this has been a post

complaining, complaining, complaining.

complaining about complaining.

complaining that no one hears me complain about complaining.

negativity, garbage, self-pity. 

a bit of suicide talk.

false cheer and fatalism.

regret.

Cue pragmatism.

I swear I'm not brave enough to do anything stupid.

And I just feel like people will think I'm doing this for attention if I say any of this to anyone out loud?

I needed to say it, is all. To someone. Because the people who pulled me out of it last time are the ones pushing me over the edge.

*siiiiiiiiiigh*

I am totes cool. The Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice still exists in this world. I have no intention of leaving that.

Working title: something not morbid

Once upon a better time, I wrote a story about family. I told a writing class about mine, and I told them I could make it better with a few words of contrition and reconciliation. I told them I had the power to fix things. I told them it wasn't too late for us to be different. I told them my family could be better.

I thought I was telling them the truth. I thought I was courageous. I thought I was making a difference for myself and for my siblings. I thought everything was going to be okay.

All this is a heap of obvious foreshadowing, though. Can you guess what I'm about to tell you?

It isn't okay. My family isn't okay. My siblings aren't okay. My father is definitely not okay.

I'm not okay.

I'm sitting here listening to a Vaughn Williams choral piece called Rest, and tells me of a girl who is "curtained with a blessed dearth of all that irked her from her hour of birth; with stillness that is almost Paradise". RVW set a C.Rossetti poem quite beautifully. The metaphorical title is very transparent.

And it sounds really good. It sounds worth it. And sitting here at this table listening to choir music is not the place to have this crisis...but rest. All I want is rest from the burden of my family.

I know. I know I'm not responsible for them, and I didn't cause the current state of affairs. But somehow it is my fault. I feel it, even if it makes no sense. There's nothing I can do or say to fix it, but I feel it.

And I just want to rest.

no conclusion or answer

I'm both angry and not? I'm frustrated, which is probably a better word, but it doesn't quite capture the fear.

I've spent several weeks working through or trying to understand the material I've been given for this class. It's all about teaching, or teaching writing.

Thing is, teaching is something I can both see myself doing and not see myself being good at. What my current professors do? I can do that. I can read a book and talk about it. I can get knowledgeable enough about a thing to drop historical truth bombs, and I can figure out enough obscure language to guide a read-through and answer questions about details students didn't pick up on. I can give out assignments and call on students by name to make them squirm. I can even sit and stare at a class long enough to get them to say something.

But the teachers proposed in these theory papers? The ones who are constantly integrating theory into their every move and are constantly aware of their classroom growth and know what it means when a paper talks about working at the intersection of society and self? I can't do that.

And the harder I try to keep up, the more aggravated I get, which makes me less likely to pick up the stupid textbook in the first place. I want to be absorbing all of this, though. I want to be actually learning this stuff, because it is important, and I know that. I guess I don't know if I ever learned how to learn.

I hate talking about how easy everything used to be, because it sounds self-aggrandizing, but it is the truth, and it is what is tripping me up now. I didn't have to try very hard in school, and even if I did at some points, those days are literally years ago, and I've forgotten how to keep going. I currently refuse to stay up into the night for anything homework-related, even if I really, really should. I'm blogging right now instead of writing a homework-style response because I can't bring myself to care the way I should, even though I want to.

So as things stand, I don't know how to learn, and I can't be bothered to figure it out. (Though learning to learn is a circular problem, I feel...if I don't know how to learn, how can I teach myself to learn, and for that matter how can I teach anyone anything?)

It has been like...a week.

It is strange to feel cracked. To be run all through with lightning crooked breaks, held together by gravity, maybe. Like a hot glass filled with ice water.

I'll shatter splinter split if you touch me
So I'll keep you at a distance for now

Though it is nice to see you.

Someone bring me the super glue.

Was it a holiday?

I've been playing a game of emotional fruit basket upset for a few days; ran the gamut of sad to angry to bitter to brittle to dull and back around the circle. I'm still not sure where I've ended up right now? But I don't have time to wallow anymore. I took two mental health days that I really could not afford, and hopefully that was enough "healing" to get me over this without residual damage. 

I've always been pretty good at putting stuff behind me once I've *had the experience*, so I think I'm okay, or at least high-functioning okay. Again. 

Back to work.  

bye

I'm feeling like crap, and my go-to response is to talk to someone, but the reason I feel like crap is because that someone just cut me off, so I'm in a circle of hell right now with no escape in sight because the worse I feel the more I have the impulse to reach out and the more I'm reminded of why I can't which is why I feel worse in the first place and I get sicker and sadder and I'm burning and freezing and nauseated and exhausted and shaken and broken chipped chopped cracked shattered s c a t t e r e d