![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
here's one I've been thinking about this week: how can you possibly accommodate my shame?
last week I met with my advisor, who wanted to encourage me to come to the department graduation "whenever it happens" that I graduate -- we talked about how I'm one class away and I didn't think I'd have much trouble with it; she was the one who taught me the first part of the subject, and she remembered how interested and furiously facile I'd been with it in general. "maybe you could do 'study sessions' which were you really teaching material you knew to <classmate who just met with me before you>," she suggested. she also I think still thinks I would do well in grad school, now with the rider of like, 'given an appropriate cooldown period'. she took time off before grad school, she told me last time, and that was good for her.
one class away, and one assignment from one class last semester in order to wrap that class up. the hardest part of the one assignment, I told Advisor, is going to be getting started on it -- and I told her that I'd planned out like three to four days for it, one to look at the assignment, one to look at the data it was based on, a couple to work it out and write it up. Advisor said back to me, very gently, I think the hardest part of the one assignment is going to be asking for help if you need it.
she said, just know that this -- whatever -- this shame? -- it's projected outward. we want to help you with it, we do. <that one assignment teacher>, me, whoever. she encouraged me to come to the department graduation.
another teacher reached out today, after I missed handing in his first assignment, skipped a class. the part where I have to write back is what's too big. Hello Sarah, he writes, you mentioned you had accommodations; would this be part of your accommodations? Please let me know what I can do.
hello professor, I do not write back. I have been unable to eat real food or get out of bed for months because I'm afraid that if I do either I'm committed to living the day ahead of me. I'm going to work and eating food that's already expired there because at least I'm comforted that everything at work is trash, so I'm permitted eat it, it not being any kind of commitment to or statement on purposeful existence. I sleep on the sofa in my room because I can't get into bed because that would also mean acknowledging the cycle of day and night and the passage of time. I leave the lights on. I don't really want to be living the way I'm living but I'm generally too out of it to make any meaningful change, and I'm pretty sure that's by design.
in high school I wanted to tell teachers things like this, tell friends. in high school the relationship between me and my parents was intensely terrible and if I didn't tell people it actually would eat me up; there was no possibility of feeling level in my emotions, in myself, because whatever special combination of nature and nurture was busy feeding me landmines. metaphorically speaking. I'm afraid it's just normalized for me now. I'm afraid I'm still afraid like that for less good reasons. I'm afraid it's been ten years or fifteen and
-- pause. it's absolutely been fifteen years since I was sixteen. this is overwhelming, and if I still cried all the time, that would be five minutes of howling.
-- it's been a long time that I've been trying not to commit, unsure what direction to go, overwhelmed by the idea that the world existed; and in the meantime the world has shown me very slowly and carefully that it's mostly just garbage, hateful and hurtful and how much energy it takes to be hopeful and spit in its face and cheerfully eat its garbage and stand up and shout the right people down every day. and I've been wrong in the meantime; I've shouted when I really shouldn't have, and I've been part of how hateful and exhausting humans are in general.
I'm going to try to get dressed and go to class. I wish I were shivering and shaky, like I probably actually feel inside, rather than just twenty pounds over my usual weight and kind of greasy and fed up. here we go, though. we wish. today, we wish.
last week I met with my advisor, who wanted to encourage me to come to the department graduation "whenever it happens" that I graduate -- we talked about how I'm one class away and I didn't think I'd have much trouble with it; she was the one who taught me the first part of the subject, and she remembered how interested and furiously facile I'd been with it in general. "maybe you could do 'study sessions' which were you really teaching material you knew to <classmate who just met with me before you>," she suggested. she also I think still thinks I would do well in grad school, now with the rider of like, 'given an appropriate cooldown period'. she took time off before grad school, she told me last time, and that was good for her.
one class away, and one assignment from one class last semester in order to wrap that class up. the hardest part of the one assignment, I told Advisor, is going to be getting started on it -- and I told her that I'd planned out like three to four days for it, one to look at the assignment, one to look at the data it was based on, a couple to work it out and write it up. Advisor said back to me, very gently, I think the hardest part of the one assignment is going to be asking for help if you need it.
she said, just know that this -- whatever -- this shame? -- it's projected outward. we want to help you with it, we do. <that one assignment teacher>, me, whoever. she encouraged me to come to the department graduation.
another teacher reached out today, after I missed handing in his first assignment, skipped a class. the part where I have to write back is what's too big. Hello Sarah, he writes, you mentioned you had accommodations; would this be part of your accommodations? Please let me know what I can do.
hello professor, I do not write back. I have been unable to eat real food or get out of bed for months because I'm afraid that if I do either I'm committed to living the day ahead of me. I'm going to work and eating food that's already expired there because at least I'm comforted that everything at work is trash, so I'm permitted eat it, it not being any kind of commitment to or statement on purposeful existence. I sleep on the sofa in my room because I can't get into bed because that would also mean acknowledging the cycle of day and night and the passage of time. I leave the lights on. I don't really want to be living the way I'm living but I'm generally too out of it to make any meaningful change, and I'm pretty sure that's by design.
in high school I wanted to tell teachers things like this, tell friends. in high school the relationship between me and my parents was intensely terrible and if I didn't tell people it actually would eat me up; there was no possibility of feeling level in my emotions, in myself, because whatever special combination of nature and nurture was busy feeding me landmines. metaphorically speaking. I'm afraid it's just normalized for me now. I'm afraid I'm still afraid like that for less good reasons. I'm afraid it's been ten years or fifteen and
-- pause. it's absolutely been fifteen years since I was sixteen. this is overwhelming, and if I still cried all the time, that would be five minutes of howling.
-- it's been a long time that I've been trying not to commit, unsure what direction to go, overwhelmed by the idea that the world existed; and in the meantime the world has shown me very slowly and carefully that it's mostly just garbage, hateful and hurtful and how much energy it takes to be hopeful and spit in its face and cheerfully eat its garbage and stand up and shout the right people down every day. and I've been wrong in the meantime; I've shouted when I really shouldn't have, and I've been part of how hateful and exhausting humans are in general.
I'm going to try to get dressed and go to class. I wish I were shivering and shaky, like I probably actually feel inside, rather than just twenty pounds over my usual weight and kind of greasy and fed up. here we go, though. we wish. today, we wish.