I haven’t written lately because school has ratcheted up the difficulty level and I’ve been drowning in homework, research, reading, writing, cursing, and drinking.  This past week I had midterms in both classes.  Up to this point, I’ve had some quizzes, but the vast majority of my grades have been papers and discussion posts.  I can write so those have been fairly easy for me.

And then.

Psychopharmacology.  Okay, I FOR SURE started studying too late.  Totally own that.  But I DID study (which is something I’m not prone to do).  I reviewed chapters and took notes and thought about it as I was driving to work and falling asleep and drilled my docs at work with questions.

Let’s be clear: (1) I don’t fail things.  Like EVER.  (2) I’m good at my job.  Neither of those facts were apparently communicated to the psychopharmacology gods because I have NEVER seen a test like this.  I quite literally missed the first ten questions, straight out of the gate.  And the questions!  Even if I had studied more, I never would have studied the things that test asked me.  So once I clicked “submit” and my automatic grade came through, I was in shock (but also not in shock since I had almost punched the computer screen during the test): 58%.  That is not only a big fat F, it is also 22% of my grade in this class.  It is suddenly very possible that I could fail this class.

After that debacle, and knowing I had another midterm to take the next day after work, I naturally sought out a Belvedere dirty martini on the rocks with bleu cheese olives.  Is that a good coping skill? Perhaps not, but it’s a tasty coping skill.  I think that I was still in shock and denial at that point.  58% was absolutely crazy; the idea that I could FAIL the class, surreal.

The last two days since then have been hard.  For whatever reason, that huge failure has brought with it a wave of grief from my past.  I’m missing my mom; I’m missing my sister; I’m having flashbacks to the shooting; I’m on the verge of tears constantly; I’m feeling crushed under the weight of my responsibilities: kids, career, school, house, bills, bills, bills; I’m wishing desperately for an escape.  And someone says to me, “You’re so strong to be able to work and go to school and be a parent.”

Let me let you in on a little secret: I AM NOT STRONG.  Geez, if you could be inside of my skull and witness the thoughts flying through my mind, you’d see the weakness and the fear.  There’s A LOT of it.  I am not “strong’’; I am stuck.  I have no choice.  I have two girls that depend on me to get shit done.  That doesn’t make me strong.  It possibly makes me stubborn (my ex will confirm this!!!), but that is not the same as strong.  I am weak and scared and so so so tired.  I want to give up, throw in the towel, call it a day—but I have student loans now & two girls watching every move I make.  That means there is no quitting.  That means I need to go until I can get a job to pay off these stupid loans and show my girls how to reach goals.  That is not strong; that is fear.

I say this because so often I feel like people don’t see me.  They see this idea of me, this image of me, this caricature of me.  I know I’m in part to blame because of my goofy demeanor—happy-go-lucky, joking, laughing.  My therapists have pointed out that juxtaposition for years.  Literally thirty years.  So maybe I should be more honest with where I’m at inside, but I also think that it’s not really anyone else’s responsibility to fix me or cheer me up or make me happy, so I keep these feelings close to the vest (well, except when I blog about them).

At the end of the day, life feels very hard right now.  And being optimistic and upbeat and happy and cheerful just feels like another monkey on my back.  Oh, I’ll keep wrangling the monkey.  I’ll keep putting on that mask; there is zero doubt about that.  I’m not sure how to ever “fix” that or even if I want to.  I generally like who I am, even when it feels like I’m drowning.  I’m also not quite sure why I continue to blog about such things.  Writing is therapeutic, to be sure, and always has been; but who cares what some poor, white, ex-cheerleader, psych nurse, grad student, mother of teens has to say?  I suppose I do it to connect to humanity.  To feel less alone.  To tap into some collective energy/life source/God.

At the end of the day, I’ll crawl into bed and crawl out again tomorrow.  Because I have to.