Are you enjoying grad school?

I realized this evening, while sitting in a contemporary lit criticism and theory class, and not paying attention to a word that was being said, that, aside from my last desperately-worded post (which has resulted in many kind responses, and I thank everyone sincerely for their empathy and concern), I haven't said a thing about grad school, and I've been here and fully participatory (although that last term might need some extra defining) for about six weeks now.  If you compare my last post with all my posts leading up to the start of classes, where enthusiasm and excitement and nervousness virtually leaked from every pixel, there's a stark disparity there, and I think that deserves some explanation.  I mean, not three months ago I was confidently singing the lyrics to Linkin Park's "Waiting for the End" - "I know what it takes to move on.  I know how it feels to lie.  All I wanna do is trade this life for something new, holding on to what I haven't got" - and now I'm wondering where I went wrong.

So far, grad school has been substantially different from what I had expected, and has caused me to spend a great deal of time re-evaluating my ambitions and intentions.  It hasn't been different in an I-don't-like-it way; it's been different in a way that I had thought I would be protected against by my healthy little hoard of self-confidence and sometimes-arrogance.  It's, um, it's hard.  And not in ways that I had expected.

That's the thing that gets me over and over.  It isn't quite what I had expected.  I didn't think I would be so cravenly terrified of speaking in class.  Me!  Afraid of speaking!  I'm the person who opened up any class discussion going.  Now I sit in silence, only occasionally venturing opinions, and I second-guess every last thing that comes out of my mouth.  I didn't think that I would be so anxious that I might say the wrong thing, or make a comment or observation that would be labeled or thought of as "undergraduate-like".  I didn't think that I would have forgotten how to read critically, and ask questions, and really think about what I was reading.  I mean, this is all stuff that has been second nature to me for as long as I can remember.  There were very, very few undergraduate papers that I ever got back - either at OSU or CSUSB - that didn't have something-like-an-A on them, and the first paper that I got back here had a B+.  I nearly fell apart.

I didn't think that I wouldn't get any real feedback from my professors on my performance, in some way or another (aside from that B+ paper, I have struggled to divine whether what I'm saying is good/bad/stupid/appropriate/not interesting enough/utterly dull/sparkling from my professor's faces, because it's all I have to go by), or that I would live and die in a comment they might tangentially make about something I said.  I never thought I would care so much about what another person thought of me, and that I would shrink into myself because of the possibility of their disapproval.

It has impacted my enjoyment of school to the point that I now hate reading.  Me.  The person who has always had at least three books by her bed, and prefers to spend her time reading than doing anything else.  I go to such lengths to avoid it now that it's ridiculous.  My apartment is immaculate (and yes, those of you who know me, you understand what that means).  I have memorized the dialogue to virtually every episode of Frasier.  I walk to and from school, 2.5 miles each way, every day, just to string out the time where I'm not working on something for class.  I hide in bed, terrified, when I should be reading.

Apparently, what I'm going through is not unique.  I guess there's this sort of thing (I hate to qualify it by calling it a "disorder") called "Impostor Syndrome".  It's where people who are in challenging (in many different ways) environments are continually afraid that someone will discover that they're a fraud, that they don't belong, and that they should vacate their position.  It's particularly prevalent in academia (big surprise) - I guess even faculty deal with it.  It helps to know that other people suffer through this, but it isn't making it any easier for me to get over it.  The thing is, these people really do have long lists of accomplishments and successes, not virtual train wrecks of academic and professional careers (like me).  They went to schools like William & Mary, Duke, Dartmouth, Yale, Cornell, Columbia, Berkeley, and on and on.  They didn't go to OSU.  (This was my first experience telling people I had gone to OSU, and getting a look that had nothing to do with their football team.)  I know that I absolutely have to break through this, or my career in academia will be over before it's really begun, but when I sit in class, and listen to what other people say, and watch how the professor responds to them, and then listen to the drivel that's coming out of my mouth, and see the look of polite puzzlement on their face . . . well, it's a little bit difficult to try and access that self-confidence and arrogance that used to be there.

The thing is, there is a deep, deep well of insecurity in me anyway, which is why I have the self-confidence/arrogance mask, since that's the only way for me to get successfully through life.  Just applying to grad school took an enormous amount of courage: I was putting myself "out there" in a substantial way, asking to be judged and accepted, which was something I had never really done.  Mostly, I've preferred to hide from that kind of exposure, and the fact that I was accepted was fantastic, but then just opened up a whole new Pandora's Box.  But for some reason, I feel completely destabilized by grad school, and putting the mask on every day, just to get through classes, is becoming increasingly more difficult.

So I guess that's why I haven't written much about grad school.  I keep wondering if I should be here.  The words that Dr. Braden said when I met with him in his office - "We accepted you because of your writing sample" - and the fact that I was a wait-list . . . these things keep going around and around in my head, and I just wonder if I really do belong here, or if it wasn't just a mammoth mistake on their part, and at any moment, they'll find me out, and ask me politely and as kindly as possible to just get the hell out, and clear up some space for someone who really deserves to be here.

But hey, aside from all that, it's pretty cool.

Loneliness (Warning: Self-Pity Contained Herein)

It's been a long time since I was lonely. Really alone lonely. The kind of loneliness that doesn't seem to have any edges, but expands until it dominates your entire emotional landscape. The kind of loneliness that I ran into the arms of my ex-husband to escape. The kind of loneliness that I did escape for 10 years, but which has now resumed its place in the center of my soul, opening its arms to gather every feature of my kingdom-soul into itself.

And this time around it's harder to avoid. Back then, when I was alone, I had hope. I knew that I was young (19), and that I had plenty of time to find just the right person to keep the loneliness at bay. Now? Well, let's just say that I'm not 19 anymore, and there are many, many things that are different, and not just the fact that I no longer cling to optimism like a bloody limpet.

I have to say that reading about love and infatuation and excruciatingly-drawn-out declarations of "fine amor" in medieval romances isn't helping. I realized just how terminal the loneliness had become last night when I was walking home, and found myself making up a song that was deeply pathetic. Here are a few lines, for entertainment:

I, I miss your arms at night.
And I, I miss all the talks we had.
But I, I don't miss all those nasty fights,
The way we hated each other at times.
I, I miss your laughing face,
And I, I miss your goofy pranks.

And so on, and so on, and so on. Now, a caveat. I do not typically make up pathetic songs like this. If I make up songs, they are typically stupid and slightly inclined to hysterical humor (not hysterical in a can't-stop-laughing sense, but hysterical in a so-desperate-to-not-let-the-(fill in the dark emotion here)-eat-me sense.) Nor are they long enough to accompany me over two miles.

It seems like it should have been obvious to me just how lonely I was, but despite a few phone calls with my mom where I told her I was lonely, it wasn't clear to me that I was deeply, achingly lonely, like I haven't been since I was so desperate for love that I would do incredibly stupid things (but that's a story for another life). But the realization brought some recent behaviors into focus. Like, it might explain why I've sometimes found myself lying awake at 3:30 in the morning, with tears rolling down my face, with no real clue as to why I'm crying. Or why, when I'm home, I keep movies or Scrubs or Kingdom or Dharma and Greg on almost continuously, to the point where there is a constant noise in my apartment, even if I'm in the other room, and not really paying attention. Or why I have very long conversations with my cat (although, to be fair, I've always done that . . . except that now I get upset when he doesn't answer me).

I know that I tend to cry easily, but even when I discovered that literally every episode of the sixth season of Doctor Who found me in tears, I didn't make the connection. I just wrote it off to hormones. I mean, yes, okay, it's sad that Rory almost died (again), but the goofy pirate episode really didn't deserve racking sobs. And even the frustration engendered by the simple expedient of identifying which button to push in the old-Amy episode wasn't enough to dampen my enthusiastic sob-laden response to Rory and Amy standing on either side of the door of the TARDIS. There is just no reason for me to have cried as hard as I did.

And let's not even get started on music. Merely listening to Limp Bizkit's version of "Behind Blue Eyes" is enough to get the tears rolling, and any version of "Wicked Game" is guaranteed to destroy my ability to approach the day with eyes that don't look like I'm completely stoned. (Oh, look at that. I got started anyway.) As for emotional-roller-coaster songs like Emilie Autumn's "Castle Down" or Rise Against's "Savior" or Linkin Park's "Waiting for the End" or Stone Sour's "Hesitate" - forget it. I can't even listen to them, because then going fetal under the covers is no longer a desire. It's a necessity.

It's why I spend so little time in my apartment. My search for the perfect apartment - for a space where I could be alone, and content, and comfortable - was truly a waste of time. I thought I'd be spending so much more time here than I have. I didn't realize, when I was running far, far away from California and the (second) mess of things I'd made there, that I would be so crushingly lonely that I would spend all day on campus just to avoid being home. I spent something like three hours in the grad lounge on Thursday, talking utter nonsense with anyone would listen (poor people), because I could feel the emptiness of my apartment waiting for me. All my books and pictures and knick-knacks and cat haven't been able to fill the emptiness.

The hardest part has been dealing with the quiet certainty that has lodged itself in the back of my mind, and won't leave, like all terrible lodgers. It's the certainty that I really will be alone for the rest of my life, that I'll never love like that again, that I'll be doomed to either a series of shallow relationships, with occasional moments of happiness to stave off suicide, or to just be alone, with my long-suffering cats, who will grow exponentially into a truly massive cat colony, until I go to work wearing clothes that I've knitted of cat hair. In the daylight, I know this irrational fear for what it is, and do my best to get the lodger evicted, but at night, when I'm vulnerable, he comes back, and settles down again, quietly waiting for me to give up. Parts of me know it's utterly ridiculous, but those parts always lose the fight. I think I need to arm them with something stronger than ephemeral hope, which becomes more and more ephemeral with each lonely night that passes.

This is just utterly depressing, so I'm going to stop now. At least I've realized what's happening, and why a friendly "hello" can be enough to make me cry with gratitude. Now I just need to get a grip on myself, dye my hair orange (because hope is stronger with orange hair), and do proper battle at night, instead of hiding behind trees and boulders.