Last night there was a moment that was essentially the sad scene in a rom com (minus the relationship issues, which of course is the important part of sad scenes in rom coms). Both of my roommates were out, one at a birthday dinner and one on a date. My partner is in LA for a few days, so I was waiting to hear back from a couple of different friends with potential plans. I had the lights dim and candles lit, a baggy sweatshirt with the hood up, eating pizza rolls for dinner, playing the Bon Iver Pandora station over my roommate's giant Bluetooth speaker.
Without something planned and something productive to do (although I'm sure I could have found something), I felt unsure of what to do and my feelings added up to a sum total of something like bogged down. I tried reading, and I did read, but was more unfocused than usual, not so much attending to other distractions but being unable to attend at all. I sent a snapchat of the scene, maybe as a subtle call for help but also not wanting anyone to respond because that would mean I'd have to communicate.
And it felt strange, and I thought about how long it's been since I haven't had some kind of plans on a weekend night, or on a night in general. No schoolwork, no work work, no money to go anywhere because I'm still not getting my first paycheck for 3 weeks and am stretched thin.
Of course at one time this was normal. This felt very much like most of the weekend nights of my first three years of college, before I knew myself enough to really do anything and when I was too scared of finding out who I was to try. College presented hundreds of opportunities (that most people don't have the chance to participate in) to engage in all sorts of things I had been taught to fear. I think frequently about how I wish I would have been involved with Pride, or service trips, or theater groups on campus, but those things to varying degrees carried too much danger because they weren't housed under a Christian organization. I had been told and really believed that anything beyond that was the beginning of a dangerous path. As I sat eating my pizza rolls and thinking about how familiar nights like these once were, it made perfect sense to me why I went to a counselor for depression off and on in school.
The past 2 years have been a different world of being off campus, adventuring in a different location every 4-6 months due to my university's elongated period of pre-student teaching placements, a period that was elongated even further by an additional year because I had to retake a semester that is only offered in the fall. In these nomadic years I found myself through blog posts and alone time and by being away from all of the different voices telling me who I was without my permission.
And so I'm still very slowly learning who I am and how to be in the world as that person, how to make a Saturday night productive and meaningful, how to engage with people and not feel painfully awkward the entire time, how to read books, play piano, write, do these things that were slowly shut down in those years that I slowly shut everything down because everything held a potential for damnation.
Last night was too cliche in its dolefulness, but I've been feeling that feeling come back slowly the past few days. And it comes and goes, and some days I take care of myself by going to the gym or calling old friends and some days I eat pizza rolls by myself to candlelight. Some days I spend time with people because I want to and enjoy the conversation and other days I spend time with people because I know I need to even if I can't seem to remember how to talk to them.
The important thing in these down days is to remember that there are up days too, and that one is coming, and that until then we do the little things we can to bring ourselves around. I changed the music from Bon Iver to Janelle Monae, finalized plans with a friend, put on something nicer, painted my nails and scrubbed them off immediately because they were a mess, poured myself orange juice instead of beer, attempted to make my brain work enough to read a few pages, and accepted that at that moment that was the best I could do, and reminded myself that most of the time I'm doing much better these days than I was a few years ago and that I'll be doing better again soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment