4.17.2010

JL, blogging again. Stop the Madness!

I couldn't write for a long time. I got lost. Now I have a lot to say.
The past year has been unbelievably eventful. Here's the short version of the last 12 months of my life.

It started with the shock and insult received from the director of my graduate program, telling me to give up and go teach community college. In February, I had a crazy love affair with someone in Scotland. The passion blazed hot and short. We were done by April. Then came my spring madness, in the form of hours-long anxiety attacks. In May, I broke my wrist, had surgery on it and was laid up for 3 months. The anxiety attacks got worse throughout the summer, almost daily for 6 hours and incapacitatingly intense. It wasted me. By August, my doc finally found something to help, an epilepsy drug. It made the attacks go away, but also made me stupid. I couldn't put a sentence together for weeks. That wore off by September, just in time to teach. I could function. I could live again. I picked up my life and ran.

It was all good. I started dating, dates every week. I joined some clubs to meet new people. Most of the men weren't Mormon, and very geeky (I have a thing for them). That's when the blog went offline. No doubt they'd google 'mormon dating' and they'd find it. I also got to work. I hired a coach to help me finish my Incompletes. It didn't work, but he did get me back to yoga and learning the cello, that made a huge difference in my well-being. Life was great! I hadn't felt so good in 6 years! Hadn't been so productive nor had such an active social life. Then the eve before Halloween, I met someone. Quite someone. And life got a little bit fabulous.

Until February. It started unraveling, along with my mental health.
The curse of the bi-polar. It started with the $300 a month pay cut for the semester. Ouch! No more coach. I can't afford to go out. The spring madness is full on. So I couldn't handle the fake-relationship with my Someone. Two days ago, he absolutely ended things between us forever, again. I'm devastated. Meanwhile, Capital One Bank is suing me. I missed the deadline to answer so now I automatically lose. And it gets even better....

I've been praying for months for a way out of this hole. (I've said it before, and it is worth repeating, be very careful what you pray for...) Yesterday, I got fired. Well, they aren't re-appointing me for the fall which amounts to the same thing. They sent me a letter. I was in the car with my visiting teaching companion when I opened it, I thought it was something insignificant. Complete shock! I had no idea this was coming. I've been there since 2003. I started blubbering in the car. But I had to dry my tears and go visit. 
When I got home, I opened a letter from the courts. That couldn't be good news. It wasn't. It was a tenancy summons. I was ordered to vacate my apartment. Eviction??!!!!! Are you kidding me??? I couldn't even cry. I just started shaking. That's not a message to move on, it's a literal kick on the rear out onto the streets. Thankfully, it was a msitake. No eviction. Still. A sign is a sign. Fired and evicted on the same day is a flashing grotesque neon sign a la Times Square.

Yet, this is a beginning. I am on the verge of a massive life change. I've felt it for awhile. After my 34th birthday, I mandated it. I took a look at my life. I've accomplished nothing in the last 4 years, they may as well never have happened. And, I am no better off than I was 8 years ago when I moved to NYC. How did I let so much time pass so wastefully? It really horrified me. I had a total 'how-can-I-be-this-age-with-this-kind-of-life?' birthday crisis. Wasn't I just 30 years old? Now it's 2010. !!!!! I have to do something. Now.



Escape Plan A: Go to the UK. Write my dissertation and get a D.Phil in 2 years. [You can't do that in the US, they make you start over. It would take 5 more years.]


Plan B: I don't know, but I'm planning. I need to physically get out of this place. Go elsewhere. Serve. Do something to make other people's lives better, rather than living to satisfy my own selfish desires. But how, and where? There's always a way.

It really never stops, my life. But I'm stronger now, I can handle this. I can eat this for breakfast.

4 comments:

TOWR said...

I'm so glad you're back! I was just thinking about you the other day and wondering what had happened to you and if you would ever come back to blogging. Sorry to hear 2009 was such a wreck, but now there's nowhere left to go but onward and upward. As the Mozzer says, "There's a place in the sun for anyone who has the will the chase one"!

Unknown said...

Hi TOWR! Thank you for coming back. It's so odd to know that people I've never met are wondering about me. But, definitely nice. I'm really doing well despite everything. I think I got strong enough to deal with all this, so it happened.

Stephen said...

Wow, that was a saga. I'm glad you've survived.

J.J. said...

Hi Stephen. It never seems to end. I wonder what kind of slacker I was in heaven to need all these trials. I know I deserved it, in the sense that I needed the refiner's fire. But it's getting to the point of ridiculous.