I get really frustrated with myself because I think of all the people in the world who barely stay alive every day and I'm worrying about having time off and spending my time trying to figure out why I'm so unhappy when I have that time that's not filled in with some activity. Nevertheless, this is what I'm working on right now.

I managed to admit to someone, my PhD advisor, that the truth of it all is that I can't stand to have time off because all I do is cry and/or think about killing myself.  That the ache, the emptiness, the shame, and lately, the anger, is so intense I try to run away from it all the time.   I have to work to the point I can hardly see straight so I fall right asleep and don't have to think about anything.

I've also managed to admit to myself that the reason for this is because I still hurt so much over being molested and raped over a few years of my life.  And I'm angry at myself for hurting over it.  It seems like something I should just get over and forget about.  Other than that, my life was and is wonderful-what do I have to complain about?  Again, it's back to thinking about the people who struggle everyday to survive and have endured so much worse.  What gives me the right to hurt over this?  

And anyway, why do I even think I'm worth enough to hurt over because of that?  What makes me think I deserve to be hurt by what he did?  Most of the time I feel like I'm not worth anything anyway, so what makes me think I deserved anything different than that?  Why do I ever think I should be treated as anything other than completely at anyone else's disposal?  What's the big deal anyway right?  

So...I've managed to admit why I stay so busy all the time and admitting the problem is the first step right?  I guess I'm just not sure where to go from here. 

The first two weeks...

I have spent the last two weeks trying to force myself to be still. The result: I ended up crying myself to sleep several nights and deciding I need to start working on a Master of Public Administration this summer. I’m already in a PhD program. I’m married, I have a daughter, I am president of the graduate student organization on campus, I am converting to Judaism (which is no little task, let me assure you), I am on several university committees, teach and develop classes, I volunteer with the juvenile courts and in my daughter’s classroom twice a week. Oh, and I have an autoimmune disease that is making me bleed internally which makes me anemic which makes me tired. Don’t I already have enough to do/handle?! The answer: YES. But by forcing myself to be still I was left with the overwhelming sense that I am not going anywhere in life and that I needed to do more. This led me to wonder where any of us are going. The same place in the end I guess. It’s not like I don’t know that none of this really matters in the end. Does it matter how many degrees you had or how much knowledge you amassed when you’re dead? Not really. I think all that matters is that while you were here you did the best you could not to hurt anyone.

So why am I driven to constantly work more? I think the answer lies in the crying. Besides just letting myself cry for a while each night I made myself analyze why I was crying. I was crying because I feel like such a failure in life and I feel like I don’t deserve to be alive. I don’t know why I feel this way. I have a wonderful life with a man I love and a daughter I adore. I love teaching. I can’t say I love graduate school or my dissertation work but I do love microbiology in general. I am happy and extraordinarily grateful for every single day of my life. I thank G-d every day for everything I have been given and would never ask for a single moment back in my life. But I cry at night unless I exhaust myself so much during the day I don’t have time to think before I fall asleep.

I think this experiment is going well…if nothing else at least I have some more questions to work with…and another degree to plan… :)

Unendurable Stillness

I read a book recently (The Witch of Portobello, by Paulo Coelho) in which the protagonist was described as someone who had trouble with the "blanks spaces"-the pauses, the parts between the letters and the words, in life. She was constantly restless, always looking for something else, someone else, another answer, another question...anything really to avoid the pauses in life because she found them crushingly, overwhelmingly empty.

I realized I have and have always had the same issue and that this is the major thing I need to work on at this point in my life. While I'm not entirely sure how to go about this I think the first step is to determine why I find the blank spaces so crushing and stillness so unendurable.