Try

When the school year was over, I thought that’s when I’d be the happiest. Even if I still had to work for an extra week, there’d be no kids at school and we’d all just concentrate on planning for the …

For the 100th time

Has it been a month already? Tomorrow’s the dreaded thesis seminar again and for the first time I’m not sure I’m showing up. I may not be able to handle it. I still haven’t answered back to my tutor’s email …

Rambo skills

This is just not a good day. I hate how my mood can go up and down just like that with no apparent reason for it, not on the outside at least. It started since last night. Wild suicidal thoughts running through my mind. Hadn’t had those in months. And it just sucks. Not because I’m about to throw myself out the window, I’m not really suicidal at this point, but the thought crosses my mind and then I just start thinking of ways I could do it, lovely hobby isn’t it? It feels like a loss, like I was getting away from that and then in a day I can be thrown right back into it.

As much as I wanted to pretend everything was ok just because I had the gift of a couple of happy days, truth is I’m still broken, and it won’t go away because I got to play in a pool.

I know one thing that is for sure contributing to making me feel this way. I got two weeks off from teaching but only one off from Mount Olympus, so this week I was able to show up at the Institute earlier, without the pressure of running back and forth between the school and the campus, and I got to stay for as long as I wanted, there was a lot to be done anyways. But the point is this isn’t my real routine. On Monday I have to go back to teaching English, which was perfectly fine by me until I got this other job that constantly reminds me of what I really want to do with my life, or rather what I don’t want to do with it.

It’s not that I don’t like being a grade school teacher, I think I like it and I don’t suck at it. It’s that I didn’t choose this to be my life, but rather it chose me. It’s something that happened to me, not something that I made happen.

Writing for a living, being a historian, working in the editorial business, becoming a foreign affairs official, those are things that I want to happen to me, any of them, but I’m gonna have to make them happen, they’re not going to come on their own. But how can I work on obtaining any of those things while I’m so busy making a living out of teaching? I guess I do think I can do it, that’s what I’m fighting for everyday, but this week is just reminding me how easier it would be if I didn’t have to juggle so many things at the same time, especially things that I consider are keeping me away from my dreams.

I’m going to be 26 next week, I’m not a young girl anymore, I’m actually going to be closer to my 30’s than to my 20’s, and I still haven’t gotten there yet, I still feel like my dreams are millions of light years away from me. In fact, I feel like they are further away than what they where some good 4 years ago. I feel like I’m wasting my time, and while other people my age are steadily on their way to achieving their life goals, I’m still in line to get on life’s roller coaster (wow, that sounded a so corny lol)

…

It’s been a couple of hours since I started writing this post, and I feel a little better, it’s a good thing I let it rest here for some time before publishing it. Maybe it’s because  I’ve been so busy with documents and emails from one of the reviews I’m working for, maybe it’s the fact that I’ve resigned myself that I’m gonna have to keep going this way for longer than expected. Maybe it’s the weather, that has become cloudy and probably rainy and sure suits my mood better than the sunny spring day we had in the morning. Who knows… I guess we all have our moments. I’m still feeling down, but as we say in Mexico, I’m not cutting my veins with animal crackers anymore. Now I’m working on my Rambo skills: this is life, it’s not great, sometimes it sucks, deal with it.

 

Rambo cat disapproves of my weakness

Picture of my life

I’ve been having this Jamiroquai song in my mind all week. Probably due to the fact that he just had a gig here in Mexico City on Monday and I couldn’t be there. Had been waiting 7 years to see him and because of work I had to be an adult and miss it. Goddamned adult responsibilities!

But there’s something else too. I’ve been feeling so lost, filled with such hopelessness, and I just can’t pinpoint what it is. Instead I’ve been focusing all my undetected and unresolved issues on my weight. This is something that’s been torturing me for sure, and I’ve effectively starved for some days now, I’ve lost a pound a day and whenever I get on the scale I’m petrified by the fear it’s going to show how much of a fat cow I am, and yet it keeps showing I’m loosing weight and it gives me comfort and peace of mind, though it still doesn’t show the weight I want it to show. I’ve also been looking at YouTube videos of the downwards spiral many women get caught it thanks to anorexia, the aim of their videos is to warn others…but I think they just fuel me. I don’t look at those pro ana-mia sites though, don’t get me wrong, I think they’re stupid and dangerous for women, especially teenagers, to look at. You want to be anorexic? Trust me, you don’t.

I do eat when I’m with company, because I know how much of an annoyance it can be to have people noticing you’re not eating. But on weekdays nobody really notices wether I eat or not and I can get away with it. I said I was going to lose the weight I’ve gained thanks to those damn pills before my birthday, and that means I have a little more than a month to do so. I wish it didn’t matter to me, I wish I could just let it be, but I can’t, and it makes me feel stupid and sad. Just as the song says, I wish someone could show me what my life should really be like, because this can’t be it.

I never had a dream that I could follow through
Only tears left to stain, dry my eyes once again
I don’t know who I am, or what I’m gonna do
Been so long I’ve been hopelessly confused
This can never really end, it’s infinitely sad
Can someone tell me when
Something good became so bad
So if you have a cure
To me would you please send
A picture of my life
With a letter telling how
It should really be instead

The precipice is there
But will I ever dare
Throw myself in the sky, so at last I can die
See I’ve become a man
Who holds nothing too dear
Who will mind if I just disappear 
This can never really end, it’s infinitely sad
Can someone tell me when
Something good became so bad 
So if you have a cure
To me would you please send
A picture of my life
With a letter telling how
It should really be instead

On a brighter note, I’m not going to go to work tomorrow, yay! Thanks to my other job at Mount Olympus I have to go to the SAT department, which is like the IRS in the States, to do a bunch of paperwork for the uni to be able to hire me as an external employee. It’s probably going to take most of my morning and I was first bummed about it, but then I realized I could see it as getting a break from an otherwise dreadful humdrum Monday, and it cheered me up! I won’t have to give classes, I won’t have to wear my horrendous uniform, and I sure will be out of there before 3:30, which is the time I get off work, so it’s a win-win really! Well… that is if I conveniently put aside the fact that I won’t get paid on that day, but it’s a price I’m willing to pay for a day off 🙂

(Not) Employee of the month

Today I was late for work. Again. It was just 5 minutes but it still counts as a mark on my payroll. Last week there was a day when I was half an hour late. I’ve yet to celebrate the day when I’m not running around and driving like all hell broke loose just to be on time and of course, just like today, there are days when even that’s not good enough because in a place like Mexico’s City there’s just no way of predicting when traffic’s going to be demential, and that’s why one should always leave with a lot of time on their pocket.

I always set my alarm with plenty of time, but when I turn it off I just go back to sleep. I’ve even recruited BF to call me and convince me to get the fuck off bed, sometimes it works… most times it doesn’t. He says I always agree to get up, and make small affirmations like “Ok, I’m getting up, I’ve turned the light on, I’m gonna go get my clothes..” and so on, but the moment we hang up I get my lazy ass back in the sheets, there doesn’t seem to anything that motivates me enough to do otherwise.  I’ve given him lines that might work well, I’ve told him to remind me that I have to be professional, that I have responsibilities, that if I get up I’ll have enough time to actually enjoy my morning coffee, nothing works! In those precious moments I can’t think straight and just can’t find any good reason to get up and live.

I know this is a symptom related to my depression, but it hurts just the same to know I’m far, far away from being employee of the month. I’m used to being the best, or at least one of the best, and now I’m experiencing a period where I’m scratching not even being good enough, it’s hard to be a constant disappointment to myself. I know this job isn’t what I want for my life, but it’s a job, and I’m adult, or at least I claim to be, so it should be easy!

I’ve tried going to bed early, setting tons of alarms, promising myself expensive on-the-go-coffee or yummy homemade one, none of it works! What do you do when you have to get up early? Is it too hard? Do you have any good methods for getting out of bed? They’d be much appreciated!

The misfit employee

Sunday’s here again, and I think I’m getting away with it. I’m not feeling any chest pains at all and it’s almost sunset so I think I might be on the other side. I haven’t experienced the burden on my chest for a few days now, and it’d be good news if it weren’t for the fact that I’m still a jumpy nervous wreck, especially at my job.

This past week was 5 months since I started working at this school, and I still can’t feel comfortable. The last job I had it took me a year to be myself, and then I left it for my current one. Is it also going to take me a year to stop being constantly anxious? It is definitely much better than it was at the start, but it feels like I should feel much much calmer right now, and I don’t. My coworkers are nice to me, my boss is strict and demanding but open and honest, my schedule (which I keep complaining about) is much nicer than what most people get here in Mexico, and my job is something I’m prepared to do. Still, it feels like I can’t relax for a second, I’m constantly on guard, and it’s pretty damned tiring.

And because I loove lists, I made a short list of the reasons why I’m insecure at my job all the time:

• My classroom is next to the principal’s office so I’m always on the watch or so I think.
• My class must be boring for my students because I must be a boring teacher who comes up with boring activities and for that sake let’s just admit I’m boring person
• My open class is in May and I won’t be prepared for it because I’m a lousy teacher
• Sooner or later someone will figure out I’m not a good enough teacher who’s not really committed and I’ll lose my job.

There was only one time when I wasn’t insecure at doing my job, and it had nothing to do with teaching. I got to Mount Olympus to do my uni’s mandatory social service for 6 months, and ended up staying there for a year. For the first half-year I ordered one of the institute’s historical review’s files, and for the second half I transcribed historical customs documents into excel files. For the whole time I worked alone in a cubicle and had barely any supervision at all and no official schedule; it was more of a phantom job really except for the times when I presented my results. I was very much trusted, and I felt it. Sadly these jobs were only temporary and when they ended I had to get a real one.*

Now I have a very strict 8-hour schedule and all my comings and goings are recorded in a fingerprint timeclock, I also have to wear a uniform and I’m supposed to follow all kinds of regulations. I do not work well with this kind of Big Brother pressure, and it’s eating me away. I don’t hate my job at all, but the constant supervision and ever-present rules make it almost impossible for me to enjoy it. I know it’s my problem, but I’ve yet to find a way to deal with it.

Still, if I survive an entire school year, and it looks like I might, I’ll have a very good reason to celebrate 🙂

 

* There’s a possibility of  getting another part-time job at Mount Olympus, and I couldn’t be more excited! I don’t want to talk too much about it though, at least until it’s not for sure.

 

 

Bad sushi

I absolutely adore Japanese food. I could it eat every day for the rest of my life. The rice, the noodles, the sushi, the soups, all of it. So yesterday, after yet another gray day, I decided the higlight of  it could be treating myself with some sushi. Around 5pm I ordered some rice and a roll from my favorite place. I didn’t have dinner and for a change I went to bed not too late, only to wake up at 2 in the morning feeling so nauseous I could barely make it on time to the bathroom. I don’t know how many times I puked before the sickness went down to my stomach and D (no, not depression, the other D) made it’s grand appeareance.

Long story short, when it was time to get up and go to work I was a wreck and had to ask willingly for the sadistic procedure of getting an injection. I just can’t afford to skip another day of work, especially not today. Good news is the kids got out early today so I only had to teach 3 classes. Bad news is they got out early because we the teachers are in for one of our monthly marathonical meetings so I’m stuck here until 4 in the afternoon (in case you are putting two and two together, yes, I’m writing this post while I should be working. Bad employee, bad, bad employee 😉 )

The thing I’m wondering is, does it ever get any easier? I mean working. Or is it always gonna be a struggle while I’m dealing with D (no, not the stomach-D, the other one) Because it’s been almost four months since I started here and it’s not getting easier. Or is it difficult because this is not my passion? What I want to do is research. For those of you who don’t know, I studied Latin American Studies and I’m specializing in Gender History. Now THAT is my passion. Except I can’t go after it until I finish the-thesis-that-must-not-be-named, and so the vicious circle continues.

Go to work? I’d rather stay curled up inside this blanky!

Not me anymore

Today my long weekend ends. I really needed it, thank goodness for Mexican Revolution. However, I do have to go to work tomorrow. I do have to face a thesis seminar and I do have to face my tutor. It’s not a matter of wether or not I can take it, it’s is a matter of last chances. Tomorrow I have the obligation of not f*ucking up. As of this moment I feel sort of capable, I hope to continue feeling that tomorrow morning.

It’s just so hard getting out of bed in the morning. Once I manage to do that, it’s usually already a little bit late and I have to run, which makes me very anxious all day long. If I could only not feel sick, if I wasn’t sick, I know I’d have finished my thesis already, I know I’d enjoy my job, and I know I’d be on may way to graduate school. The worst part is having to lie about it, because no matter what people say, being severly depressed is frowned upon. And even though I don’t want to, even though I should know better, people’s view on my performance affect my own personal view of myself. I’ll  feel like an irresponsible whining baby because I can’t comply with what’s expected from me.

And when I stop being so hard on myself, still I can’t shake off the failure sensation. I can’t forget that I used to be the shining star of my undergraduate generation, the one everybody consulted before handing in papers, the pride of teachers, and a girl who had her act pretty much together ALL the time.

I’m not that person anymore. I don’t know where she went and I don’t know if she’s ever comming back. I sure do hope so because I miss her. I can only wonder how she managed to handle everything, not just her everyday stuff but also the garbage that keeps me a complete mess and forces me to be medicated and go to therapy three times a week.

There are flashes when I feel everything will get better, and periods of time when I do feel better, but even when that happens I can’t forget I’m not what I used to be, I don’t forget my utter failure in all of my goals, and I don’t forget there are still battles comming up ahead.

Damn, I’ve written a sad post again, and I’m not even feeling that sad. Come to think about it, maybe writing all this stuff helps me chanalize it instead of feeling it on my flesh. It has always been this way, except before I only wrote when pain was piercing me and now, sometimes I’m able to hit the keyboard at the first sign of a crisis, and I think it has helped me in reducing them. I wish this was all the therapy I needed, but until that’s the case (I do hope that’ll be the case someday), here’s a cat.

This is (not) a happy post

Someone told me the other day that I have a good, though somewhat sad, blog. I made the point that I thought my blog was at least sometimes a little bit funny; the answer was: “yeah, if by funny you mean having a dark twisted humor”.

Now, since this person happened to be my BF, and since I sort of value his opinion more than that from the rest of  humankind, I’m determined to writing at least one happy post every once in a while…well, maybe once every other ice age.

That being said, my Monday started in a very sh*tty way. I didn’t have my morning coffee, I messed up at work first thing in the morning, and I had an absolute lack of energy despite having agreed yesterday to a painful and dangerous torture that promised to give me more energy (also know as a B-vitamin injection). My day didn’t look to good, I was already swearing and feeling very depressed, and it wasn’t even 10 am!

Still, right now I’m feeling better and my afternoon has the unique opportunity of picking me up. I’m gonna eat with BF, have an afternoon coffee, and rant away in therapy, after which maybe I’ll feel up for preparing my stuff  for tomorrow and avoiding being in a hurry in the morning.

This is as happy as I can get right now, but I promise I’ll try not to always be so dark and twisted, though I must say it sounds far more interesting than being a happy-go-lucky girl (or maybe I’m just saying this because I don’t know how to be a little carefree?).

I hope you enjoy the rest of your Monday!

Writing also helps

I feel like I’m on the verge of breaking down again, and I’m not sure I know how to stop it. All day long I’ve been feeling empty, robot-like, and now the tremblings are starting, together with the ache right in the middle of my chest. But I know it’s not gonna happen today, today I’m just gonna lay down and I’m even gonna fight it.

The strange thing is I had been feeling ok. Halloween at school was fun for the kids and I even dressed up, makeup and everything, like a black cat, something I hadn’t done in years. All I can think of is that stepping out of the routine, as much as I hate to admit it, got to me yet again.  And it’s not like I like my routine, I pretty much f*cking hate it, however it does give me some structure, something to hold on to, in the middle of my chaotic life. A demanding job from 7:30 to 3:30 is the last thing I wish for me, but I do have to admit that it’s the part of my day that puts my feet on the ground, most of the time everything else is just spinning around and I have absolutely no power to stop it.

Something different this time is that I don’t want it to get to me. Who knows… my little experiment of writing about it is surprisingly already helping me feel better.

Me, myself and I

3 in the morning.

Body: I need to pee. I need to pee NOW.

3:10 am, post-peeing.

Right hemisphere: Writy write write…writy write write.

Left hemisphere: But it’s almost 3 am and you have to get up early, if you start writing right now, you’ll be tired and sleepy in the morning.

RH: Don’t care. Writy write write, writy write write!

LH: Ok, we have to get up at 5:30 anyways, so I’ll get up, put on a pot of coffee, write for an hour, and I’ll just have an early start today.

Body: BTW, I’m hungry! Feed me now!

3:30 am, post-feeding.

LH: Ok, laptop’s all yours RH, go ahead.

3:40 am, post-minor writing.

Body: I’m sleeeepy! Let’s go back to sleep now!

LH: Sorry RH, we really have got to go back to bed.

4:30 am, post-minor sleeping.

Body: Can’t sleep anymore, think we should listen to RH!

LH: No way, I’m not gonna listen to you two irresponsible dumbasses anymore, we’re going back to sleep!

RH and Body: Not gonna happen dude!

LH: The hell it’s gonna happen, we’ll just lay here in bed until we get sleepy. We’re not writing any more!

5:30 am.

Body: I’m sooo tired, what a terrible night, let’s sleep until 6:00 just for today, pleeease!

LH: Ok, just this once, but we have to get up at 6 sharp and hurry up.

RH and B: Will do, promise!

6:37 am

LH: Damn it! I’m late, I’m super late! Can’t be late for work again!

——–

In the end, we made it, minus coffee or makeup that is. Let’s hope for a better understanding tonight!

Stray Bullet

I’ve managed to do it again. Self sabotage is apparently something I can never get enough of. I was supposed to meet my tutor today to show her my progress on the chapter I’m currently working in. The meeting was just an hour after I leave work so I had to run to get there…just to tell her I had left at home the above mentioned progress (not that it was anything to be proud of in the first place). At first I hoped it wouldn’t matter all that much since we had to get into the corrections I thought she was going to give me from the last chapter I handed in…but it turns out she’s only going to give me those after I hand everything in. So basically the meeting was pointless and I could see she was mad, and she had every reason to be so. Come to think about it, a lot of people have good reasons to be mad art me…including me.

I just don’t know what to do with myself… and all I feel like doing is listening to Manu Chao, maybe he can make things a little bit better tonight.

The lyrics on this song go more or less like this:

My life… little light with no candle

My blood from the wound

Don’t make me suffer anymore

My life…stray bullet

Through the highway

Slum puddle

I don’t want you to go

I don’t want you to move away

Every day a little more

My life…little light with no candle

My life…dark water puddle

Soap bubble

My last refuge

My last hope

I don’t want you to move further away each day

My life… little light with no candle

My blood from the wound

My life

Don’t make me suffer no more

Up against myself

So I skipped my job today. Second time this month. So much for my functional adult being in charge… After a huge fight last night, I simply didn’t wake up on time. So much for my 5 (I swear, 5) morning alarms…

The only thing worse than being absolutely pissed at someone is to be terribly pissed at yourself. And since I can’t scream to myself, I’ll try to make the most out of the unexpected time I have. I’ll work on the chapter that’s due on November, finish my lesson plan for next week, and if I manage to be in a better mood, maybe even read my Proust.

Right now there’s a big argument going on inside my head. There’s my nerdy self feeling like the world’s about to end over the fact that I’m probably a complete failure at my job and I should probably just quit it to stop pretending I’m not. On the other side of the ring there’s my cynical self thinking stuff like: they’ll probably just deduct this day from my paycheck and that’s it, the worse thing that could happen is me loosing my job, in which case I’d just have to find another one; but they won’t dismiss me ’cause, where are they going to find another not entirely sucky teacher in the middle of October? If I could only pick a side and stay there, but I guess that’s impossible when both sides of the argument come from within you…

This feeling of being torn into 2 completely different different personalities has been growing stronger since I consciously acknowledged it some weeks ago. It has become so obvious that I don’t know how could I not recognize it sooner. There’s one side of me that builds, prepares for the rainy days, exercises, reads, is a straight A student; this side is also the one that can’t take no for an answer, the one that obsesses, that prefers to be alone and avoids being in social situations as much as possible. The other side is a destroyer, it goes about tearing apart what the other side builds, the one that smokes and curses and hates exercising, the one that avoids doing what has to be done until the very last possible moment (wich means an absolute torture to the other side), and sometimes it’s even successful in its task of not meeting deadlines. But this is also the side that knows how to have fun, to relax, that’s funny, extroverted, lets things go and remembers to have a chocolate every now and then.

So it’s not as easy as having a dark and a bright side, it’s more like having two people with their own dark and bright spots fighting each other for survival inside a single body, a single brain, and a single identity. It’s like watching a tennis match and wanting both opponents to win… no matter what the result is, you know you won’t be satisfied.

In the meantime, I’ll set a sixth alarm for tomorrow.

The 24/7 torture

Being a teacher is hard, and there are a ton of things I hate about it (no, I’m not going to balance this sentence by adding next all of the wonderful things about it, I’m just to grumpy right now for that), one of them is the fact that half the work is done outside the classroom. This means that my full-time job is not finished after my work hours, for I have to spend a percentage of my “free time” planning. So, having a growingly reduced spare time for working on my thesis, I’m starting to think I might not make it through.

What’s worse is having to dedicate just this free hours to the single most important thing for me right now, and it’s a vicious cycle that never seems to end: I can’t work on it full time because I have to make money for my expenses, so I have to get a job, the mentioned job being so far away, I have to use a car, which needs maintenance, which costs money; I also need clothes for this, oh and groceries to prepare the lunch I’ll be taking, and a whole bunch of small expenses that just keep adding up.

After working 8 hours straight plus another couple wasted in traffic, the last thing I wanna do is sit dow and work on my thesis, though it’s usually the one thing that tortures me on a daily basis. Now another deadline is approaching, and the whole process feels like watching a snowball running downhill to get me, I guess this is just one of those days.