phoning it in.

god, isn't this place beautiful? it snowed in the mountains yesterday. i can't remember a time that i felt more giddy than on my walk to class, staring at the clouds and white tops.

Yikes, bikes.

It’s noon now and the light seeping in from my windows is reminding me of my grandmother’s house. I can’t explain it, I just looked around the room and it felt like she was here, or rather, I was there. It’s bright, insistent. Even though my shades are drawn, the sun won’t be denied. It will persevere in its task to light the world; it will make me acknowledge my own refusal to be a present and willing participant in this day.

Anyway, like I said, it’s noon now and I’m also basically still in bed, although I’ve gotten up a few times for provisions and teeth brushing, etc.  I figure I should say a few words about grad school since it’s basically my life now and I don’t have a job, which is actually pretty terrible. I seriously, seriously need to be working and making money, but that’s a subject for another day.

So far grad school is good and not even really that hard time-wise and I really, really love the program, my classmates, learning all the history and theoretical techniques of therapy, and the faculty. But shit-damn am I feeling just emotionally drained and/or emotionally hungover most of the time. When my day is done I don’t want to talk to the people I love on the phone or cook myself dinner or go for a hike. I want to fucking drink my face off and watch ‘quirky independent romantic comedies’ on Netflix until I fall asleep. This is probably not effective coping behavior.

And honestly, I don’t want to sound like I’m bitching about this AT ALL, because it’s such a beautiful and self-actualizing journey to be on and I’m so lucky to be on it. But being this engaged and invested in something, to the point where I’m more than just showing up to every single thing, I’m really not sure I’ve ever done it before. I mean ever. My autopilot is more functional that most people’s engaged. I don’t really know if that’s true or not, but it seems like it could be. I feel like I could go pro at maximizing my life potential with minimal effort. It wasn’t always this way, but getting out of it, shit. My seize-the-day-and-try-your-best! muscles are like, really fucking rusty.

Anyway, that’s not really the point. I’ve really never thought of myself as a completely non-self aware person or someone that was harboring super intense and deeply-engrained issues before. I mean, we’re human, we all have our shit and we all have our struggles and shame and sadness. We all experience these things differently and we all deal with them differently. That’s part of what makes being human and interacting with other humans so enthralling for me.

I just feel like I’m in this weird mind-fuck. I alternate between talking opening about things that are bothering me with my classmates in the client role for learning exercises that always seem to get way deeper than I ever thought they could possibly be and then having conversations where I act as the therapist so I can play back the recording and literally pick apart every single one of my actions and words. I now fully know how frequently I blink and exactly what the side of my face looks like when I talk. And all that would be fine if at the end of every day I wasn’t thinking, “Holy fucking shit, I still have so far to go and I have to start seeing ACTUAL clients in three months what the fuck am I going to do and how will I get there?”

And I mean, I’m trying so hard to trust the process right now. I have faith that my professors will be able to get me there and I have faith in their selection process and belief that I can probably definitely do this and that I will be a good counselor. I just sort of don’t know how to handle the part of my life that isn’t school when school is just rubbing up on every single part of my life, especially because I moved across the country to do it.

So yeah, I’m phoning it in today. From my nest of pillows and down comforters. Sorry, sun. Try back tomorrow.