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11:45 p.m. - 12/17/02 In other news, I heard from Hampshire, and proceeded to bawl my eyes out. I was deferred- not accepted under early decision but not exactly rejected. I'll find out in a few months whether I got in or not. Obviously, I was incredibly disappointed, in large part because I really wanted to be done with having to think about (anything other than how to finance/ be ready for) college. And I went through the what's wrong with me monologue that attempts to know what I simply can't know, and I thought about how much pain can I take, and how many times can I be rejected. I cried because I'm always my own harshest critic, so how come when I'm starting to really be myself and like myself, I'm "not enough" for other people? Et cetera, et cetera. In order to do this, I had to keep from trying to figure out a course of action until I was out of tears. That was relatively easy once I reminded myself I see the doc tomorrow. I could cry and feel and not think, knowing we can sort through logistics in the morning. Good plan; it worked well. The far more important thing I realized is that, because the decision (or lack thereof) came from my dream school and not some Ivy League poser-me sort of place, I felt I was being rejected by my future. I felt like I was not enough to live the life that I've been fighting to live, and what's the point of my recovery and blah blah blah. What I realized, though, (and managed to make an article out of for my creative writing class- hot damn)was that if this *were* a letter from my future, it wouldn't be rejecting me, it would be deferring me. It would be saying, "We can't yet accept you into your future" which is of course, always the case. I realized that one thing I really need to work on is not spending so much time focusing on what will be (however valid that focus is; I do have to survive D!@#$%^ with my parents) that I don't experience the present. If I work at creating the life I want *now* instead of *in the future* the influences over my future, which I can't predict or gauge the way I can current influences, will not have such power. And bringing the power back to me sounded like a hugely good idea at that point. So, what did I do? I wrote a handful of letters to people at Rogers. Tomorrow (hopefully) I will write a second handful, and then I will send them north, and see what comes of it. Maybe freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, or maybe I realized that if I can handle insane pain that comes without preparation, I can likely handle curves I have reason to expect. Maybe this just confirmed for me something that is very true: I can't be beaten now. Things get shitty, and I fight them anyway. That's one of the greatest gifts Tracy gave me. When I didn't lose everything after I lost her, the rest of the pain in the world lost its power. Because nothing hurts as badly as that did. So, hey, grab dinner, write a letter, keep on keeping on... Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and so forth... chord p.s. the tree is up and full of lights and ornaments and I am one(?) assignment away from only having finals to complete. eep! � � |