keep getting physically sick (which has to be connected somehow because I rarely get sick), it's the first year I've failed at NaNoWriMo, it's the first summer in two years I haven't been with my best friend, and nothing about me or my situation seems to have improved or grown since last winter. I've figured out a few things about myself and how I work and how to deal with it (sort of), but they're mostly things I ought to have figured out at sixteen or seventeen. I feel I've stopped maturing beyond seventeen anyway. I've felt so disconnected from other people and from life and things I ought to do all year, like I'm only skimming the skin of the world, and when I'm more lucid I realise how much I've seemingly ignored people or not done things I ought to have but then it's too late to fix them anyway and I just feel sick and have to shut myself down just to make the unfixable feeling stop.
I'm lonely and sad and hungry for magic and I just want this year to be over because I am so tired, but I'm afraid of its end and me left empty-handed trying to explain to everyone.
There have been good things, and I have to catalogue them because it isn't fair not to -- my birthday, with tea under a tree hanging with ribbons and balloons, and our sojourn in the October woods, and shenanigans with Sarah and Hannah and philosophising under the stars in the middle of the night, and falling hard for Fringe and Moulin Rouge! and Tangled and Alberto Manguel and Sarah Rees Brennan all over again with The Demon's Covenant, and Saturday afternoons with Doctor Who and a pot of tea, and coffeeshop Friday nights, and half-inventing a delightful recipe for cinnamon streusel muffins, and the thrill of coming up with an entirely new story even if it all went to hell in November, and buying books with Amazon credit when sadness struck, and the Dublin Irish Festival and plum wine, and the fact that I truly do know the greatest people on this planet.
I wanted to badly to ring in the New Year far away from here, somehow -- dancing the night away under a strange sky, perhaps, or getting terrifically and delightfully lost, or stuck in a massive library with nothing to do but hunt. Doing something unexpectable, un-routine. Possibly with other humans. But we have no real plans for tonight, just the usual standby of foodstuffs and unspecified movies, and as we haven't done anything special for any of the holidays this year it just makes me feel lonelier and I don't know what to do to make it better for me.
Every year, I think that the resolution of my heart, whether or not I acknowledged it, has been: become less unhappy. So. There's nothing for it but to keep trying.
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language.
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
-- T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"