crystal-clear

It’s April. It’s snowing. Actually, it’s slushing. Disgusting. It’s a disgusting morning. I woke up 20 minutes later than I wanted to, the morning after my mid-semester meltdown, and jumped into my filthy, paper-and-cafe-apron-strewn car with wet hair, burning sinuses, and a distinct sense that I was holding my psyche together by sheer force of will. Drove straight to the English department building, slopped through the slush trying to protect my 9-page, single-spaced portfolio draft, and gathered myself in the women’s restroom. Yellow cement block. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The comparison kind of works.

My professor’s minuscule office is hung with what look like tapestries. He’s a Gothic Lit specialist. The room was warm and comforting. He knows my name; I knew I didn’t need to ask before I sank into the faded orange plush office chair. He asked me how I was, and he meant it. He always means it. He’s middle-aged, sensitive, theatrical, and everyone desperately wants him to be their uncle. I told him the previous day hadn’t been the greatest.

“Before we get to the paper,” he said, “can I help you with any of that stuff?”

I told him that my stress had culminated, that I had cried, and he said, “Good! You need to.”

He may have used the phrase “purge the poison,” which oddly enough, is something Ibsen, the subject of my paper, thought about. The story goes that while writing the play that I am analyzing, he kept a scorpion in a jar on his desk that would get agitated until he threw a piece of fruit inside the glass. The scorpion would attack the fruit, releasing its poison, and return to a more docile state. Stress is a toxin that must be expelled. I encounter difficulty when I try to think about emotional release as a necessary part of mental health. But I almost broke down again when Dr. Tapestries told me I needed to let myself cry. He freed me by releasing me from the expectation of having it all together. We can free each other, no matter the nature of our relationships. My professor is not my uncle; I didn’t know him two years ago; he knows my name but not much else. And yet he freed me. We build monstrous castles of stress with the bricks of other people’s expectations. Sometimes we need someone else to knock them down.

Graduate school has ruined and saved me. Adulthood is still ruining me; I have yet to find out if I can survive it. I have never known so much disquiet and anxiety. People disappoint me daily. I disappoint myself daily. The world is horrible, horrible, and beautiful. I can’t really see the beauty right now, but I believe it will shine out again.

What profit has a man from all his labor in which he toils under the sun? One generation passes away, and another generation comes; but the earth abides forever.

That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.