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04.23.04 - 12:20 a.m.
"giving til i get" a whole week has passed since mid-april (that's apr. 15 the last time i checked), and STILL no official phone call or fat package telling me the outcome of my dissertation fellowships. the waiting is killing me, and i know that i'm only hurting myself by continuing to dwell on this fantasy that any day now, i'll peer around the corner of the departmental mailroom and see a huge fed-ex package declaring "congratulations, you're in! you're in!"... i was telling my thrpst about how i never used to allow myself to fantasize optimistic happy futures as a child. sure, my morbid adolescent head dreamt up my funeral, elegy, and wake over and over, but i never spent time dreaming about my future wedding or wedding dress, or even children or deciding on two sets of names (____ if a girl, ____ if a boy). since april is sweepstakes month though, daily i've received news of wonderful outcomes for my friends who also spent last year applying to things, and daily news rolls in: meg got a tenure-track position; marianne just got a two-year post-doc; jen received the s__ teaching fellowship; nicole got into yale english AND american studies; rachel got into b.u. for a music performance program, becca got into harvard school of ed (sadly, this means that my two stable nyc buddies, with whom i also either hang out with at a diner or share dinner and a bottle of wine with when i'm in town, are off for boston pastures...which means nyc will be even emptier and more of a drag); even douggie and my former dgs received guggeinheims this week... and still i wait. and i'm admit, it f*cking hurts not knowing...
to make up for not knowing, and the drag of depression creeping up, i've poured energy and enthusiasm into cheerleading others... cheerleading IS a good strategy; it's nice to find reasons to "get happy", be outright zany, to jump up and down, and scream "wooo wooo wooo" ala julia roberts's pretty woman all make me feel transgressive in expressing myself, and just lovely to exude exhuberance when blase, 'no-big-deal' unmoved-edness blank expression seems to be the trend. i like to make noise, and i like to make reasons for being noisy, and it shakes people up when i reinsert spontaneous pure joy into the atmosphere... but all that cheerleading isn't directly happening for me, and it's getting old...it's not enough...i want to know...i want to have reason to be happy for ME...it makes alone times harder still...i want the company of knowing...without it, the silence of unknowing...which isn't uncertainty, but rather dull uneventfulness maketh me crazy lately. yeah, to feel better to be around people to share in THEIR events that give them joy, i've been procrastinating/seeking to intertwine myself with other people and their projects...just to feel alive...just to log in on my dayplanner that i spent say 2 hours today in chatty conversation and i am connected with the rest of the world (even though i feel isolated in a solitary waiting for a deadline pertaining to only me)...it helps... ...and so long as i don't feel sorry for myself that i have to go to such lengths to stay happy, to stay buzzed with "life goes on" ness, when i feel exactly the opposite: that life's at a deathly standstill...that's why i do things like attend the first-year student writing conference that i did today, not so much because my peer grad students organized the symposium. mostly, i went to support the first year students, and just share in the enthusiasm and excitement of cheering each other on for a night...i want to be apart of something happening, something moving forward...so i sat in on this for a bit. i try not to let my lethargy and down-in-the-mouthness show, but my disillusionment increases, my hope wanes, and i'm not so quick to find items to smile about. i feel super lucky that i came home tonight, and my roommate happened to have made dinner for an old friend that she hadn't seen in ages. she offered me some of her homemade tortellini soup and some yummy white wine. while i felt too out of sorts and alien (not alienated - she tried to include me, but i declined) - still, i came home to something lovely and loving..i took the glass, and curled up to grade 7 more student papers tonight before i go to bed... and maybe it's the wine, but i think not - i relaxed, focused, and felt more cushioned, touched by indirect generous care. thank goodness for kind thoughtful people in this world. thank goodness i don't even have to formulate a sentence saying "i'm needy, i'm hurt, i'm lonely, i'm just so alone in this wait, and self-doubt and unrest." thank goodness others give, when even i'm all given out...can't get enough, can't get enough getting
MUSIC: Soundtrack: Pulp Fiction
READING: you know what, still
FEELING:petit despair
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