All it took was a photograph.
It's been about a 50/50 proposition as to whether i would have a meltdown in the week before my qualifying exams. now i have the answer. YES!!! however, the very last thing i was expecting was that this meltdown would be caused by something as innocuous as a photograph.
it's a quite lovely photograph. the problem with this photograph is that I'M NOT IN IT!!!!!! there's my family--mom and dad, brother and sister-in-law, and my beautiful niece. along with my brother's in-laws. all of them. not only am i not in this picture but I'M THE ONLY ONE MISSING!!!!
it's actually amazing how inextricably linked this photograph and my exams are when i sit here and think about it. my exams are the reason that i'm missing from this photograph. this photograph is the reason for the meltdown the week before my exams. it's almost like trying to answer the question of which came first: the chicken or the egg. however, i keep telling myself that i'm not in this photograph because i made a conscious decision and all decisions have consequences. if i don't like the consequences of this decision then it's my own fault and no one else's.
i was in the elevator today with some of my fellow graduate students and they were asking me if i'd already started my exams to which i replied for about the 1000th time "no, i don't start till Monday". and to which the not surprising reply was "wow, you seem pretty calm". seriously, if i hear that again that might make me come unglued for a second time. because right at this moment, i'm about as far away from calm as i can get. you know those moments of stark terror i've been talking about? well i'm in one of them right now.
2 comments:
I was just about to tweet a "how you doing?" message...glad I checked in here first. LMK if you want to grab a cool refreshing beverage or some food tonight, like maybe Nick's pasta. We could talk about baseball, or football, or anything that isn't school even! Or not. Whatev.
did i ever tell you how calm you are?
no seriously, i know very well that feeling that these decisions of ours re: school have consequences that maybe we don't even realize but will certainly reverberate through our personal lives, and perhaps particularly our family lives. and i never underestimate the power of a photograph, especially the one you've described.
i can imagine that i would have had no less than the reaction you had. and i think it's right on par with what you should feel, even if the exams were not right around the corner. even if you were still taking classes, and the exams were a distant worry, you would have had the same reaction. because this is your life, and that is theirs. and it doesn't mean that you can't be a part of that world when you want/can, but it certainly means that the past is just that.
that probably helped a zero amount. sorry love.
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