Tuesday, December 28, 2010

I Hate Being Alone

While I might want to be left alone a lot of the time, I really hate being all alone in the house.  Not very grown-up of me, but then I hardly act my age anyway (30).  I live with my parents and my sister and my parents have been out of town visiting my other sister’s future in-laws.  Last time they both went out of town I ended up cutting up my torso with a glass scraper (torso cuts don’t show when you have the dress standards of an LDS woman).  Nothing drastic happened this time, but I was really depressed, barely slept, and hardly got any work done.  It just really drags on me when I don’t have familiar company, and as great as cats are, they aren’t a substitute for a good mom.

It frustrates me to feel so dependent on others.  I want to go to graduate school (again) and get my doctorate (I think), but I don’t know how I’m going to manage my health and my routine without assistance from my family.  As of right now, they are the only ones who understand how to help me—especially my mom—and support me during bad times like the entirety of winter.  The idea of moving away and living alone again is really daunting.  I don’t really think roommates are feasible because of my mental health; I’ve alienated people in the past because of my mood swings.

So I’m in limbo.  Trapped between being a fulfilled adult with a real career (*crossing fingers*) and being a perpetual adolescent living off of my parents, at least in emotional terms.  I’m not sure I’m capable of being on my own; I’m not sure I won’t cut more often and more intensely; I’m not sure I won’t try suicide again; and I’m not sure I can stay out of an institution.  I’m also painfully aware of the fact that bipolar disorder becomes more volatile as you age, making my chances of finding other companionship feel far away on depressive days like these.

Monday, December 27, 2010

Freaking the Heck Out, As Per Usual

So the time has come, once again, to freak out about the upcoming semester.  I start teaching next Wednesday, so that give me 8 days to get things in order.  As of right now, my brain is convinced that this is impossible.  “Didn’t you just teach this class?” you ask.  Well, yes, but I felt like a moderate failure in some aspects of the courses I taught and I completely blew it on the “no text” thing.  See, I thought that meant that the majority of the material would be covered by a combination of lecture and discussion without a lot of outside reading, except at the beginning.  Well, it turns out that it’s hard to have a discussion when you are dealing with cold fish first thing in the morning, and it is even hard to have a discussion when I am introducing new and foreign material to said fish.  Also, my boss assumed I was having them do readings when I was not, which scotched my peer review a little bit.  So while I have enough material to fill a semester, I don’t have enough appropriate material to facilitate classroom discussion.

My job, then, for the next 8 days, is to cobble together a series of outlines/quotes/short readings/discussion questions/short assignments that I can present to my students before they come to class so that we all have something to talk about.  This means scouring my files, the interwebs, and the collaborative 1010 site so that I can create this wonderful thing.  I also have to craft assignments to be turned in before class so that I can be a classroom autocrat and demand participation, while at the same time remaining benevolent and likable.  Top all this with my seasonal mood death and you have a bad combination.  Also I am fat and unattractive (according to my seasonally warped brain).

And to think this is my dream job (teaching).  Imagine if I was employed doing something else.

Stupid Jerks

I purged my facebook feed of my annoying family members.  In this time of goodwill and Seasonal Affective Disorder compounding my depressive symptoms, I thought it best to keep the feed clear of anyone who will bring upon me excess aggravation.  That means my come-to-Jesus-praise-God-all-the-time-technology-addicted cousin had to go.  So did little miss cloth-diapering-is-my-bible.  “Shut up!” I wanted to say, but I blocked instead.  My head feels clearer already.