Sarah Lawrence
Well, I went to get the mail today fully expecting to be greeted by a thin envelope by Sarah Lawrence, but there was a thick envelope sticking out of the mail box instead! I am so, so excited! I knew they were sending out all of their decisions this week, but it seemed like everyone who was accepted had received their acceptance either yesterday or Monday and that today people were beginning to receive rejections, so I figured that acceptances had gone out first and the rejections and that since I hadn’t received anything yet I was rejected. Imagine my surprise when I found the big envelope!
Anyway, it’s very expensive, so I need to look over the financial aid package with my parents tonight. It’s mostly loans (all federal, which is good because they aren’t private-raspel will appreciate this!), but I did get a scholarship that amounts to about 8,000 dollars a year. I don’t know if it’s feasible or not (I suppose I’d have to work part-time to pay for my living expenses as well, although I’d have to work part-time for Vermont, too, so that’s no big sacrifice), but I feel honored and excited just to be accepted. Sarah Lawrence only accepts about twenty percent of applicants, or one in five, so getting accepted is a pretty big deal.
Anyway, I’m really excited about this. Sarah Lawrence has a really good program with lots of individual attention and support, and it has a really good reputation in the writing world. Plus, I could live in my own little apartment. It might very well cost too much, though. Oh, well. The sun is shining (which is great because this weekend was a total washout and there was tons of flooding in eastern Mass) and it’s over sixty degrees out (spring and the warm weather are coming!) and my mouth isn’t hurting too much and my father’s taking me to my favorite burrito place tonight and it’s spring break and I just got accepted, so there’s a lot to be happy about…
…which is good because I was having a hell of a hard time on Monday night for some reason. Don’t ask me why, but I sunk into a really deep depression Monday night. I just kept thinking that I’ll never lose weight and that I’m going to keep gaining weight and that I’ll be fat forever, which somehow turned into thinking that no one cares about me because no one cared when I got my wisdom teeth out (not that that’s a huge deal or a major surgery or anything, but still), which turned into really strong urges to cut. I haven’t wanted to cut that badly in a month or so. I told myself that I’d wait through the night and that if the urges were as strong the next day I’d cut then. I know that sounds dumb, but it’s been working well for me, because by the next day the urges have always diminished or passed completely. I never thought the delay tactic worked, but it’s what has kept me safe for the past three months. Seriously, if you’re someone who struggles with self-harm tell yourself that you’ll wait until the next day and really give yourself permission to self-harm the next day if you still feel as bad. The odds are that you won’t most of the time, though. It works for me, anyway.
Actually, I think I do know what triggered the bad feelings on Monday night. I watched House with my mother. Simple fact: I cannot watch medical shows; they trigger me like nothing else. The fact of the matter is that I still have this intense urge to be sick and in the hospital, and medical shows (and anything related) bring that urge out to its fullest. I’ve always been obsessed with them (there was a point in junior high and early high school when I would literally watch ER three or four times a day!), but they trigger me like crazy. On Monday night I was thinking about how much I wanted to be sick in the hospital again and about how I’d never get there again because I’m so fat now, and that made me feel really depressed and hopeless. I really need to stay away from shows like that for my own good.
It’s weird, because today (basically since getting my acceptance) I’ve been feeling OK, but Monday I wanted to cut and was borderline suicidal. It’s like one good thing can change my outlook completely. I guess I need more good things in my life. You know, I highly doubt I’m bipolar because I’ve never been manic or hypomanic and I don’t really have mood swings, but maybe the people at McLean weren’t as far off as I thought when they wanted to diagnose me as borderline. (They ultimately decided that I had borderline features but that I didn’t meet the full diagnosis.) I scoffed at the idea, but my mood does seem to change from bad to worse without really good reason sometimes (like Monday night). Hmm.
Well, there isn’t much else going on. I’ve been rereading Wintergirls and it’s given me some inspiration to write. I think I’m going to explore the whole idea of “rock bottom” in my next piece; I have some decent ideas. I have to read the first two books of Chaucer’s House of Fame for Monday, so I’ll probably do that tonight. I also have to do some reading and write a four to seven page paper for Contemporary Women’s Short Fiction on Wednesday. That all seems doable, but at the last minute before break my Cognitive Psych professor assigned a psych literature review assignment that requires us to find at least four articles and write six to eight pages on them for next Thursday. I can’t really work on it over break because I don’t have access to the psych article databases at home, so I’ll have to wait until I get back to school, which doesn’t give me much time. I’m pretty stressed about it.
Well, I guess that’s it. I hope you’re all enjoying the holiday. :)