Internalising hysterics
Yep. That's me. Internalising my hysterics as we speak.
I flunked out of Tax Law. Just looked down at the exam and froze. When I woke up an hour had passed. I had written nothing and I still had no idea how I was going to tackle the thing. Total and utter blank. I never finished. So I have to take a supplemental . . . something. I don't know what or when it'll be.
Worse, I just now realised what I want to do when I grow up.
I'll have spent more than 30,000 bucks on a degree I most certainly Do. Not. Want.
Have you ever done anything, started a career path, taken a class, whatever, and suddenly realised that you hate it? More than that, the only reason you're there is that you just sort of did it? I was on complete autopilot, faked my way into law school, and now I'm about to enter my third year there and now is the time I've most definitely realised I do not want to do this. I don't like law. I don't like the little nitpicky things that go on in it, I don't like dealing with the cases, precedent and legislation, I don't find anything I do there interesting. No matter what people suggest I do in relation to law it sounds awful and dull and horrible and so thoroughly not me I can't even begin to describe it.
The only classes I find interesting are the ones that hit on something that is not law.
Now that says something.
So I sit here, having just, just realised I want to try for a master's in journalism. I want to write. For the first time, I really really actually want something specific in life.
And it took failing a tax exam and freaking over it to bring me this moment of realisation.
It feels . . . liberating in an odd sort of way. My parents will be both happy and furious I think. Happy because after fifteen years of nagging I think I know what I want to do. Angry because it took several extremely expensive years of law school to do it, and I'm still going to take another degree. I have to. I won't have any 'in' otherwise.
The other hysterics are in relation to my grandmother. I keep on wondering what I'm going to tell her. She'll inform me in no uncertain terms that I should article (which I don't want to) and work as a lawyer for several years (which I really really don't want to) so that I can write journalistic articles on law-related stuff. Which is one of the things I never want to think about again.
I shouldn't say it. It's bad.
SHE'S A HORRIBLE OLD WOMAN!!
It slipped out anyhow. Sigh. I've wanted to say that for years.
The things that she speaks of!
1) Never speak of food. Whether it is good or bad is a nonissue. Food is to be eaten so that you do not die. Anything else is immaterial. What this means of course is that she cannot understand people who like to compare food quality, taste, texture, whatever. She can't understand people who like to eat certain foods to excess. I am a chocoholic. This concept is so foreign to her . . . I can't even describe it.
2) If a work of fiction is science fiction it cannot be good. If it is good, it is not science fiction. Kurt Vonnegut is a good author. Therefore it is not science fiction. Do not get me started on those conversations. Brave New World? Not sci-fi. It's good writing so it can't be.
3) There is no good popular music. The only good music is classical. She told my father many years ago that he wouldn't be listening to those Beatles twenty years down the road. It's more like thirty years and of course he still listens to the Beatles. Not as much as he did as a teenager, but he still does. He's never called her on the five dollars they bet on it either.
These are just some cardinal rules of existence. I still recall the time I went to England and France with her. There we were, sitting in the hotel room and she yelled at me because I was rereading the books I'd brought. She decided that I wasn't allowed to read those books again. Instead, she handed me the book of Margaret Atwood short stories she'd brought with her. So I read it. And reread it. And read it again. I never liked Margaret Atwood, but I had no choice. When we weren't out seeing museums and the like, I had nothing else to do but read that damn Atwood book. To this day I cannot get the memory of the woman who covered the tumour excised ealier that week in powdered chocolate, wrapped it and sent it to her ex-boyfriend as a vengeful gag gift out of my head.
Some things just stay with you.
She visited recently. We'd had a nice lunch, she talked about the opera tour in Boston she'd been on, we talked about the ballet orchestra, everything was fine. And then she leaned over with that horrible little gleeful conspiratorial smile on her face. And she mouthed at me with a happy little grin, "You need to lose some weight." Then, she smiled happily. Like . . . like a teenaged girl telling her best friend about the cute guy she went on a date with the night before. And she added, "You know how."
One time, I think I was sixteen, maybe fifteen, we were out. We'd ordered dessert and when my pie arrived, she smiled at me happily and said, "You're going to get fat if you keep eating you know." It wasn't even a rebuke or anything. She was so happy to be . . . I don't know. Gossipping with the girls? Spreading her tidbits of wisdom?
She makes me crazy. Absolutely bonkers. I can't stand her. And I can say nothing to her on any topic. Not even about the fact that she wants me to harrass my father on her behalf about his waistline. As though I want to be in the middle of that dispute. All I know is, when I talk to her on Sunday, I don't know what I'm going to say. What I'm going to do. I finally have a life choice I want to make and she's going to piss all over it.
So you see, I must internalise. Poorly apparently, since I've told anyone who cares to read this all about my freakout.
Man I hope someone's having a better day than me.
SCWLC