This Morning

Hiding out in my big comfort fleece (mahoosive, pale blue, hood up) won’t make things go away and it’s the last thing that either of us need right now. I need to be out there, and strong, and coping with things doubly. But right now I’ve got mild gland-ache and I just can’t, OK? I’ll make it to my afternoon lecture, at least, and I’ll try and work here in the meantime.

(No, it’s OK, we haven’t broken up for any concerned onlookers.)

(And no, nothing has changed and I know that, but it feels like it has and, well, I just need some adjusting time, as do you I think, yes?)

Still At Home

I am ill. Not scary swine flu ill, but ill enough to feel pretty shit and not to have used the train ticket that I had booked for going up to Durham on Saturday. This sucks, although as lectures don’t start ’til Thursday and I was planning on avoiding all things Fresher-related anyway, I guess the timing could be worse.

My Dad is convinced that I have brought on the illness by anxiety, and as such the path to getting better is to leap out of bed, (wo)man up, and deal with it accordingly. I am yet trying to convince him that as much as there may possibly have been anxiety-related incidents involving crying and shaking and burying into duvets, a bug is a bug and the prospect of travelling again is even less inviting if I haven’t first got rid of it, which I can’t do by willpower alone. Grump. Parents. If he’s trying to persuade me that staying at home isn’t such a great option after all, he’s doing a bloody good job of it.

However the upside of one of the above incidents is that after yet another well-intentioned invitation to Talk About Things To Us, I am increasingly sure that I am going to take a gap year after university. Or a gap six months – whatever – because the wonderful freedom about leaving the educational system is that no longer will my life have to revolve around September starts and May exams. Maybe I’ll work, maybe I’ll travel, or maybe I’ll just stay at home and remember what bonfire smoke smells like in south Birmingham on November 5th, but what I will not do is refuse to give myself time and space to breathe. Maybe, just maybe, my ideal job will come up in the meantime and I’ll go straight to there.

But I won’t have to, because I will be free! I think that I need that light at the end of the tunnel.

The State Of Things

Hope

Today, I went to Meeting.*

This is significant for several reasons. The first of which is that I am home again for a bit. The second of which is that I was one of the last people to leave the building because I spent the better part of an hour catching up with all number of lovely people who I haven’t seen or spoken to in far too long. The third of which is that big happenings have been going in the British Quakers this week (as briefly elucidated by the news article here), and as has been said by nearly every Quaker I have come across in the past three days, I am proud to belong to a religious organisation which promotes such values and principles. I only wish wish wish that I could have made it to Britain Yearly Meeting in York to have been there, as many of my friends were, in the week long series of Meetings which led to that decision.

But the fourth reason, that has left me the most glowing and contented, is that for the first time in a long while, months and months, I really got something out of going. I guess it’s going to be the same with any type of religious worship, any activity even. You go through phases of enjoyment and involvement but those are often inevitably followed by down-times where you don’t have time, can’t be bothered, and just maybe don’t get as much out of it as you used to. That’s how I’ve been with Quakerism recently.

It’s been more than that, of course. The thing is with Quakerism is that there’s no safety net of a fixed structure, no safety net of a fixed creed or doctrine even, because that’s not what it’s about. At times I wish that I did have a strong, traditional belief in Jesus and God and heaven because when times are tough, it must be a very comforting thought that through that belief, things will be all right in the end no matter what. I don’t have that. It might be nice sometimes to turn up on a Sunday, a bit stressed and hassled maybe, and to be led through the familiar and comforting routine of hymn – sermon – hymn – reading – Eucharist – hymn, or however it goes in Churches without really having to engage every time. In Quaker Meetings you have to think for yourself. Of course that’s essentially one of the reasons why I like it, but it does leave you somewhat at the mercy of your brain – and it doesn’t take a genius to work out that that has presented significant problems for me in the past year. More recently and whilst being more stable, I’ve simply found myself spiritually cold and have found it very hard to ‘connect’ to Meetings.

But today was good. My thoughts wandered a bit, inevitably I got a bit distracted by the rather lively toddler during the first ten minutes, and it did help that there was quite a bit of ministry. And yet I came out feeling a lot fresher, as it were, than I have in a long while. It feels hopeful :-)

x

*Sorry, Flix! It just felt appropriate!

Reflection

Just a quick note to say that I got my results t’other day. After several incorrect mental calculations, I have finally swallowed my pride, used a calculator, and come out with an average of 60.5, or a borderline 2:1. Combined with last year’s marks, I now have a degree average of 69.9, or an infuriating 0.1% off a first.

I really don’t know how to feel about that. My head is telling me that I’ve done better that I can ever have hoped to have done, and that I owe one hell of a lot to one friend in particular, S, who has supported me through the year both in and out of lectures and has gone way beyond the call of friendship in doing so. He deserves every single percent of his own 96 average! I also know that on top of that I will have a good case for mitigation*, and hey, a 2:1 is perfectly respectable.

Despite all that, though, I’ve just been left feeling a bit numb. On a normal year I’d've missed the first – and be gutted. There’s still a nagging part of me that wonders just how much of it was due to the year and just how much I’d've done poorly anyway, and there’s the disappointment at the exam marks for a couple of modules in particular. 48 on Maths Teaching. 48! At least it was brought up to 69 by the coursework, but still…! On the plus side though that’s the first (and last) essay exam that I will have done since A-Level, so it may just be a question of live and learn.

I suppose that what I’m really terrified of is having a similar experience next year. I always said that if I didn’t come out with a first class degree then it wouldn’t be the end of the world – and yes, I do still firmly believe that. It’s just that if I don’t do as well as I might have wanted, I want it to be because the Maths was too hard and not because other shit got in the way. If that makes sense?

Year closed, eh?

x

*Although after a close friend’s recent experience, I wouldn’t trust mitigation to get me anything. I’m certainly not banking on it.

Internet Abuse

Facebook quizzes have already been commented on by Callan as to their sheer pointlessness. Well, yes. They can be quite entertaining, though, albeit briefly. I am #513: Friends (according to ‘Which XKCD comic are you?’), I should really be at Oxbridge (‘What university SHOULD you really go to?’ – oh, the irony), and I may or may not be a potato. All well, all harmless!

It came up on my news feed earlier that a friend had taken the ‘What Psychiatric Disorder do you have?’ quiz, and had come out with Generalised Anxiety Disorder. Her comment was, “Everyone seems to be getting this. Bit of a cop-out.” Well, presumably that’s because most people taking the quiz don’t have a Psychiatric Disorder, and most people experience some degree of restlessness or stress at some point. Hence the need for the word ‘generalised’.

I think possibly I’m just rather unreceptive to that sort of thing at the minute – since coming back to Durham a couple of weeks ago my moods have been up and down and down and up and a bit all over the place, with no cause more than the obvious. And yes, it’s a stupid Facebook quiz, and yes, it’s just meant to be a bit of fun, and really no, I hope that people will have enough common sense not to use that sort of thing for self-diagnosis. I just find it a bit tasteless, that’s all. What next, ‘What cancer do you have?’ ? Ooo, ovarian, my favourite.

Progress: 3

See Progress: 2. Only minus the Galois Theory because that happened this morning.

Only one exam down, and already I’m basically too tired to care. I should have been revising this afternoon for tomorrow’s exam. Instead, I… well, I haven’t been revising, put it that way. Sorry to inflict more exam-related gloom upon your feeds. I figured it was mildly preferable to doing so on Facebook, and, and… And just phmeh.

I reckon I passed this morning. I didn’t do well, but I should have 40%, so that’s the main thing. I think part of this apathy towards revision is that while I know that I don’t mean it in the long run (and certainly won’t mean it if I have to retake the year), there’s a tiny part of me that wants to fail, just to say “I told you so”. Hell, at least failing the year’s catagorisable. There’s a tick for your box.

Progress: 2

Outlook from this morning, North-East of England, fair to moderate:

DG:6

DS: 7

G: 7

GT: 6

NT: 3

MT: 8

Average: 37/6 = 6.16666. Rising slowly – sunny intervals.

x

Jenny’s most recent post reminded me that I have progress to report on another front. As of a bit over two weeks ago now, I have been taking 40mg a day of Citalopram and finally I can boast to mood levels which a bit more than ‘functional’. There are still days when I dip quite badly, there are still frequent patches of disabling anxiety, and I still have the concentration span of a gnat for the greater part of things. But all of these are getting lesser, gradually, and I really am hopeful that this is what’s going to work for me – more and more I am just starting to feel like ‘me’ again, which is nice! And y’know, everyone’s allowed a bit of third year exam stress, aren’t they?

Even better, I’m having counselling again. It’s with a new person as the woman I was seeing before still isn’t back from long-term sick leave. When I rang up the service to arrange things before the start of term, I surprised myself by asking to speak to someone female. I still to this day don’t quite know why, but to have them say “Yes, of course”, unquestioningly, was such a relief. Sometimes emotions just don’t rely on logic, I guess, and for once I don’t feel majorly inadequate for putting that into practice.

So yes. I hope I’m not speaking too soon, but long may the general trend continue :-)

Dear God

, if you’re out there at all. Or indeed in here, I’m not fussy, honestly, I’m not.

1. Please make my hip stop hurting constantly. You have no idea how painful it is, and if you could rid me for good of this stupid back problem at the same time that’d be awesome.
2. Any chance of some sun?
3. Or some proper emotion? This constant dull nothingness is getting kinda tedious, and it’d be nice to be able to interact properly with my housemates before we have to move out this summer.
4. Do you really have to keep allowing all these bad things happening to people I care about?
5. You’re omniscient, right… so you can explain Maths to me! Nothing more annoying than a smart-arse who sits there being smug and refusing to divulge, though I realise that I’ve probably been guilty of that myself on occasion before. I’m sorry. But I’m really really stuck at the minute, so pretty please? Just some clues.

Yours sincerely, Amen, and PleaseThankYou,

Lucy

Protestation

I don’t want to go back.

Please don’t make me go back.

I don’t want to go back to work, and stress, and panic, and a horrendous set of exams which I’m probably going fail most of anyway, and an essay deadline, and backache, and worse backache, and food shopping stress, and a messy kitchen, and other people being stressed, and being trapped in my room when I’m having a dip, and end of things sadness, and summertime sadness, and small place claustrophobia, and not having any nice bread ‘cos I won’t have time to get any, and pretentious people irritation, and mitigation forms, and having to leave our house, and not enough time, and finalist goodbyes, and no-one there to just talk to ‘cos they’ll all be working, and doctor’s appointments, and counselling appointments, and what do you do in a relationship during third-yr exams?

x

:-(