1:15 p.m. - 02/20/02
ten more minutes...
I need to remember that there is no right way to do things, only an accepted way. I need to surrender my feelings of guilt for not meeting the typical expectations of an adolescent. I need to let go. Again...
Surprise.
I have about 48 hrs of my "extended summer vacation" left. This is crazy. I left school last year the weekend of my birthday, and I am starting it up again two days before. Technically, I have not been out of school that entire time - I mean, I did finish the last semester of sophomore year homebound (and did very well, thank God)...but it's still pretty crazy that it's been nearly a year since I sat in a classroom and copied from the board...
I'm terrified to start school again, even though it's only two homebound classes. I can't accept the idea that I did not leave school due to my own inability but rather due to illness; I can't accept the fact that this anxiety disorder is *real* and I'm really not inferior to all of my 17-yr-old friends who manage to go to school every day, do their homework every night, and hold down extracurriculars and jobs. I'm really not inferior; I'm just on a different path, and no matter how many times I say that I can't remember it. I hope that when I finish the insanity that has been my high school career (hopefully within the next year; please don't make it take 2) I will accept that I am equal with them and allow myself to start clean. I really don't want to spend college "proving myself" (to myself) again. I really want to just look at my acceptance (please god) letter, and say "I am good enough for them" and it ends here. Not that I believe one letter will neutralize a lifetime of shame- I don't- I just think that perhaps (*perhaps*) if I manage to tie up the ends of school in a way that my dream-college finds acceptable, if I manage to be enough for them, I can put these four offbeat years behind me. I've learned a lot throughout this time about what it means to be a people pleaser with a terminally disappointing illness. I've learned that the path we're taught is set in stone is really permeable. But at the same time, I still feel occasional guilt for "failing" at the course I was conditioned to finish. The honors-track-ivy-league-bound course...Sadly, it doesn't matter that this is not what I want, nor has it been what I want for some time. Despite the fact that I've gotten a lot closer to what I want through an offbeat track, I still feel some shame.
I don't know how John managed to just say adios to high school as a junior. The beating he's taken from my parents...God. But then, John didn't want to go to college, and he was desperate - and - he's John.
It's only an algebra/trig course and an English class. I can deal with that, right...? I'm not worried about the English one too much; in my experience English is simple to make up, you can jump around through the material pretty easily, and junior year tends to be heavy in literature and books go much faster outside of the classroom. It's the functions class that frightens me. Even if the material isn't overly challenging, math, being cumulative, is much more difficult to rush through...
I'm lying, though. My real, above all else fear is that Friday afternoon there will be a tutor in my house, another woman for me to disappoint, and at the school there will be two more teachers scrutinizing my work, along with an entire guidance department, and all I can think about is how quickly am I going to screw this up?
Yesterday I talked to Stephanie and in her tone I remembered that she looks on me as a success story. The girl no one thought would stay a week who (almost) completely turned her life around. Being on the phone with her was like being on the phone with my own personalized, (sincere) motivational speaker, and it was all the more wonderful because she wasn't just spouting you-can-do-its but rather reminding me that I have done it, and I continue to do it, and I really am stronger than I let myself believe.
So why is it that a beautiful woman in Wisconsin shows more faith in me during one ten to fifteen minute phone call than I can muster in seventeen years?
urgle.
chord
"Sometimes I have trouble waking up. Sometimes I can't leave the house. Sometimes I can't do my job as well as anyone wants me to...that's how I am sometimes. Deal with it."
-Cranna
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