43/90, a hot mess

I have run out of time for writing. It gets backed up, like some verbal constipation, to the point where I miss the feeling of the pen's edge digging into my finger next to the cuticle or the smear of ink that forms on my left pinky–the mark of a southpaw.

I get anxious. I lock myself in my room, dig into assignments to get ahead or catch up and find myself waking up with a line of drool on my book at 11 p.m, when my roommates are just getting started.

Two years ago, a mentor was overly busy. I apologized for adding to her to-do list.  She responded simply. "We're all busy." It can't be helped. She didn't mean it as advice or as a caution; she just knew that her list of stresses mirrored mine and didn't need listed.

This hit me. I'd been using the people close to me to rattle off the things I needed done. I was disgusted with the fact that I had overbooked myself, then complained about it without looking at what that person did each day. I decided to stop listing my life to people.


People come to me, they always have, and explain their stresses, their busy schedules. I want to complain, to shout that I understand because I'm there too. I contain myself, try to mention my stresses only when they seem asked for, as a sort of commiseration or shared insanity.

That is not to say that my mother and fiancé don't still get the panic-stricken phone calls, when I feel the day's hourglass shifts its sand only to fall and shatter on the floor. That is not to say that at night, I don't break down and give Joe the litany of things I didn't do for the day.

That is not to say that I don't, at fewer and fewer times, commiserate and complain about not writing and not doing yoga. But there is a bit in this that I can't stand, and that is the response that feels so obligatory, so essential.

Just make time for yourself. Give yourself an hour a day.

Yes. I agree. That would be lovely, and I do look at students as close to I am to graduation that manage to go on cruises or to Mexico (crazy asses) for a week instead of going home to plan and re-write papers. I look and them and think, "How do they do it? When do they do school?"

I can't. I don't have time to give myself. The time I give myself is sleep, which if you've known my for more than two years (when my schedule used to be sleeping from 3 a.m. to 5:30 a.m.), you know that this was a big step. Now, there simply isn't anything else.

So there is no use complaining. There is no hour to sneak away–not if I want to graduate. There is no project to put off. I have been organizing a post for over a week. A post that talks about the horrible body image that comes from not giving myself 40 minutes a day for yoga or cardio, from not having time to make meals and eating trail mix or peanut butter for lunch each day.

I haven't had time to finish it, and in the fifteen minutes a day I get to blog, assuming the house is empty and my rabbit isn't chewing through a wire, I don't feel it anymore. I don't feel confident in the sentiment of the piece... that it will all be okay this summer, when I only have a job and wedding planning and personal reading and an essay to write. That I'll get back on track, maybe lose a few pounds, maybe get my yoga-tea-regime energy back.

For now, I have to accept that this is the big "Deep breath, now push," moment before I birth this diploma. I have to turn in my thesis today. I have to order my cap and gown today. I have to accept these things and the sacrifice of my yoga time, because there is no time.

I'm not asking for more, but I'm trying to accept that this is all I have. So when people tell me that they're behind or overwhelmed or over-class-worked or over school in general, I'm not sure what to say, because I know that they can't "make time for themselves" either.

I'm not sure where this post went. It was not a complaint, and it wasn't an acceptance either. I suppose it was just an attempt to explain that I am tired of ending my conversations with my fiancé in the same way–"Soon, it will be different." Because I'm wondering if it will be. I'm wondering when it will slow down, what I can fake or half-ass or break off with to make graduation not just be a time to start something else that blocks me out of my life.

There. 15 minutes of writing for the day. Still no pen in my hand, no thoughts on the paper, but we've moved somewhere.