Into the void...
“That night she sat for hours, too numb even to drink, teaching herself to breathe in a vacuum. For this, oh God, was the void. There was nobody who could help her. Nobody in the world. They were all on something, mad, possible enemies, dead.”
-Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
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2003-01-13
6:26 p.m.
Tonight is the last class for my fall semester course. I have to turn in my final paper, which is fifteen pages of painstakingly researched material on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s use of the international theme as compared to that of Henry James. It’s due tonight. It was done by last week. I think I spent most of the semester working on it bit by bit, and goddammit, it was done with plenty of time to spare and only a little bit of stress.
This is a far cry from the desperate all-nighters pulled all throughout my undergraduate experience.
My mindset in college was that things would be over sooner or later regardless of whether or not I finished them. That was my only hope. The only thing I could look forward to was the fact that stressful dates would come and go with or without me, and, if things ever got bad enough, I could easily kill myself and that would be the end of the problem.
What is the point of this "growing up" crap?
Am I smarter now than I was in college? Am I wiser? Am I more respectable? No. I’m the same goddamn person I always was, and I hereby attest to the fact that I’ll never really change.
The changing attitude in preparation for classes is only happening for reasons that have half to do with the medication I’m on and half to do with the fact that I’m aging at a phenomenally rapid rate that makes me too damn tired and slow to do anything past my bedtime. When ten o’clock rolls around, I’m worthless: tired, ornery, and worthless. If anything is going to get done past my bedtime, it’s going to be half-assed work that won’t get me anywhere, and I’ll end up taking the same goddamn classes over and over again before finally getting fed up with the fact that education is stupid and useless since we’re all going to die anyway.
So, at first glance, it does appear that I’m being the good little conscientious student, but, in reality, I’m just praying to god that I’m not asked to read something too long for me to finish in tiny fifteen-minute intervals because otherwise, I’ll fall asleep.
I’m so bored with life.
I’m sick of having to listen to people all day long at work, then during my commute, then on TV, then in my nightmares while I’m asleep,...people just TALKING, incessantly talking, and I can’t ever get a moment of quiet to just let my head rest for a second unless I want to fall asleep for several hours. My head is SO SICK of hearing the people’s voices going on and on and on. I don’t care who the fuck is talking, the fact of the matter is that if they are talking, they are driving me crazy.
Oh, and my therapist is leaving.
Therapy is the one hour a month when I get to be the one talking. I don’t necessarily LIKE talking, so don’t think I’m saying that I wish I could talk more, but dammit, occasionally, it’s nice to see someone who’s a relative stranger, staring at me in only half-recognition, while I babble on about something I don’t really care to talk about. Maybe it’s just nice to see another person sitting there NOT talking for a change.
My head feels so heavy. And my eyes are all blurry. I can’t breathe through my nose. And all the muscles in my entire back and my neck are twisted up into knots that feel like they’re going to spring free at any moment in a painful release of bloody muscle tissue, but I’m not quite so lucky. Instead, I sit here, thinking to myself that it's odd to be writing from MY point of view for a change, instead of writing through the point of view of the character in my newest book, and I can't stop thinking about how much pain I’m in and how much I feel like there’s a tiny little blender inside my skull that’s blending together all the useless brain cells, while the rest of my head simply reacts by feeling overused, exhausted, and oddly like someone’s been beating me on the head for the entire day.
I definitely do not feel well.
I think I have to get out of here soon. This office is making me feel sick to my stomach. But I have another hour before I leave for class. What should I do? I’ll probably end up sitting here for the entire hour, thinking about how much everything hurts and how nice it would be to be home sitting on the couch with my blankets and my slippers, playing with the bunny and relaxing with Rob. Work is too much for me. Life is too much for me.
I want to go home.
