happiness can be quitting

Today I am happier than I have been in months, and it’s because I finally stopped holding myself to a standard of achievement that doesn’t fulfill me.
In other words, I quit.

Everything.

(Almost).

Despite my love of learning—of theory and research, of data and practice—today I withdrew from my graduate program. I realized that trying to do everything (work two jobs, go to school full time, complete my internship, and work on myself) was like trying to shove a square peg into a round hole: I was trying to fit myself into a program that didn’t work for me and instead chipped away at my wellbeing.

I know I’ve made the right decision because as I mentioned, I am happier than I’ve been in a long time.

For years and years I have lived in a state of constant, overwhelming stress. I thought I thrived on it. In undergrad I was always taking about 18 credits, working a job or two, involved in various journals and research labs et cetera. High school was similar, albeit with extracurriculars rather than work. And just now at 25 I am learning that I don’t need to stretch myself so thin in order to be fulfilled.

Just because I want to help people doesn’t mean I can’t say “no” to requests. Just because I’m intelligent doesn’t mean I have to keep going to school. Just because I’m healthier than I was a few years ago doesn’t mean I have to work myself at the same level I did before I was sick.

My roommate and I made self-care posters that are now hanging in our kitchen. I desperately need to remake mine as I used to have a fundamentally flawed understanding of self-care, but there is one thing from my poster that I want to keep: a quote saying, “working to death is not a badge of honor; martyrdom in vain serves no one.”

It’s time that I take my own advice and live like I give a shit about myself instead of killing myself because that’s what I think I need to do. There is no need to participate in the culture of glorifying over-working.

I want to be happy. I’m finally ready to make whatever changes I must to fully tackle my depression and anxiety. I want to work one job instead of doing the equivalent of four. I want to finally be able to sleep at night without lying awake thinking of all the tasks I need to accomplish. I’m ready to stop comparing my journey with others’ and do something that I can be proud of for once.

I am going to stop competing in the nonexistent race for success.
There will always be people who are smarter than me, stronger than me, kinder than me, more talented at x, y, or z than me. And that’s good. That’s fine. I just need to be the healthiest me that I can be, and to do that, I’m starting over.

Currently I have no life plan other than find a job that I’m passionate about—easier said than done, I know. It’s going to be tough and scary… but it’s also exhilarating. I am so excited to see what the future holds, and to discover a self that is well again.

i don’t deserve to graduate

It’s currently 12:15am on the morning of the day I am supposed to graduate from college. All week I’ve been listening to the excited chatter of my peers (many of whom absolutely excel in their respective fields), but all I want to do right now is cry.

When I began my undergraduate journey back in the fall of 2012, I was confident. I was coming into college with 32 credits under my belt from taking AP classes in high school where I had pretty easily excelled and ended up graduating with a 4.125 GPA.

I’m not telling you this to brag, I’m telling you to paint a picture. I was a young student used to success and used to feeling intelligent. I never felt particularly attractive when I was younger, I was terrible at sports, and wasn’t really exceptional at anything other than writing English papers–but I always had my intelligence. I didn’t spend a lot of time studying, I enjoyed reading and writing, and was a naturally good multiple choice test-taker. Academia was suited for me, and I for it.

My first semester of college, I got a 4.0, but that rapidly changed. Whether it was genetics, the trigger of ending a tumultuous and abusive long-term relationship, latent post-cancer effects, whatever (probably a combination of many things), I began to struggle greatly with depression. Still, despite my setbacks with trying to find the right medications, sleeping through tests, and skipping tons of class, I managed to keep afloat. Kind of.

With those initial 32 credits out of the way, my original plan for undergrad was to graduate in 2015 with a BS in Psychology and a minor in Religious Studies. Now it’s 2017, and while that minor has changed to a BA in Philosophy, I don’t feel like I deserve to graduate. I’ve struggled to put this into words for my loved ones, and usually just talk about how I hate graduation ceremonies or tell people that they don’t need to feel obligated to attend, but I’ve been doing this because I feel like an imposter.

I still try to cling to my intelligence/academic skill as a part of my identity, but the truth is, no matter how much I love school, I have failed to live up to my own expectations. Frankly, most of my college classes have been easy (with a few notable exceptions). I honestly feel like I would have breezed through if it weren’t for all my stupid mental illnesses. And the cognitive effects of chemo brain definitely haven’t helped the situation. I forget everything, feel foggy, and just can’ t work as efficiently as I used to. If only I could have overcome my depressive symptoms and memory issues, or gone to class or studied, I know I could have gotten an A instead of a B or C. The material wasn’t difficult: I just never put in enough effort.

And that’s why I don’t feel worthy of walking across that stage tomorrow. I am tired of people congratulating me for my mediocre efforts. I want them to look at me and say “hey, we know you could have done better if you’d have tried harder.” Part of me understands just how irrational this is, but the larger part is just so disappointed in myself. Every semester of undergrad, I’ve started out strong, telling myself that “this is the year we’re finally gonna get our shit together!” And every semester the same spiral of depression and anxiety buries my good intentions under a paralyzing need to remain inert.

In 2015, I wasn’t sure if I would even live to see this day, so I made an even stronger promise to myself during chemo: “we’re gonna use this. This experience will be our fuel, and we will use our gratefulness to thrive. We’re not going to take our education for granted, and we’re going to do everything right this time.” But here I am again, trying not to cry, sitting alone in my underwear, listening to ABBA radio and wondering how the hell I ended up back at the bottom. 

I desperately want to succeed. I love philosophy dearly, but I’m terrified that these destructive patterns will follow me into graduate school. I’m terrified that my future school will see all my mistakes from this semester and decide they don’t went me anymore–I wouldn’t accept me anymore. Mental illness is nobody’s fault, but even with everything I know about how my illness works and manifests, I can’t help but fall back on these thought patterns, these barbed ‘should haves’ that make me feel unworthy. Lazy. Stupid.

So today I graduate. I don’t know if I’ll be celebrating, but it’s happening regardless. I guess I’ll just have to come to terms with the new, post-treatment me, and keep trying to find strategies that will help me with school in the future.

 

untitled poem

Sweet red wine to sour grapes
Feeling my body with no escape
Falling down since there is no up
All thoughts runneth from my cup
Each pretty drop supped by forked tongues…

Water to wine to innocent blood
My flesh unleavened, formed by mud
Fortune told in star-dust’d veins
The veil is torn but blindness remains
Each little hope from flowered trees hung;

Or hanged–but willingly–each dizzy breath from a Judas tree.

positively depressed

I am a broken record.
Celebrating small victories and inescaping smaller anxieties.

I really am a positive person. Really. I think that people are fundamentally good, and I never lose faith that one day I will show up to an appointment on time. However, I’ve realized there is a disconnect between my general attitude and my mental illnesses that confuses people—confuses me. How can I laugh and smile and post photos on social media of how much I love all of my friends while simultaneously being completely paralyzed by anxiety and depression? I don’t know how, but I know that I can. Because I am. Always.

I really do feel like a broken record. Like people reading this blog must think “Goddamn, all this woman talks about is cancer and mental illness. Get over it.” But both are a huge part of my life and I will never be over them.

I think that’s the scariest part about both major depressive disorder and cancer: they’re always with you. I had a weird stomach pain a few weeks ago which caused a panic attack because I just KNEW I had another tumor. I called my oncologist’s office to make sure I had a CT coming up (and I do, in a few weeks). Of course I told my parents about it and freaked them out, even though I told them it was probably just me being paranoid (which I’m pretty sure it was). Cancer doesn’t just affect you, but your loved ones too. Same with depression/anxiety. I am constantly calling my older sister and my mom on the phone, telling them that I can’t get out of bed or that I have so much to do that I’m too overwhelmed and I can’t do any of it.
–You know that feeling when your heart starts racing and you almost pray that you would just pass out to stop your mind from spinning because you KNOW what you have to do and you just. can’t. make. yourself. DO IT. And you’re letting yourself down, and your professors down, and your parents down and everyone is falling down down because this is a spiral and you’ve been following it for so long by now you know there are no emergency exits that you’re willing to take—

I hate that I have to burden others with my problems. And I know I’m on a down-swing right now because I’ve been isolating myself. Skipping classes, avoiding talking about my feelings. Keeping it arbitrarily light. Because I really am a positive person. REALLY.
In general I think things tend to work out for the better, but the more depressed and anxious I get, the more difficult it is to keep myself from dwelling on the problem I’ve been confronting for half a decade now: I will always feel this way. I will always have to struggle to be happy.

I’ve gotten pretty good over the past year about talking positively to myself and giving myself some self-compassion, but I’m exhausted. Constantly. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. I’m in school in a beautiful city studying a subject that I love dearly. I am really healthy (all things considered). I have wonderful relationships and a job that I’m passionate about. I’ll be working the best summer job ever and then going to an awesome grad school to keep studying philosophy. My life is amazing, and I still have these problems.

I have never written a post to garner pity. I just need to express the feelings I have that I can’t bring myself to speak aloud. And again, I’m sorry. Because I know
I am a broken record.

too blessed to be stressed

Or as I would really like to call it,
too blessed to be stressed.

If you can Bing Crosby it and just think about how blessed you are and forget about your worries, good for you. That’s not sarcastic. Like, for real. If you can pray your stress away, awesome. Sometimes I’m able to, but more often than not I can’t. That’s something I’m working on with God, but man, we got a long ways to go.

I have so much anxiety about the dumbest little things. I’m in the process of changing my anti-depressant so I’m not on anything right now, and while I haven’t noticed my depression worsening, my anxiety has gone through the roof and I’m so frustrated with it.

Like right now, for example. What sparked the idea for this post is the fact that I was finishing up a late assignment this morning and I looked at the clock and realized I was missing the bus. So instead of doing the normal-person-adult thing, I thought about how I was going to be late to class and panicked.

Because instead of driving to school and being a couple of minutes late, it obviously makes more sense to sit on my bed like Bambi about to be hit by a truck.

And that’s honestly what it feels like. Like I can’t move, or breathe. And if I think about what’s stressing me out too much (in this case, the fact that class starts in 14 minutes and I’m sitting on my bed blogging about how I’m panicking about missing class but I’m so panicked that I can’t go), I feel like I’m going to burst into tears and die of shame. Because it makes sense to assume that your professors feel an undying hatred towards you when you skip their class so much, right?

It makes sense to assume that most people don’t like you because they know how much of a useless, class-skipping piece of trash you are… right?

No, of course not. I know, rationally, that everything I’m thinking and feeling when I let my anxieties run away with me is complete garbage. It’s just difficult to stop that train once you jump on.

I have some close family members with similar anxiety issues. I have watched them work themselves into a frenzy by letting their anxieties build upon each other and spiral out of control, which is exactly what I’m doing now. And I’m never quite sure of the best way to stop it.

I guess that’s the real reason I’m writing this right now. To stop the crazy by making myself slow down and think about what I’m thinking about.

It might be working. A little.

I wanted to end this on a positive note, but I can’t really think of anything else to say. It’s really difficult for me to talk about these issues unless you know me really well, or I know that you have similar issues. The chances of me lying to your face if you ask me if I’m freaking out about something are approximately 92.72%. Because I don’t want to talk about it.

That’s why I’m writing about it.

Oh wait, I just thought of a positive note: only 30 more hours until Spring Break. Then I can go be an anxious mess at home. 🙂