Repetition.

Go to bed at 9:45. 

Fall asleep at 10:15

Wake up at 11.

Fall back asleep at 12:30.

Wake up at 1:15.

Fall back asleep at 2:30.

Wake up at 4.

Maybe fall back asleep till the alarm goes off at 5.

Get up, get ready, and leave for work by 6:25.

Work till I get home between 4-6.

Grade, prep, plan, and maybe eat.

Go to bed at 9:45.

Sigh.

Some days I just don't see the point in repeating. Some days I do.

And then there's this...

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/crime/2013/11/16/newday-valencia-rapist-no-jail-time.cnn.html

Cause and Effect

the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them

Charles Bukowski

Are You Still Being a Good Girl?

This is what I heard as I locked my car and started walking towards cvs to pick up my medicine. The question has been looping through my mind all day. 

As soon as he spoke I whipped my head up from my phone and saw him standing there. This little, cocky, half grin crept across his face. I didn't look any longer after that, though. I backed quickly to my car door, unlocked it, and smacked my head on the way in ( I'd find out a few hours later that I cut it open and probably had a concussion). 

Then I drove. I'm not sure how far he followed me, but somehow after thirty minutes I managed to lose him. I drove out to Roundtop and when there weren't any cars behind me, quickly turned around and headed to a friends'. 

I still cannot get those words and the face out of my head. I'm ready to be done. 

People Always Ask:

I could always stop cutting; that’s the plain and inelegant truth. No matter how compelling the urge, the act itself is always a choice. I have no power over the urge, but the act itself is always a choice. I have no power over the flood tide of emotions that drives me to that brink, but I occasionally have the power to decide whether or not to step over. Stopping, however, is not at all the same thing as ending the desire. I still ache with a fierce, organic need for cutting’s seductive, minimalist simplicity. I expect that I will always be the kind of person who is too much aware of the boundlessness of chaos; it’s like having an unfortunate sixth sense, alive to the teeming, invisible undercurrents of anarchy streaming past us as every moment. I don’t say it makes me stronger, or more interesting, or gives me character; it’s just a part of my fabric of self.

It Was A Rocky Start...

But I'm definitely sure that I chose the right career for me. I'm really enjoying teaching [even though this is only the second week school has been in session]. Last week and the week before, I was feeling completely confused and lost with what I was supposed to be doing. I did not find out the classes I would be teaching until the Friday before school started. Needless to say, it was a little nerve-wrecking and anxiety-making; for me, higher anxiety is not a good thing. I was able to get into the swing of things like usual, though. Here we are at the end of the second week, and I'm ready to lesson plan up to the end of the month.

Now, that's not to say that I've been doing perfectly and haven't made any mistakes. I definitely have. If you're looking to be a teacher [ANY teacher] here is what I've learned so far:

• Journals sound like a great thing in theory. Yeah! My students can write creatively and make real-world connections! In reality? No. No. Nope.
• If you want to have your students write journal entries you need to know these three things:
• DO NOT assign the writing in all of your classes at the same time. Your writing hand will thank you. Emphatically. So will your brain.
• DO NOT assign a prompt that will enable/encourage students to write about deep, personal events from their lives UNLESS you are willing and ready to have several long conversations with their guidance counselor. 
• DO NOT attempt to write lots of *helpful* comments and suggestions on their writing. You hand and brain will disown you, and that sucks. 
• Lay down the law sternly and OFTEN. 

I'll get back to this in a few weeks.....

Need to get past a few things first.

Sonder

Graduated.

Four years of college completed and degree acquired...shouldn't I be feeling awesome right about now? At this point I'm feeling the exact opposite. It seems like everyone is getting permanent jobs, getting engaged, having kids, moving up in their lives, and just generally becoming adults. Me? I'm just watching other people's kids while endlessly sending in job applications. Losing my boyfriend at the end of the summer, looking at yet another surgery, and quickly losing any ground I may have gained over the last fourteen weeks of therapy. What am I doing wrong? At this point it just feels like I'm back in the same loop that started nine years ago: Endless setbacks and crap to deal with. 

I spend most nights flipping through dozens of school district web pages and seeing little to no secondary English jobs; most of the ones posted require a reading speciality which one gets through a master's program. I'm just not experienced enough (despite everything I did beyond my required courses) or don't have a high enough gpa since I spent much of my time working to even afford college. With all the setbacks and crap I've had to deal with over the last decade, one would think I could maybe get a little lucky with something. But, alas...that is not the case. 

After I'm sick of looking and applying for jobs I probably won't get, I try to go to sleep. I'm usually successful for about the first 45-60 minutes of sleep. After that, I'm jolted awake by the same freaking night terror I get at least four times a week now. One would think that after fourteen weeks of therapy this would be getting a little better, or I would have new techniques to combatting them. Nope. They're getting worse. Now I wake up and I physically hurt. Not to mention I typically wake up and am thrown into an instant panic attack. After all that, it typically takes me another hour, give or take, to fall back asleep. If I'm super lucky, I can sleep one or two more hours without having another terror, but I think we've already established how much luck hates me. 

The incision scars from last summer's surgery are beginning to enlarge and puff up. Once or twice a day I get sharp, shooting pains that seem to stab straight through them. I have another appoint,net to get checked out in a few weeks, but I'm really nervous about the whole thing. If my endometriosis is getting worse and progressing this much in less than a year since the big surgery, I'm screwed. It'll mean that a repeat surgery would be ineffective, and I would need a full hysterectomy. No kids of my own. Perfect. And cue complete and obliterating debt. Student loans and medical bills would completely consume me.. Add in the lack of a job and what do you get? My full-circle panic attack. 

This has been an frequent thought process for the last few weeks. Fortunately, I've been able to hold back on actually following through with anything. Waking up in the middle of the night, out of bed, holding a razor was the least helpful occurrence thus far. Just gotta make it through the last week or so of student teaching. I know I will be infinitely better when I've graduated. 

Buried in the nameless black of a name...

“This much I'm certain of: it doesn't happen immediately. You'll finish [the book] and that will be that, until a moment will come, maybe in a month, maybe a year, maybe even several years. You'll be sick or feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for the first time in your life. It won't matter. Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you'll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all. For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how. You'll have forgotten what granted you this awareness in the first place

You might try then, as I did, to find a sky so full of stars it will blind you again. Only no sky can blind you now. Even with all that iridescent magic up there, your eye will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations. You'll care only about the darkness and you'll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay. It will get so bad you'll be afraid to look away, you'll be afraid to sleep.

Then no matter where you are, in a crowded restaurant or on some desolate street or even in the comforts of your own home, you'll watch yourself dismantle every assurance you ever lived by. You'll stand aside as a great complexity intrudes, tearing apart, piece by piece, all of your carefully conceived denials, whether deliberate or unconscious. And then for better or worse you'll turn, unable to resist, though try to resist you still will, fighting with everything you've got not to face the thing you most dread, what is now, what will be, what has always come before, the creature you truly are, the creature we all are, buried in the nameless black of a name.

And then the nightmares will begin.” 

― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

You Can't Fight a Ghost.

Group therapy officially starts Wednesday evening. I couldn't be more nervous. I eagerly anticipate the impending panic attacks for the next few weeks. 

Vertigo

I don't know if my body is plotting against me again or if the stress is just getting to me more than usual. Had a wonderful weekend with Connor until waking up Sunday morning. I woke up with overwhelming vertigo. Could hardly walk from the bed to the chair without falling down. It has taken till now, 4pm, to get better. Though, I'm still a little foggy. I truly hope this was just a fluke occurrence because I have to teach tomorrow and Dr. Shannon is coming to observe; I need to be on the top of my game. I need to find a way to de-stress so that this doesn't happen again. 

I've been doing really well for the last few months, but for the last week it's been really hard to resist. I don't really want to go through the tediousness of hiding it all again though. So I guess I won't.

Truth.

I am going to make it through this year if it kills me

And I hope the junkyard a few blocks from here
Someday burns down
And I hope the rising black smoke carries me far away
And I never come back to this town again in my life

I hope I cut myself shaving tomorrow
I hope it bleeds all day long
Our friends say it's darkest before the sun rises
We're pretty sure they're all wrong

I hope it stays dark forever
I hope the worst isn't over
And I hope you blink before I do
And I hope I never get sober

I am drowning
There is no sign of land
You are coming down with me
Hand in unlovable hand