This is failure

I did it. I've failed. I slipped up. I fell.  There is a path laid out for people like me that I wanted to follow and I fucked it up.

What I'm referring to here is the whole research path. I was doing really, really well: back to back summers of research experience, undergraduate research courses, all that. I've graduated with an excellent GPA, I have great references.

Yet here I am

The fact that I spent this past year wanting to kill myself on an almost daily basis from November onwards if I did do this is really something, because I'm very clearly still here. Like... this is what I was so afraid of. And yeah, it sucks. No one wants to hire me. I'm paralyze with fear about what happens if I procrastinate, which makes me procrastinate. All I want is more time- more classes to take. I pushed myself to just GRADUATE, GOD DAMMIT. In a little over a week, that's gonna happen.

I've applied for a lot of jobs, but I haven't been doing it daily. I've made lots of cover letters, and spent so long sitting on them convinced they had to be perfect that I've lost out on opportunities I maybe could have gotten. The longer I wait, the more creative I will have to be with my explanations. And when they say there's a stigma against mental health, what that means is that if a potential grad supervisor asks "why didn't you talk to me in January?" I could say "I was dealing with a chronic medical condition that required a change in treatment" if that were the case, but I can't say "I was too busy trying not to kill myself out of an intense fear of the unknown that has manifest itself into a depression in me" because that makes me a bad candidate. I can't tell people I didn't talk to them because depression made me numb and useless. That's the stigma.

I thought finishing school would make things better, and it has in some ways. I'm not stressed anymore. But in other ways, it's worse. I have no routine now, and I thrive on that. I was easily able to make it to class and to the lab. I lived on a meal plan, so even if I didn't have the energy to cook, food was there for me, so I ate regularly. Now, I have no routine. Some days the only thing that gets me out of BED is my boyfriend asking me to come meet him for lunch. Some days that's the only food I eat that isn't some kind of shitty junk food crap from my bed. And yeah, there's nothing wrong with junk food, but when all I eat in one day is brownies and popcorn, I'm not taking care of myself. The only thing I can seem to manage to do is drink enough water.

So yeah, I kind of feel like I've failed.

This is the first time in my ENTIRE LIFE I have failed at something. I am at such a weird crossroads. I don't know what the best road is and everyone seems to have a different opinion. My dad says I should just focus on grad school this summer and volunteer if I can, but don't worry about working at McDonald's or whatever, because that won't look good on a CV since it's not relevant to what I want to do later in life. My mom thinks I should get a job in the meantime, but keeps encouraging me to apply for ones that are a little cushier than waitressing or retail- jobs I am never quite qualified enough for. My boyfriend keeps telling me to go to a mall and hand out resumes, or apply online, and focus on grad school at the same time. Everyone seems to think their option is best and I don't know what to do, and now the option of more classes has come up. It's all I want- all I know how to do is be a student.


And I'm sitting here writing this when there's a dance going on. I completely gave up on swing dance this semester, just stopped going to meetings, to dances, to practices... I let myself slip away because it was easier, because I did not have the mental energy and didn't want to force myself. I still have to shower before I can go, so I'll be late, but... god dammit, if I show up, that's worth something, isn't it? That's me trying to claw my way back, right? That's something.

So sure, it's failure. It's not scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel failure. It's not the worst I could do. It's not the worst I will face in my lifetime. And I know here I will be defined by how I get the fuck back up again. And if that means it takes me three months to find a job and seven potential supervisors at every school I try to apply to because the first six don't like my explanation of why there's a monthlong gap of nothing then that has to be okay. If that means I have to spend money going to therapy with a psychologist because my thought patterns are broken that's okay. If that means I have to run even after I read an article saying it's not good cardio because I actually like to run, that has to be okay. If that means I show up an hour late to a dance that probably won't last that long, that has to be okay.

I have to try.