The First Day of the Rest of My Life
Or Choosing Between What is Easy and What is Right
It goes to show how disconnected from the Harry Potter universe I am that I can no longer recall what book Dumbledore said that in. Totally beside the point.
Help. I am asking for help.
It's been easier to wake up late, to not get up when I do wake up, to feign sleep for hours on end, to tell myself that I'll just stop somewhere on the way to the lab to eat or something and take an unnaturally long to do it. It's been easier to not think about what I have to do, because it all seems futile and hopeless, me getting pertinent, significant results by the end of April. It's been easier not to try. It's been easier to hide, and not open email, or look at messages. It's been easier to say I don't want to.
It was easier to decide, for a thrilling, intoxicating while, to just leave now. To not even wait for May 2. To make now the first day of the rest of my life. Because I didn't know how to stop being afraid of everything.
Well. I have to clarify that. I didn't mean to just disappear. Oh, that idea occurred to me too, and it was also intoxicating and glorious at the time to think of just going away, but I wouldn't have been doing myself any favors if I did that. Thank God I wasn't so far gone yet as to not realize that. But I wanted to give notice. I'd stay on for as long as I was needed. It did not help that I didn't think I did anything significant or necessary - in short that I would not be missed if I left. Gods, I was even going to say that they needn't pay me for the non-work I'd been doing since January, that they should just use the money to buy supplies, because I'd saved a ridiculous amount anyway (the benefits of getting out of work so late at night that all the shops are closed). Anything really, as long as they let me go.
Don't think for a moment that the idea isn't tempting now.
I've been telling myself over and over that I should have just left in October. It might have saved everyone a lot of pain and hardship. A lot. Of pain. And hardship. Saved. Emphasis.
Or maybe I should have just gone to a psychiatrist, as suggested, to be properly diagnosed and medicated.
Should have is a useless thing to think. Because I didn't, and I'm here, and I have to deal with that.
Dear God. I cannot count the number of times I've had this conversation with myself.
It's mostly my fault. Things have been scary and difficult, but there was no reason for me to be that terrified, and cripplingly so. Fear is the mind-killer, I know that for real now. And I allowed it to continue, and I didn't ask for help - I've let various people know some part of it, and if they all got together and talked they'd probably piece the picture together, but I don't think I've let anyone know the whole, stark truth of it. (I don't open up easily, and I really am better in writing than in conversation - there's a smaller opportunity to be embarrassed or shy in front of a screen or a blank page.) It occurs to me now that I should have asked for help sooner, but that's another should have for you.
I've tried to change my outlook by, haha, forcing myself to be happy about at least eight things every day, and it worked for a while. I worked myself into a ridiculous high over Benedict Cumberbatch in the BBC's Sherlock while in isolation over the weekend, to the point that I was channeling the character in my manner of speech (no affected British accent, though, thank you), entirely loopy, and, gods, all brittle behind the eyes, and feeling that I'd burst into tears given the slightest excuse. And I've been neglecting to feed myself. Gods. Not precisely because I didn't deserve to be fed (like last time), but rather because it seemed a pretty pointless endeavor.
Enough.
God help me to be strong to mean it this time.
I don't know what I'm going to do. Should I stay, or should I dare, and all that.
But the rest of my life starts now.