Losing the battle, winning the war.

Shortly after this I went on a date with a waiter. I wasn’t fully aware of his background, but it turns out his father owns multiple businesses in the area. He tried to explain the plight of the poor to me, followed by telling me he feels like he’s really proud for choosing to rough it but is frustrated that his dad doesn’t recognize being a waiter as an accomplishment while he waits to inherit the businesses...

And all I can say is my colleague is not just on to something, that something is not just academia/our department.

Mo,

What a week! I defended my thesis - I’m getting my MASTER’S Mo! Crazy. When we met, I wasn’t sure I would end up with a college degree. Now I’m through checkpoint 1 and on the way to PhD...just wow. Mom came up. I was surprised but so so glad. She really is trying lately. I wonder if it’s the Boy thing.

Speaking of Boy...I met a man. I wasn’t looking. I’m not even sure I’m interested in starting anything, even a friendship. But, damn, Mo, something about this guy just struck me.

I gave him my number. I regret it and I don’t. He texted me, but between my awkwardness and a potential cell service outage...I think I botched it. I should be relieved. Instead I’m here hoping he will take me to coffee. I’m terrified...I haven’t felt compelled to acknowledge a man like this since Boy...we all know how that one turned out. What if that’s why this feels compelling? What if I’m running straight to another Boy?

What if I’m not?

I need to finish my thesis edits. I also need to finish my coursework. My head is splitting. I keep finding new ways to not focus. I need the semester to end...so I’m excited but also stressed and upset and conflicted.

I wish you were here to talk it through, Mo. I guess I know what you would say...sometimes God sends us signs and we have to acknowledge them, even if the thing signaled ends up not being what we expected. I feel like God told me to communicate with this man, Mo, but why?

Crossing my fingers that this, whatever this is, is a positive thing.

Love and miss you sweet girl. Our anny is coming up soon, I promise I’ll have some cake for us. I’ll try not to be too weird about it.

Hi Mo,

It’s been a while. So much has happened. I don’t even know where to begin. I turned 25 this week. Hard to believe, huh? Twenty-fucking-five. Six years since DP. Six years sober.

I’m getting divorced. Oh, right, surprise, I got married. Don’t worry, I hadn’t told anyone else either. What a nightmare. Five years. Do I even know who I am anymore? Do I even have a self after everything he stole from me, after everything he did?

I defend my Master’s thesis in three days. It’s good, Mo. I was made to do this.

But this is killing me. I slipped, Mo. Not with drugs. I’m 115 lbs. Last time I checked. I’m sure it could have gone down. Eating is horrible. I feel like my effort isn’t great, but I can’t find the effort. And the people. Some days I question my own sanity, some days I question my own worth, every day I question why I even care to exist in this weird limbo, knowing I won’t ever truly fit in this new world and also knowing that I can’t ever go back to the way things were in my old world after reaching this place. I’m tainted by my working class background at work and tainted by my rapidly increasing status back at home.

Honestly, the better I get at this, the more I gain, the more angry I become. It’s almost a cruel joke, me being good at this. Here, H, confront every horror you’ve ever experienced during your journey through this academic life, get applauded for it, let people pat you on the back for contributing to their science. Their science that has continued and continued to ignore my experience, exploit me, and make assumptions that I cannot challenge if I want a leg in the door.

Elite people are sensitive.

There.

I said it.

I know you understand what I’m saying, Mo.

I’m not allowed to be sensitive.

I’m not even sure that I care to be sensitive, honestly. I would like to be left alone to plow through the horror that is my life right now, though. I have to be on all of the time. All I want to do sometimes is scream, BACK OFF OKAY!?!?!

Backlash.

They are allowed to scream.

Cry.

Break down.

Be incompetent.

Panic without being dismissed.

It really sucks. I’m here for my research. I’m here for you. I’m here for people like us. They are here for recognition.

I feel weird about it. I’m a genuine person. This is what you get. I don’t know how to exist around people that force you to navigate their pettiness and disingenuity. I need more straightforwardness, but I feel like I meet fewer and fewer people that are straightforward.

I started this last night. It’s noon-thirty now. I just had a meltdown in am enterprise parking lot. What the fuck is wrong with me, Mo? I feel so out of control. I’m just floating through this hoping I don’t drown.

I almost wish I would drown.

Continuing to make it is a cruel fucking joke. Maybe that’s the point, though. Maybe this is my punishment. I don’t deserve to be here. It should have been me. Five times over, it should have been me.

Everyone keeps dropping.

I’m still here.

It should have been me.

I don’t know what I’m doing here. Why would nobody come pick me up?! Why is every place so incredibly fucking lonely? I just need an extra hand right now. I need a shoulder so fucking bad.

H has it together. Let’s dump our shit on her.

The curse of competence.

LEAVE ME ALONE

I want to scream at everyone

They only leave me alone when I’m stranded, stuck, or drowning.

I hate people.

I’m so tired, Mo. I have so much to get done. I just want to crawl under my bed and stay there.

Why can’t I catch a break? Why do people think I don’t need a break? Why do I have to embarrass myself and look like a pathetic mess to get people to recognize that something is wrong?

I spent 16 hours trapped in the car with my colleagues this weekend. One is pretty chatty. They told me we weren’t friends last year. I think they thought I was a snotty bitch. That’s what happens when you aren’t a pathetic mess in this field...BITCH. They finally decided I was worthy of friendship after all of their other friends/sisters moved away. This friendship hurts me. I don’t feel like I can say anything. I spent 16 hours listening to them complain about their problems and tell me to stop being annoying when I brought up ONE thing. It was a pretty major thing. It wasn’t the only major thing I was dealing with.

Annoying.

How dare I mention a life problem, appearing so okay, to someone that is always not okay because of life problems that don’t really exist? I hate to say that, but feeling like everyone hates you when you still have a wide social network with people that support you socially and financially...that’s social anxiety...that’s not a life problem. That’s not grounds to disallow me to discuss things like not knowing if I will be able to pay my rent. That is a life problem. Let’s trade life problems.

Social isolation.

It’s a funny concept. Most of the people that invade my life because they feel upset and isolated...are actually just uncomfortable being alone in a physical space. They aren’t socially isolated. They interact with people all day every day, and people understand, agree with, and validate them. Nobody understanding? That’s isolation. Not having anyone to call or ask to come over? That’s social isolation. You having to work alone for one evening while still engaging in multiple group texts? Not social isolation.

I’m so angry at life, Mo.

I want to scream.

Today I did scream. It didn’t matter.

16 hours of nonstop “nobody is ever around,” followed by refusal by that individual to be around. FUCK YOU BITCH. You can buy people to be around, you make that so clear all of the time. Here’s an idea, you could give me the money so I can buy people to be around, and you can just figure it the fuck out?

Anger.

Hurt.

How do you tell someone that existing in the same space as them makes you want to die, when they don’t think you are allowed to feel that feeling because it’s THEIR feeling to feel?

I need space. But I also need help. I need to be able to function. I’m still crying on my bedroom floor. I still have this stupid fucking rental car. I fuckin hate myself for not being able to just pull it together and deal with the cards I was dealt. It’s increasingly difficult to do that in this space around these people. WHY DONT THEY DEAL WITH IT???!!

They think I’m a worrier. Because they are worriers. We are all in this field, we are all the same.

CONTEXT FUCKING CONTEXT.

I am not naturally a worrier. I’ve become a worrier from years of dealing with things that children and teens should never have to deal with. I’m a worrier because I learned that if I wasn’t, nobody in my life, including myself, was going to survive. I don’t want your sympathy, I just want my worriers to stop being dismissed as simply anxiety...if I’m worried, it’s because I know from experience that shit follows shit and have recognized a pattern.

God I need you here Mo.

Or maybe I need to be up there. I’m not sure anymore.

I should stop writing. My heart is bleeding. It hurts. I should stop caring. I could, but it would ruin me. People expect that I’ll care.

Grad school is killing me. Mo. Life is killing me. I let the wrong people in again. I always do that. I try to protect myself. I get burned. I feel my eyes swelling. I need to eat. I can’t make it happen. When will this feeling end?

I hope you understand, Mo. Nobody else does.

To which I laugh out loud and remark that if I had a nickel for every time I had heard that one I’d have quite a few dollars by now. This was obviously taken as evidence that I come off a certain type of way.

(Hey Mo, obviously it’s me again.)

I guess I really need to do one of two things: own my apparent bitchiness/intimidation or just not speak around people that think I come off as bitchy/intimidating.

The problem: I am not intending to come off as bitchy...and it seems as if in this case smart = bitchy. It’s not that I ask people to clarify their crazy claims, its the WAY I ask. It doesn’t matter that I was asked to tell people a little about myself, the mere fact that I told people about myself was too much information, definitely pretentious (it’s not my fault that you asked me what grad program I was in...if you feel it is pretentious to specify program when asked you need to revisit your reasoning). Oh and let’s not forget the apparent golden rule, spouses of the law students are to be seen and not heard, if they are to be included at all.

It’s not a gendered thing, he says. It’s not a you being in a PhD program thing. It’s something wrong with your personality, he says.

I’m getting really fucking tired of people getting mad at me because they themselves are too insecure to handle a woman that is smart and also takes care of herself. It is not my job to stand around smile like a bimbo because it makes you uncomfortable to hear me talk about statistics (because obviously math = devil and if you are not on board you cannot sit at the cool kids table).

This is what I am walking into, Mo. A viper pit full of insecure and vengeful lawyers-in-training. My instinct is to actually be a bitch and tell them that they really will not succeed as attorneys if they get uncomfortable when someone brings up something they aren’t an expert on. I can’t do this for the sake of my relationship.

The bigger issue: W doesn’t seem to be defending me at all on this. I literally sit and listen to them spout off law jargon for 6 hours at a time without objecting but it’s somehow totally fine and definitely a thing that I’m a bitch for saying a couple of sentences about my work when asked.

He doesn’t see how all I hear is “this is my new life and you are cramping my style”.

This program is already hard enough without him all of a sudden having an issue with it. I’m infuriated and have no desire to go spend my time around these people. I’m supposed to just fake it around people that are unwilling to make any effort with me. I know this is a lonely profession but fuck give me a break. To make things worse, this has no impact on me wanting to change my behavior or leave grad school. It is, however, causing me to question quite a few things about my relationship, namely, whether I am willing to put up with someone that isn’t willing to stand up for me, and even worse, someone that would rather ask me to change for people he has known for a matter of months when we have been together for years.

It also just hits home though. I have spent my entire life hiding behind my “stupid” pretty face while succeeding academically without being forthcoming about it. I spent years pretending I was that stupid pretty girl, and trying to fight criticism off when I clearly was not stupid. I finally got to grad school and have for the first time been in an environment where it is okay, encouraged even, for me to be smart, to ask questions, to correct people. It’s infuriating when W has never had to pretend to be stupid. It’s infuriating that he is basically asking me to pretend again to make his peers comfortable when he knows how hard I have worked to get to where I am. Why should I have to pretend to be stupid when all of them get to try to be smart? My understanding was that you gained knowledge through discourse. It’s completely unproductive to spend all of your time conversing with people that think exactly like you.

I’m disheartened. I am so tired of being told that I am not allowed to be smart. All I want to do is take my brain and my cute tight little ass to the middle of the woods and not speak to any humans again. I want to be left alone.

I finished my first semester today, by the way. Kind of an annoying ending. Get built up by faculty member that’s been crushing you all semester only to get torn down by the one person that is supposed to keep you safe. How the fuck does that work?

I guess that’s all for now. I have to get on a plane on Sunday but have no desire to do so anymore. I’ll keep you updated.

Miss ya so hard,

This morning I sent my cohort a simple text:

Me: “Hey everyone! Let’s email our recruits by the end of today if we haven’t already done so!”

Cohort: “I thought we were texting them.”

Me: “Okay...text, email, carrier pigeon...let’s just contact them!”

Cohort: “You didn’t have to get sassy.”

Me. Sassy.

Dear Morgan,

I’ve been back in shit town for three days. San Diego ended up working out so well. That girl that didn’t want to meet me, but wanted to live with Will? She’s awesome, and her boyfriend (who lives in Indiana!) will be living there with all of us (if they all find a place) this summer. I got really awful food poisoning while we were out after dinner one night, and they were super supportive and checked on me the next day. I also cleared shit up with Will...growing pains suck, but I know we are better for it.

I already want to go back, but it is less because of how awesome everyone in San Diego was and more how miserable everyone here makes me feel. My cohort really is the worst. I sit in class with them for 6 hours a week, and they spend at least half of the time attacking me. I’m not talking some petty, oh they were mean, bullshit. They do not read the articles we are assigned or submit any of the assignments, and if they do submit the assignments they are late and/or half-assed. So I end up answering the questions, or they answer and are incorrect, so I follow-up with the correct answer. Then they attack me. One actually told me my idea was stupid, and when I asked her to explain why so that I could improve it, her response was that it was not her job to tell me why it was stupid, and that it was too stupid for feedback.

I am not kidding.

The faculty constantly shift the syllabus around because they don’t turn things in, in an attempt to make our classes somewhat productive. The only thing that has come of these changes is myself and the one outside-department student in one of our classes having twice as much work, because we actually do read and turn in our assignments, and my cohort still refusing to do anything.

It’s the most ridiculous thing. They spend all of their time doing things to distract from their poor work ethics, but people notice! Unfortunately, even though they notice, nobody acts. They just let it happen.

I am crumbling under the pressure. I have no time, no true friends here, and no way out. I should not be having to compensate for them.

I decided to sign up for a counseling evaluation. I’m losing my mind here, Mo.

I’m so exhausted. I’m so tired of defending myself. I’m so tired of compensating for others. I’m just so, so, tired.

I wish I had your fuck-you attitude right now, Mo. I’m going to work on it.

That’s all for now.

Love,

Dear Morgan,

I’ve been struggling a lot this week. I thought my anxiety would get better when I got a break from school and everyone there, but I’ve only been more anxious since coming to visit Will. I wish you could have had the chance to meet him. He really is the best guy. I think that’s why this is so hard, the distance. I’m terrified he will realize that I’m no better than any other chick out here. These girls are all beautiful, loud, confident, and all over him like a bunch of groupies. It hasn’t been a problem, except for with one girl. They all have boyfriends, and were excited to meet me; they seemed to already know a lot about me. That was comforting. One girl in particular, though, has tried just about every excuse in the books to avoid meeting me. Again, not a huge problem...except that this particular girl has also proposed moving in with Will and one of his friends (also Mo, short for Mohamad, but still, what a coincidence!). I’m uncomfortable at the thought of him living with some girl that refuses to meet me, even if another person is there. I feel horrible because of the cost of living, but also have to wonder what her issue is.

I feel so small since him moving to this big ass city. I feel so small in my department, but somehow find a way to pretend to be big. People make fun of me constantly; “Aren’t you just the cutest?” “Oh honey, I don’t need your input.” “You really should consider adhering less to traditional femininity if you want people to think you are intelligent.” “You aren’t married? Is it because you refused to follow him to California?”. It’s honestly exhausting. I’m constantly on stage. I let Regina take over most times lately; I know that’s awful, but she is so much stronger in confrontational situations than I. I force food down periodically to get her to leave...it only works sometimes. I am not any less exhausted on this “vacation”. I’m still on stage. I’m having to prove to this group of law students that think they are the most intelligent beasts on the planet that I’m a commodity because I don’t want them to try to convince Will that I’m not once I leave.

We’ve been together for four years. I’ve grown into myself, and I somehow found a way without nearly killing myself in the process. I’m in a Ph.D. program for goodness sake...I should feel smart, beautiful, sexy, intelligent, and like I can conquer the world. I should be proud to show these bitches that I am Will’s woman, and not be worried what they think about it. Instead, I’m paranoid and furious over this one woman, who in reality should not mean shit to me.

I know what you would say if you were here. You always used to comfort me over the same feelings regarding Daniel. You would laugh and roll your eyes, and take a long drag of your cigarette before telling me that it’s lonely at the top, but that I should embrace it because I belong there, and that I just refused to acknowledge it.

I’m trying so hard to get to the top, Mo. I scare myself with the amount of re-socialization I’ve already been able to accomplish. It’s most terrifying because it’s undoing the exact re-socialization process that we were subject to on the inside. I’ve re-learned to stifle my feelings, to pretend that I’m totally fine and cool when inside I am screaming. The only compliments I actually do receive, ironically, are on how remarkably sane I am able to stay despite being in this rigorous program with double the workload of my peers while also juggling a long-distance relationship. The irony being that I’m probably one of, if not the, least sane people in the program. It is not normal to stay sane under this amount of pressure; I’m so sane that I’m insane. It’s a repeat of 2011. The golden girl...I hope I don’t crash.

The good news is that I do not succumb to Regina anymore, despite stuffing my feelings down. I’m experiencing some of the worst chronic anxiety I have ever felt because of it, but I’m trying to learn to ignore it as a new coping mechanism. It hasn’t been hugely successful, but I’ll keep you updated.

For now, I guess I should capitalize on the fact that I’m sitting alone in a quiet little coffee shop in San Diego while Will melts down over his “hefty” workload. Hope it’s as beautiful up in Heaven today as it is down here; 60 and sunny.

Until next time, Mo,

Hey Mo,

I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately, especially with it being NEDA week. I saw an interview that your dad did with the local news. Goodness girl I hope you are smiling down at how far he has come, and what he is doing in your memory. I cried that night I saw that news story. Your dad wants to assemble a research team to help girls like us. You know how I told you I was going to grad school, Mo? I think I might be the right person to help him. It’s what I’ve been studying, actually.

I can’t believe it’s been five years. 5 years since I checked out (and thus, got checked in). A month later, you arrived. Our high school baby; just barely 18; barely even old enough for the program. You had already been in treatment for five years that that point. That was three years longer than even the oldest among us had been in treatment. You were a pro, and you built us all up, pushed us towards our recovery, encouraged us to be our best selves. It kills me to remember this, because inside you were dying, screaming for help, and even our best efforts, your best efforts, were not enough to tackle the beast inside of you.

When I would not help myself, you helped me. I could not help you, so this year, for the fifth anniversary of my recovery, I decided that I would try my hardest to continue what you started, without ever setting out to do so. I am going to do everything in my power to help other people the way that you helped me, and I will make sure every single day that they know who you are, and why I owe you so much.

I finally reached out yesterday, Mo. I told someone your story. I joined an awareness club, and told them that I wanted to be active. They were shocked and saddened when I told them your story, but so welcoming and supportive about my mission.

It took five years, but I finally broke my silence. I refuse to stand by idly while this monster continues to take some of society’s most kindhearted, intelligent, and down right amazing souls from us.

I’m doing this for you, Morgan. It’ll always be for you.