c'est ridicule...

She said 'you don't know me, you don't care at all...'

Senior year is supposed to be amazing.

Senior year is supposed to be fun.

Senior year is supposed to be a time of anticipation and some anxiety.

Senior year is supposed to be about remembering the good times, and looking back on how far we've come.

Senior year...is none of those things.

I don't think it's possible to fully articulate the disappointment I feel at my senior year right now. Maybe I'm overextended (at least, that's what my boss says). Maybe I'm seeing too much anxiety and not enough fun - maybe the formula's bad.

All I know is that it's week four. I want to go home more than words can say. I miss my old friends like I've never missed them before (and that says something). I wish for trips to McDonald's before drama...when drama was on stage and not in my hallway. I dream about bus trips and random singalongs and of how it felt to know that I was never really alone, and that if I was single it didn't matter because I was only a kid anyway.

I'm not a kid anymore.

Decisions I made with certain outcomes in mind are now materializing as something warped and unfamiliar. I thought I would belong, and not feel so outside the curve. I underestimated just what taking this on would mean. I'm talking in circles and not even sure that I understand what I'm saying.

I don't feel comfortable pulling others in when I'm so desperate to get out.

I need clarity...contentment...coffee...and some cuddling wouldn't hurt either.

I didn't grow up to feel so alone.

celui qui est dans la commande

So I need to take some time to think about my life. Where am I going, how will I get there, when will this entire charade play out to a happy resolution?

I'm irritated right now...well, not exactly right now...it's more the memory of the irritation I had yesterday, when I was thinking about things. As much as I love my job and I love being an RA and so involved, yesterday it felt like I was reaching a breaking point. And it's only September.

B is amazing. Great supervisor, wonderful friend potential if it wasn't for that ineffable boundary between professional and personal. It should be there, because we wouldn't be able to work together if he saw us all as friends first. But that's beyond the point of my thinking here. I'm just a little fed up with inconsistency. I set up my schedule with certain understood things in mind, and I've now had to deal with the third shake-up to which I'm expected to adjust with no complaint and pure cooperation. I want to articulate this to him but I'm not sure how to do it without sounding critical or, worse, petulant.

I hate being petulant.

Talked to Mom today. She sounds like she's doing better...I really miss her. She actually cried when she told me she wanted to see me - I think she's coming down at the end of the month, after the High Holy Days are finished, to spend an afternoon - she may even be here for Jello!

And then there's the sorority. When I signed my bid and joined DZ I felt so complete, like I was somewhere I belonged. And now...there's so much bureaucracy and the requirement to do so much that wasn't articulated before. Rather than feeling a sense of belonging and completion, now I feel like it's just another obligation I would be better off without. Come January, I may give it up for good...

Try as I might (well, not try, I do everything on my schedule) I feel like I'm slipping and forgetting little things here and there. I hate it; I hate not feeling like I'm 100% in control of my life.

But hey...I'm not.

les problems...

Personally, I feel completely stressed out... Being sick means that whatever snippets of free time I manage to carve out are miserable or, usually, spent sleeping. I've become a buffer in the meantime for everyone's personal drama and I don't know how to just say "no" to people, because it makes me feel like I'm being callous. All I need is the space and support to maybe fall apart a little and not feel like a) someone is going to start a pissing contest with me or b) I'm being insensitive to someone else's stress, as is what usually happens when you start venting to someone only to find out that their problems are so much worse.

Besides, I'm strong, right?

...right?

The stress doesn't just come from school, or clubs, or residents (ha, they're my lowest source of stress), or even my friends here. There's so much going on at home, same story with no chance of getting better. Mom's sick right now because (in part) she won't slow down and behave like an adult with limitations. She goes out at all hours of the night with kids half her age, eats poorly and doesn't get enough rest, then expects to be able to go to school and work every day without falling apart. I'm 21 years old and I'm incapable of doing that day in and day out. The thing is, she's lonely and so desperate for friendship that she's willing to do just about anything to get it.

What makes it worse is...well, one of her pals is one of my best friends (awkward). The other is my ex-boyfriend (trés awkward). I feel by going home I'm either forced to see someone I don't care for or she ends up having to decide whether it's more important to see her daughter or her "friend". And it's just a weird relationship, if you ask me, except nobody asks me. I feel like I'm being put in the middle of a situation I can't stand.

Then she says she doesn't want to get back together with my dad, and it's just fine as long as she's the one doing the rejecting. Let him say he doesn't want to be with her, though, and she gets depressed.

She's suicidal. Whenever someone confronts her with all of this and she feels cornered, she'll say that she just wants to die. Last semester I spent a night on the phone with her, both of us crying, and I couldn't go to bed until the guys promised me they wouldn't leave her alone. I'm sitting in a room three hours away, not knowing if my mom would make it through the night. Just last month when I was home I told her I'd had enough of feeling like this, and she tried to leave - she even called my brother to tell him goodbye. I left with her and we talked her down...that time.

I'm afraid that I'll wake up one morning to the news that nobody was there to stop her.

I've lived my whole life with the shadow of suicide, but it was my dad talking, my dad holding the gun, my dad wanting to throw it all away. Now that it's my mom...I'm scared. She, I think, has the wherewithal to actually do it.

But don't worry about me. I love life too much.

It's just...j'ai les problems...