Entries tagged with nervous breakdown 2006

I've been talking in generalities for a while now. About me, I mean, and what's going on in my life. I'm not doing that any more.

I think pretty much everyone knows that I'm a college student, and that I have depression. Those two facts have been unfortunately coinciding over the last few months, to the point where my academic performance has suffered beyond what I'm prepared to accept.

I haven't been turning in papers; I haven't been preparing for classes. I've been getting away with this because I participate in discussions and because I'm smart enough and am well-read enough to do that, and because I'm really good at sounding like I know what I'm talking about. I know the catch-phrases.

But this isn't the way I want to conduct my academic life. This isn't who I want to be, academically, and I'm not going to let myself get away with this anymore.

I'm taking the rest of the fall semester off. I don't know if I'm coming back for the spring semester; I will eventually return, I know that -- I want my BA from here, and I want more than that from somewhere else, but right now, I'm merely marking time, and I'm doing in such a way that I'm hurting myself and I'm not doing it for any reason beyond stubbornness.

I'm going to get as better as I can and I'm going to do this right. Oddly, I'm pretty calm about it; I'm not happy about this whole fucking disaster, but...I really hate indecision. Having made the decision, I'm pretty much just trying to go through with it as best as I can. When I was talking about this in therapy, a few weeks ago (this is not as snap a decision as it may appear), I said something about how the best I could think of for this semester would be getting out with some dignity, acting with as much honor as I could (okay, I chickened out of actually saying it because that sounds like one of the old-fashioned old men in Edith Wharton or Thackeray, and who wants to be a character who gets mocked by Wharton or Thackeray?), and that's still what I'm trying to do. I think that I can do that.

Appointment with the dean at two-thirty today, and I'm just sort of killing time until then; I'll talk to disabilities if they have a free time, and I'll drop by the library and pay my fines (put the chairs up on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me), and I'll go into my Barnard email and erase, well, everything, and email my employers because there is no way I can have a job on the UWS even if I stay in New York rather than North Hell; and I need to call home.

I can do this.

Reposted from LJ, 20 March 2009

I can't feel my left hand.

I can't keep going through this. More to the point, I don't want to. I'm starting to really think that taking leave from school is a good idea -- I'm barely keeping my head above water academically, if that, and the health stuff (the depression and the thyroid issues) is starting to really frighten me. I don't think I can, though, because there's a maximum of eight semesters of financial aid, and there is no way my family can afford Barnard without serious finanicial aid. I don't think I can leave during this semester.

The only thing I can think of doing that might fix this is taking classes at Hudson Valley or Queens College, making up enough points that I wouldn't have to go through another five-and-a-half semesters here (including that fucking qualitative reasoning requirement, which has to be easier for me to handle at a community college than a place that prides itself on its "Ivy League" cred). I do like that idea, except for the part where I'd have to live either in North Hell, which, just, so much no, or with my grandparents, which is its own special kind of stress, but it's...I can handle it.

I'm just not sure if I'm panicking and not reacting maturely or if, well, you're all rolling your eyes and thinking, god, if I could've just reached through the screeen and smacked some sense into her weeks ago... (I don't actually think you're thinking that; if you are, can you not tell me, please?) and this is about as sensible as I've gotten in the last eight weeks.

I also don't know how to talk to my mother about this.

I don't know what to tell my therapist. The dean of studies I can handle, I can always cope with administration, but Dr. L knows me by now, which is a big part of why the last few therapy sessions have been so painful and difficult. I don't understand the way she thinks, actually, I can't always anticipate her, which is weird and unusual and scary as fuck, to be honest, which, strictly speaking, I am only within the confines of my own head a lot of the time, and not always there. I don't know what she's going to think. I don't know what questions I'm going to have to answer, and I hate going in blind.

I keep touching my left hand and thinking, if only this were okay, but it isn't, and it's not going to be okay, unless I'm the one to fix it.

That entry, the one that was an overreaction to the actual trigger (there was an email, I was afraid to open it, I wrote this; I was reacting to what I assumed the email would contain, which was a worst-case scenario rather than the actual contents, but that doesn't make what I wrote any the less true, unfortunately), is where I'm headed permanently unless I fix this.

I'm calling home. I need to talk to someone besides the inside of my head.

ETA: Aaaaand no one's picking up. Great.

ETA 2: OK, so, called home, cried a little, my mother was about 93% senstive, which is pretty good, and now I'm just left with a sick, heavy feeling in my chest, because I don't want to be this girl, and lying is easier than trying to fix it.

I know, that makes no sense, but I only make sense in fiction these days. Fixing it takes effort. Fixing it is painful. It's just simpler to lie.

Except, of course, that it isn't.

I need to talk to people -- the dean, Dr. L, disabilities -- and I want to sleep on it, but I may not -- I may --

I can't even say it.

Reposted from LJ, 20 March 2009

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