2:40 AM and All's Not Well

I don't know if it's happened again or if this is something new, something I'll pull through. I've been very unhappy in this, my second semester at college. I was terrified this would happen. Again. In my second year of online classes, my senior year, I lost all drive to keep going. I think part of the reason I did this was because online classes were no longer new and exciting by the second time around. So, even though I was terrified I'd lose motivation in my first semester, I knew it was even more likely in my second semester of college. In my senior year in high school, I WANTED to do well in school. I really did, but I just couldn't bring myself to try. It was so much easier to sleep, and that's what I ended up doing most of the time.

It hasn't been quite THAT bad this semester, but still, I've been unhappy, and it's quite a loss to go straight from being okay one semester to decidedly sad the next. I wrote a post on this earlier in the year, but never got around to editing and posting it. Maybe I will later. Anyway, I started off this year depressed in big part thanks to losing my friends. My cafeteria friend and particularly my friend J who ditched me for her other friends and hasn't called or texted me once this year. I still have my other friend in the dorms and my other friend in electrical engineering and a couple other people who's company I enjoy, but I can't really talk to any of them. I certainly can't go over to their rooms in the middle of the night to chat and relieve my anxieties, like I used to do with J. Everyone else keeps somewhat normal hours.

In a word, lonely is what I've felt this semester. Utterly lonely. And sad. It's not unfamiliar to feel this way. I used to at home all the time, but I find myself wishing I was at home at lot this semester, because at least there, there's someone around, someone making noise, someone I could say SOMETHING to any time I felt like, even if it wasn't a very nice something. This year, there's no one nearby that I could go up and say hi to. I often feel like, at any one moment, no one knows where I am or how I'm doing. I could be dead, all tied up in garbage bags in a dumpster, and no one would know.

Basically, I'm not feeling so well this semester. Academically, I've been doing fine, I suppose, but then this weekend happened, and I got sick. It was a three-day weekend I've been looking forward to since Day 1 of this semester. I got to go home, see a movie, eat out, and I was supposed to do homework too, but I didn't. It was very stupid of me. Because yesterday, I got sick. My mom brought me back to the dorms. I spent a miserable night doing a crappy job of writing my lab report while my nose was congested and my throat stung and I tried to grab a couple Z's as well.

Today, I was tired and sick, so I emailed my teacher to say I wouldn't be in class today. I didn't feel that bad about it because I only have one class on Tuesdays and nothing really happens in it. I tried to sleep all day, and got a few hours, and felt better than I had in the morning, but still not good. I got up to do a few things I had to do, then I came back to my room and tried to do physics. But I slept. And then physics just seemed really hard, and I knew I couldn't get all my homework done and I got very frustrated. I knew I could do it if I wasn't sick physically. I could even do it if I wasn't sick emotionally. But seeing as I am both, I won't get through it. Not tonight.

And then, finally, the tears could come. I need to do my physics homework because the quiz tomorrow will be based on the homework, and I still have no idea what I'm doing. I need to do my calculus homework because supposedly this homework set will take a long time and I'm only going to get more homework tomorrow and I have a quiz on this stuff on Friday, and I still have no idea what I'm doing. I needed to do my chemistry homework because the quiz tomorrow will be based on THAT homework, and I still have no idea what I'm doing. But I need to get some sleep too because I'm sick and I won't be able to do well tomorrow if I don't get any sleep and I'm sick. I need to get some sleep to even be able to do this homework, because I feel too awful to do it right now. And I don't see how I'm going to make it through college at all if I'm going to be feeling like this all the time. Like crap. This is senior year all over again. I'm already so behind, and I'm going to lose motivation to catch up, because it's going to seem too hard for me. I'm going to fail college. This is what I was thinking. Part of it.

I often cry when I'm sick. I can't stand being sick, especially when my nose gets all clogged up and my whole face aches because of it. It wasn't even that bad, though, this cold. I wasn't in THAT much pain. But it was everything that was adding up, piling on: my loneliness, my homework, my despair, and my physical discomfort. I wished the cold would go away. I wished I could get my homework done. I wished I didn't have to be scared of losing motivation. And I wished most of all for someone. You know, someone. I wished -- no, I WISH for someone who didn't care what time of night it was, who'd come to me from however far away they were RIGHT NOW WHEN I NEEDED THEM, who'd hold my hand and rub my back and talk to me and let me cry. I feel so pathetic for crying. I feel like everyone else is happy and smiling and getting on with their lives in spite of the pains we all have to endure, and I'm crying over a stupid cold. I wish for someone who'd show me they still love me in spite of how weak and pathetic I am with tears pouring down my face.

I paced around my room, blowing my nose constantly and loudly and hoping everyone who heard assumed it was only my cold and couldn't hear my sobs. I briefly kind of almost considered calling my mom and telling her how sick and unhappy I am and how I want to quit and come home. But I know what she'd say. She'd tell me to keep my chin up and press on for just another three weeks and then we could see each other again over spring break. She'd tell me, "What do you want from me?" She's not the kind to consider driving two hours in the middle of the night in the middle of the week to see someone. I can't really blame her, when she has so many problems of her own, real problems, and she has a job she needs to be at in the morning. But if I'd called her, I'd be exactly where I started, except I'd also be humiliated. You know, like most people, I've never had anyone who would be there for me exactly when I needed them and know exactly what to say. I've never had anyone who could actually help me with my problems.

But, God, I wish I did.

Anyway, I blew my nose raw and cried my eyes sore, and now I have a strong feeling my face is going to look like a marshmallow tomorrow. So I'm going to have a sick day. It should at least be interesting. It's the first one I've taken. I don't really consider today a sick day, because I only had one class. But I have four tomorrow, and I'll be missing a lot of important stuff in all of them, quizzes and such. And I still have my homework I was supposed to have done by today, so I'll have to work twice as hard. Hopefully, I'll get over my cold through the night and be able to do that. It would also be nice to sit in bed and watch movies, like some people do on sick days. But then, you see? Isn't this like my senior year? I'm skipping classes when it seems they'll be hard to go to, and I'm thinking instead of watching movies in bed. I hope to God it's not going to happen to me again. (I'm not using the Lord's name in vain anywhere in this post. I'm actually saying it to God. Just so you know.)

Good night.

Top 7 Lessons of the Summer

Top Seven lessons I learned or internalized over the summer:

1. Sometimes you have to make a conscious decision not to give up. Not giving up doesn't come naturally to all people. Not to me at least. When I have trouble with something right at the start, I usually quit right at the start. But I realized that's keeping me from doing things that are important to me. I quit my very first job, at McDonalds, and I didn't earn the money I could have, the money that would have made me more independent. I want to be indepenent. If I was working just to earn friends, it wouldn't be worth it, and I could quit because I don't truly want the everyday sort of friend. But I truly want to be independent. So when it comes to that, I have to say outloud that I won't give up. It worked with navigating the streets of town. I got better at it every time. It worked slightly with driving cars. I got minutely better at it every time. And these things will help me be independent. They're worth it.

2. I CAN keep myself from giving up if I make a conscious decision not to. I know now that I CAN keep myself from giving up on college. Before, it often seemed that giving up was just something that happened to me, but it's not. I can control it. Somewhat. I can also get better at controlling it. It worked on crossing the street and driving. It can work on college.

3. Everyone goes through what I go through at some point. If you start thinking you're abnormal, you'll make every twisted experience and emotion worse. And usually for no reason. When I worked at McDonalds, I stood on the other side of that terribly intimidating counter for the first time and saw how hard it was, but also saw that many people acted the same as I used to when I went to order at such a counter. Afraid of making a mistake, overwhelmed by the options, confused by the terminology, shy. (Fast food menus really are too complicated.) And I realized I wasn't weird, I realized it was okay to feel that way, and I realized that couldn't be the only area in which more than one person felt that way. Because I knew that, I could finally stop feeling that way. I could be more confident, just knowing other people do that too.

4. Be proud of your terror. This might seem a tad contradictory to the above lesson, but when I was learning to cross the city streets, I was terrified. I was extra terrified when I vaguely remembered that "scared to cross the street" is possibly some way to referring to a scaredy cat. I think. It's like "scared of her own shadow." I've never been scared of my shadow, and it's perfectly rational to be frightened to cross a street jammed with cars that could crush you in a single go. But it bugged me still, that I might be in the same category as Afraid of Own Shadow. But then I realized I was doing it anyway. I was terrified, and I was facing that terror. If I was extra terrified, I was also extra courageous, and I should be extra proud.

5. Move and talk slowly. I move and talk fast when I'm nervous, but if I control myself even then, I can eliminate many mistakes I'd otherwise make in a rush, and I can actually calm myself.

6. People will like you for being yourself, and even when they don't, you won't care. When you're being yourself, it's like you're standing on solid ground -- if you'll please forgive the cliche on the basis that I should already be in bed. If you're fake to please others, you set yourself on a cardboard sheet between skyscrapers. But if you're you, you're powerful. Even if people hate you, they can't topple you. It just is.

7. You can turn loneliness into empowerment. Like many people, I've wished for someone to help me through everything I've been through, and all I will be through. Whether it came to emotional turmoil in the safety of my home or that that came with walking alone around town, past cars and scary-looking people and non-scary-looking people who can be just as dangerous (hey, I'm scared of people, I admit it). Like many people, I had no one. Just me. But then, sometimes as I thought of this, I'd recognize a strange feeling. I'd think, "Hey, no one else got me through my pain. Maybe no one else could. But I did. I'd think now and then that, if anyone helped me out, they'd be like Superman to me, but I just kept going, and now I'm out of those places I wanted Superman to help me out of." I think of this, and for a little while, I feel like Superman. It makes you realize that you don't need anything you might lose, only the one thing you can't lose: you. This is more complicated that it sounds. According to my religion, I didn't really get myself out of anything, because I'm powerless without God. I do believe that, in the end, it was all Him, but that's not how I feel. And I'm not saying it's best to be lonely. If I had my way, everyone would have their One True Friend to help them out their whole lives. I'm just saying there is a bright side to being alone.