I’ve become THAT girl.

I’ve become that creepy girl that sits at the back of the room rocking and chewing on her hair.

Yesterday I imploded in the middle of class. One minute I was in class listening to book report presentations, and the next minute I was sobbing uncontrollably and hastily running out of my class before too many people noticed what was going on.

I cried for the next 40 minutes. I cried so hard I gave myself the hiccups. I cried on the phone with the boy, and while he was nice about it, it was not exactly what he should have been doing at 7 pm on a Tuesday. I was a mess. This has been building for months, and it sure chose the worst time to come through. I’m not exactly good with my feelings and emotions. I like to keep things bottled up and pretend that things don’t bother me when they do. For the last few months I have been trying to juggle three jobs, school, homework, a social life and the boy, and my juggling skills have finally run out.

There is a reason that the program told us at the beginning to not be in relationships, to take a sabbatical from work, and to kiss our social lives goodbye. This program sucks the life out of you. It will consume you. The reading, the studying, the writing, the prepping for the qualifying exam, and then for my dissertation….it never ends. I expected it. I knew that I would be busy, I knew that it would be hard, but to be in the middle of it now while trying to juggle other things. While the program was slowly sucking the life out of me, I let myself fall into old habits. The sucky thing is, when I get into these bouts of depression, I tend to ruin relationships. I can already feel myself doing that. Without insurance though, I cannot afford to see a doc, and some of the affordable options have not been a good fit (I guess that is a good enough reason to sign up for insurance).

The problem is, I’m selfish. I may want to quit the program at this very moment, but I am not going to. I may want to quit one or two of my jobs, but I am not going to. The library pays my bills for the moment, I love working with the junior high kids, and the professor I work for is one of the nicest people I have ever met. She is also giving me the opportunity to publish, learn, and immerse myself in research. I should not go to SD and see the boy, or hang out with people for happy hour, but I am not going to give those up. I love my friends and family, and I love the boy the best way I know how, and I don’t want to let any of that go.

The problem is, instead of doing everything that I learned to do while I was in therapy in Scotland, I reverted. I don’t know how to keep that from happening. I don’t know how to reconcile what I know I need to do with what I am doing.

Luckily I have some amazing friends and family to help see me through. My BFF has been giving me just the kick in the pants I need (and enough daily reminders that I am not in fact a broken toy) to keep me from crawling too deep into the hole. I’m also getting to the gym and getting some weekly yoga classes that are helping me work off some of the tension, and I am really hoping that I can make a lasting change, rather than just a change I thought was lasting.

I hate admitting that I failed….well not failed, but suffered  a setback. I like to think of myself as strong and perfect, completely capable of taking care of myself, but I am slowly learning in my old age that that might not be the case.

….and that is completely okay.