It’s crunch time here. Time to step up, to kick it into the
next gear. The time when I become a man. The time when I leave cliché behind
and, you know, do it right.
Except that the anxiety is crippling me and I am FREAKING
OUT. It seems that when the pressure gets really bad I am not rising to the
challenge but just folding like a cheap card table. I knew this time was coming
and unfortunately there was nothing much I could do but try and be ready for
it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how I got here, with this
year and everything. It’s ten years since I started university for the first
time and since I first made plans to do Honours in history. Back then I was planning
to do double Honours – a thesis year for history, and another one in Italian. I
thought that I would probably do post-grad law, probably not at the institution
I was attending, and that when I did that my life would get better. Because
university was letting me down.
I was the most miserable fuck at school you ever met. I know
everyone says that, and it’s probably true more often than not, but I really
was. I cried so easily and so often, I was that
student in class that everybody hates because they know all the answers and
never shut up, and the only people I was friendly with were in other years and
I came to know through music. And that last bit only happened my last four
years after I moved schools. The situation at the house (I never called it home) was untenable and often violent.
Work was another ball game – for the first time I had friends, a couple of whom
were close in age to me, but it was also the scene for some of the worst stuff
that has ever happened to me.
I tell the school story only to illustrate that university,
in my mind, was going to solve all my problems. I was told teachers who cared
about me that university was where I was meant to be, that intellectually and
emotionally it would satisfy me. I came
to see uni as a field of dreams, where I would be happy, where my classes would
all be incredible, where I would have friends, where I would do well and be a
success.
And of course it wasn’t like that. My subjects were either
very difficult or not demanding at all. The grading scale at university was a shock
to the system, I struggled with having to type all my work (I didn’t have my
own computer) and I was working far too much for far too little. The trauma
that happened to me two years earlier was coming back to haunt me and I was on
the fence about my singing – I knew I had to make a decision about whether to
continue or not. To top it off I ended up coming down with glandular fever
(that’s mono to you Yanks). And I didn’t realise until after.
Uni did eventually get better. I found out in third year
that it was possible to have great classes and make wonderful friends. But then
my life came apart at the seams and I dropped out, never even officially
deferring properly. The darkness consumed my life so completely that everything
before seemed better by comparison, which of course was ridiculous. It was just
that I couldn’t cope anymore at all.
And now I’m back (from outer space). And this year I am
having the best classes I have ever had, mostly full of incredible people. I am
making new friends and keeping old ones, I have a mentor who is making it clear
that he is in my life for the long haul*, my relationship with my sister is mostly
as I have always wanted it and I am getting the help I need for my illness.
So I’m trying to remember these good things even while I try
to breathe again after a panic attack that I had to run out of class to give in
to. I try to remember how content this work makes me even while the anxiety
keeps me up for days at a time and yet prevents me from concentrating. I try to
remember what my mentor is teaching me by example: that being soft and
compassionate is a strength, not a weakness, and one that makes me better at
what I do.
So I’m going to do my best with what I have, in the time I
have. This year is a privilege and I know how lucky I am. So as much as I hate
these deadlines, I am working on things that are important and that have
meaning. For the first time in a long time I have more to be grateful for than
not. I’m hoping that knowledge, and that
gratitude, keeps my head above water.
*more on that another time.
This was going to be a
bitchy post but I hope it became something better than that. Sorry for all the
sad stories.
