And Then I Told You Why I'm Taking a Gap Year

I made the announcement online yesterday. It's "Facebook Official," so we all know there's no backing out now.

I haven't written much this year.

I haven't been well.

Part of the subtitle of my blog is "confessions," right? So here's my confession to you: I'm clinically depressed.  And I'm frustrated at myself. Because I feel like I have no right to be depressed. I'm privileged. I'm loved. I'm intelligent. I've got a lot going for me. 

But, this semester, it's gotten to a point where I feel entirely out of control.

I'm not eating well and have lost weight. I am still sleeping, fortunately--it's been my one constant escape. In fact, when the doctors have asked me if I'm having suicidal thoughts, I've told them no, but all I want to do is continually drug myself and sleep. Because when I start sinking into that blissful unconsciousness, I don't have to think. I can let the sleep make my mind a blank, at least for a little while. But, of course, you have to wake up sometime. And it's as painful coming out of unconsciousness as it is blissful sinking into it. 

I've stopped caring about things that used to matter to me. My school work. Organization. Cleanliness. Order. The dishes in a pile in my sink. The 18 page history research paper with the due date that kept looming. Learning my lines for the production I was in. Some days it was all I could do to swing my legs out of that bed and onto the floor.

Perhaps it's not so much that I haven't cared. Because I saw the dishes piling up and the approaching due date for my paper and I whimpered. But I haven't been able to bring myself to do anything. I've been paralyzed.

It's terrifying. Because I'm a rather articulate person who can sit here and write to you all my symptoms and tell you what's wrong and what's not getting done and what I should be doing and even the steps I need to take to get them done but I can't do them. It's distressing and terrifying and disorienting. Because this is so unlike me. The Type A, do-it-all, on-top-of-things, over-achiever. I don't know who this person is anymore. 

And that is why I'm taking a Gap Year.

To go home, rest, get well, get some help, and re-learn how to function.

I want to work a simple job that I don't have to think about after I clock out. Go home and curl up on the couch between my parents when they watch Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune in the evenings. Be able to go to family get-togethers and cookouts and birthday parties and visit my grandparents on sunny afternoons. Read dozens of books I've always wanted to read and put together puzzles and work on projects around the house. Dig my sewing machine out of its box and learn some new tricks and maybe make a few things. Hang out with friends over coffee and lunches and drinks. Learn how to cook and bake some new things. Wear pretty blue dresses and savor mom's pot roast after church on Sundays. Maybe start writing that novel to be finished someday when I've got just a little more life behind me. Maybe even get a jump-start on the MLitt thesis I hope to turn in, eventually. 

And maybe, just maybe, tackle some of the BIG QUESTIONS. When I feel up to it. But have some breathing room in which to do it. 

And the plan is, in a year, after some rest and regaining some stability, I'll come back and try to give the rest of my Master's degree a shot. 

Someone stronger than me might stick it out and get through it and be a better person for it. But this is me. And I'm small. And, lately, I feel just a little too fragile to get through the day. And I love and miss my family more than even the lump in my throat can testify, most days. What's right for one person isn't right for everyone. And whether or not it's "right," this is my decision. For now. None of us knows where our lives are going. We can only take the steps that we feel are best in this moment. That's the why. I'll be home soon.

After Months of Silence, I Express Frustration with my Mind.

I don't have the time or the energy to even begin writing about the conundrums that have been stretching my brain in a thousand different directions over the last few months. The conclusion I have come to is that no amount of education or preparation could possibly have amply equipped me for life in the real world. I've hardly been able to come up for air since I moved away from home at the end of the summer. First, life as a financially-strapped single grad student slapped me across the face. I went through the traumas of homesickness, questioning my decision to come to grad school, terrible living situations with a difficult roommate, the personal tragedy of having to give up my cat after a particularly nasty bout of fleas, and moving and transitioning to living alone for the first time in my life within the span of the first couple of months. And then, these past couple of months, I've been buffeted and plagued with enormous doubts and fears about God, a crisis of faith, the weight and impact of my choices, and the trajectory and purpose of my life, accompanied with a deep questioning of many things I have always taken for granted to be true. The result of all of it has been a little depression, a lot of anxiety, and no small amount of heartsickness.

Part of it is that, in the words of one of my favorite people in the world, I'm "too smart for my own good." And I think he's probably right. I keep thinking that, if I just had a simple mind, I would be so much more blissfully ignorant of pretty much everything that's caused me headaches and heartaches for the past several months. How nice it would be to be content to live a quiet life lacking the degree of intellectual curiosity I seem to be capable of and prone to. I want to go back to being five. When life and the world were so much simpler. And I felt surrounded by the safety and warmth a loving home provides. But. Alas. My brain and I and our gigantic questions are out here in this enormous, cold world now.

I felt premonitions of it before leaving college. I was scared to graduate. I had found a niche where I belonged and where I mattered. I felt safe. Occasionally challenged, but mostly on my own terms. I remember thinking about venturing outside of that safe, warm "bubble," as we called it, and shivering in preparation. I had no idea how right I'd be.

Part of it must be the cultural climate in which I exist. This article in The Atlantic, I think, is pretty spot on with regard to the cultural shift that's taking place in this country, and I'm feeling it just as acutely as the next person, if not more so. In fact, my life, in many respects, is a microcosm of the larger cultural picture. The metaphor in my head is of clinging desperately to the side of a ship being tossed on a stormy sea.

Here's the thing no one ever told me about venturing outside the bubble of the Christian subculture. You meet people. Wonderful people. You've been told to love them--sure. But there's no recipe for how to love anyone because every single person is different and every interaction you have is different. How do you do life in this world when you're an intellectually minded twenty-something with a deep, bleeding heart who's clinging to the belief that miracles happen and death has died? It's so much harder than I thought it would be.

Tell me, anyone over the age of 65, does your mind ever quiet down? Does it ever find rest?
I defer to Portia in Act I, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, with one small edit:

"By my troth, Nerissa, my little [mind] is aweary of this great world."