The stuff about getting better

I don't know, man, sometimes you just have to come here and type and say what your brain is thinking.

My drafts folder on this blog are... good. It's a dated history of my depression (still undiagnosed, fwiw). I can look back now, with the knowledge I have, and see where I went wrong, see all the things I beat myself up about, see all the toxicity. I'm glad those posts never got published. They were just a bit too... emo/dark to share with other people. Too dramatic, too personal. Some of that stuff I've told other people anyway, in other words. Some of it I've figured out on my own.


I keep thinking about the future. In two weeks I move back home for grad school. A week later, I come back here. For the next two weeks, I travel with family and friends and then I spend a week packing up the rest of my life here and moving back home. My summer at home will consist of living with my family again- Freckles included. I have friends still in the city I can hang out with while I adjust to doing long distance with Redbeard. I'm not worried it won't work, just worried about being sad and things being hard. But in a way, I'm glad I'm not staying here.

The last school-related thing I did last April was go to the lab and make sure I hadn't left anything important behind, say my last goodbyes. I walked out towards home. It was a nice day, a sunny day. I was miserable. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. My summer job fell through because there's no fucking funding for science, much less for kids with my GPA, and I think at that point I may still not have had a place to move when my lease ended. I was trying to find a good time to bus home to get my car and other moving supplies, staying in the house while my parents were out of town. I sat on the grass and cried for half an hour. I was so sad that everything familiar was ending. How much had I wished to be doing anything else during all that studying? And now I'd give anything to have it back. Why had I applied to graduate? Why hadn't I just taken another year? Why hadn't I discussed moving back home with my parents? Everything was a mess.

I'd like to say I felt the comforting hand of what was then future-me. I'd like to say I believed it would all be okay, that I'd figure it out, but I didn't. I wish more than anything I could have given myself some comfort at that moment. But there wasn't. Eventually I had to go home and stop crying. Eventually I had to leave that spot.

Over the summer I came back to campus a couple of times. Redbeard was working on campus so sometimes I met him for lunch, other times I had to pick up grad stuff, or I thought campus would be a good place to work. But it just made me sad. I would walk through the old halls, take my old paths to class, and be overcome with emotion. Let me be clear- I loved getting my degree. I had a great time. I have a lot of good memories, and I'm still sad it's over, but in a better way now. But being on campus then just made me sad I didn't have a purpose there. September was worse. My sister was living with me, and going back to school on the campus I had just left. Redbeard was going to school. A lot of my friends were going back to school, and I was right to predict that that's when it really hit me- I wasn't going back to school. On the first day, Freckles got ready and left, Redbeard texted her to let her know he'd be on campus if she needed anything, and I... I probably sat around the apartment being sad. I felt so lost. It was sitting on the grass in quad all over again. A month later I watched Lorelai's graduation scene in gilmore girls- or more accurately, I skipped past it and bawled like a baby because it made me so upset.

When I had a job in November- for a nightmare micromanaging boss who refused to listen to anyone's ideas but his own- walking on campus was a little more okay. It felt good to be useful. To be doing something. Seeing people every day. Walking. Making money. I only wish it could have lasted longer and being fired had me scream-crying in a bathroom stall for half an hour before I went to get my things. I paid for another new ID card for that. It says alumnus on the back. Just another reminder.

But now, I get a new ID card. I get to live far away from what is now- and always will be- my alma mater. I don't think about wandering the halls anymore- but now it won't even be an option. I'll visit the city, but to see people, not my old academic haunts. Granted, I'll be going back to a lab I've spent a lot of time in already, but now in a new way. Now in the fall and the winter. Now I might even get a key (one can only hope- I got keys as an undergrad in a lab, I should get a building key as a master's student, right?). My parents are helping me rearrange my room so it doesn't feel like I'm reverting back to childhood.

In some ways, it feels really good to move on. To move forward. That was my word for the year, in the words of the cheesy feel-good self-help podcast I listen to semi-regularly: pick a word for the year. Forward. As in, away from the past. As in, I have trouble moving in this direction. As in: I need to practice making big life changes. It's time for a new one.

And this time I'm ready for it.