when they talked about the potential of web 2.0, somehow liveblogging our nervous breakdowns was not what i had in mind
and yet, here i am, having had my leave of absence processed today, waiting for the weekend when the fam will take me home. temporary college dropout because i don’t think i’ll be coming back.there are some things for which, i have to tell you, i am not quick on the uptake, like how if you are making a choice that you want to make you happy but in practice makes you miserable to the point of triggering clinical depression, you should possibly consider NOT MAKING IT ANYMORE. i keep thinking about how i could be the poster child for that saying about how the definition of insanity is doing the same thing multiple times and expecting a different result. even as far back as freshman year, what was i expecting from going to a college that was basically the college equivalent of my high school, except with a greater emphasis on the parts of my high school that fucked with my head, and also being a college which meant no “going home” from school?
and after my first leave of absence, when i was happier than i had been in years, i talked myself into going back, somehow expecting that things would be different, and then got all shocked when, bam! depressed again, crying all the time, lonely to the point of feeling all existential about it, stressed and unmotivated. unable to ignore as often as i wanted to the persistent hum of i don’t care i don’t care i don’t care or i don’t want to be here. a slight uptick towards the end of the year, after a 4-day stint on wellbutrin that nearly made me suicidal scared me, i think, into something like normalcy, not to mention the weather got better. but i still freaked out and failed a class - one of only three i was taking - because i never turned in the final paper.
this year when we pulled into harvard square the night i was moving in my stomach tensed up. it’s been doing that all semester, getting unsettled whenever i’m anxious which is all the time. anxious turned to stress turned to depressed, again, some more. turned to totally unable to write papers, as in unable to think anything at all about anything i was assigned to write about, not even able to come up with 5 pages worth of nonsense vaguely relating to the topic at hand, bursting into tears whenever i tried. surprised but not really surprised because this was the same old story with me and this place.
and my helpful local administrator was like, so maybe you should take some time off again, and i was like i don’t want to prolong this whole college thing any more than i have to, and my mom was like, maybe you should take some time off again, and i was like i don’t think it would be time off, it would be going away forever and figuring out something else to do other than getting a B. A. from here, and my shrink was like i don’t really get why you’re not taking a leave of absence because at this point it’s pretty much that or failing out of school and i guess something is blocking you, and i was like, i feel stupid taking a leave of absence AGAIN which i recognize is a stupid reason not to do it but there you have it.
and then on monday i was trying to explain this to a friend of mine and suddenly i realized actually what i really wanted to do was drop the fuck out of this place, spend a little bit of time at home recuperating because i’m lucky enough to have a family that will let me do that, get some kind of job somewhere, and then transfer to city university of new york (which, for those who don’t know, is more or less state school but for new york city, because nyc is awesome enough to be its own state, or something) and go maybe part-time while working, which i have a couple friends who wound up doing when the full-time college student thing didn’t work out for them either for whatever reasons.
and then, and this is the really scary part, i realized there was actually no reason at all for me not to do that, except that i was scared to, which is a bullshit reason for something like this, which meant that now that i realized there was no reason not to do this, i had to do it, and… i don’t waste time, so here we are.
technically i am in fact on leave of absence, which means i can come back up till five years have passed or until the point where i get a bachelor’s from some other institution, which strikes me right now as infinitely more likely than me choosing to enroll here again. but i guess it’s good to keep the option open since there’s no harm in it.
i’m not going to say there’s no part of me that’s freaked out about this, because there’s definitely this other-isabel in my head who keeps yelling at me on like an hourly basis WHO THE FUCK WALKS AWAY FROM A HARVARD DIPLOMA? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU CAN’T YOU JUST SUCK UP BEING SO MESSED UP IT’S HARD TO GET OUT OF BED OR THINK ABOUT ANYTHING EXCEPT HOW MUCH YOU WANT TO DIE FOR ANOTHER YEAR AND A HALF?
and you know, maybe she has a point, but she’s the one, i’m pretty sure, who talked me into coming back after my year off when all my instincts were telling me i really didn’t want to do that, and she was wrong and my instincts were right, so shut up, other-isabel!
my instincts are on board with this decision, and any decision i’ve made following them has always turned out to be one i was glad to have made, even if it didn’t turn out like i expected, and i can’t say that about the decisions i’ve talked myself into.
i’ve said for a pretty long time now that there are pretty much two basic reasons to do anything, and they are: it makes you happy or it makes someone else happy. the applications of these reasons are varied and sometimes incredibly complicated, but that’s kind of what it boils down to, mostly: pursuit of happiness. which means: if something is actively making you unhappy, then no, there is no reason you “should” do it. not because you feel like a failure for quitting. not because you’re scared of figuring out what you’d do instead, at least if you have the resources to allow you to do that. not because SERIOUSLY, SERIOUSLY, WHO TURNS DOWN BEING ABLE TO WRITE B. A. FROM HARVARD ON THEIR RESUME DON’T YOU SEE HOW MANY OPPORTUNITIES YOU’RE - shut up, other-isabel! not a reason!
pursuit of happiness. actively choosing to try to make myself happy. saying, sucking it up and dealing is only worth it if the goal is worth it. sucking it up is not in and of itself a virtue, no matter what the remnants of puritanism want you to think. acting on my own reasons, and not anyone else’s. this is how i want to live my life. this is the example i want to set for myself, regardless of how this particular choice turns out.
here we are. here we go.
