Archive for the ‘All that college tuition has not gone to waste’ Category
How Not To Be A Romantic Poet
July 11th, 2009 | Author: Jessica
“Half mad . . . between metaphysics, mountains, lakes, love unextinguishable, thoughts unutterable, and the nightmare of my own delinquencies.”
It has been nearly a month since I have written. I have been paralyzed by my own navel gazing horror of my own inadequacies. The above quote is a long time favorite of mine – I might even consider it as an epitaph or as a good summing up of the last 24 years for my upcoming high school reunion. (My year is doing it a year early in a combo with the class above us as we were the first two grades starting the school. So I find myself desperately explaining to people that it hasn’t quite been 25 years, as if that one year at my advanced age made a huge difference).
Several things have happened. The first is that I nearly missed two deadlines for things for nursing school and learned quickly that they are not playing around and there are no grace periods. I received the bone chilling admonition from them that perhaps I am not nursing school material, which brought back flashbacks of years of school reports stating “Jessica is not working to her full potential.” I was a smart but disenfranchised high school student, somehow got into a great college, deferred for a year and then entered only to flunk out in a blaze of glory by being frozen by fear and simply not going. I was readmitted two years later and made it through, mainly by finding a major, professors and fellow students (I’m looking at you Jaime A.) that I loved. But there were always distractions – both my exciting life in the big city and my own self created drama and stress. At 27 I went off to graduate school in London and quickly burned out on the program and was instead distracted by lovely London and all it had to offer. I did meet my lovely husband and have one of the best years of my life, so it was worth the mountains of amortizing student loan debt. I still have nightmares after all these years of showing up to a class and facing an unexpected and mind rattling test (which happened to me again this spring bringing the whole thing full circle).
When I started the nursing school process two years ago I had to go back to school and take all the science classes I skipped in college and more. I had to take Algebra as I failed the placement test and it was required for chemistry – both subjects that have haunted me since high school. First semester I took 21 credits while working full time and made the Dean’s list. But as the process dragged on and my good friend and co-conspirator MS dropped out, I found it harder and harder. This spring, battling with the decision whether or not to go to school full time, I shoved all the paperwork in a drawer. Hence the nearly missed deadlines.
After that devastating wake up call, I have been terrified of missing deadlines and am running around getting things like immunizations and replacing my social security card. As I get ready to leave work I feel guilt and responsibility for all the unfinished work there is no way I will ever finish due to the workload and training my replacement. On top of everything the hospital announced a hiring freeze so for now any part time work is not possible. So the terror I felt before is magnified.
I used to think I was highly organized and together. Now I realize I am more like other people in my family than I thought – periods of procrastination and denial followed by mad bursts of manic energy and self flagellation. Added to that a deep strain of negativity and sarcasm that even my British husband finds too dark and you have a winning combination.
I used to think that if I was alive 200 years ago I would have loved to run with Byron, et al. – all that drinking, drugging, sex and inspired writing to justify it all. I realize that my other reactions to stress and conflict is to either retreat into a dream world of reading and daydreams or to indulge in potentially destructive or at least time wasting self indulgent behavior. But I can’t do that anymore. I am 42, have three (wonderful, beautiful, smart) children, a husband who is ill and in pain and most of all loves me more than I deserve. Looking back at the life of Byron most of all, I see that what he left besides great poetry was a lot of pain to those around him and a lot of wasted time and energy that could have created even more beautiful work.
Oh no, I might have finally grown up.
Swimming underwater….
June 9th, 2009 | Author: Jessica
And holding your breath.
When I was in high school, I used to take mental health days when things just got too much and I couldn’t deal with people or the world anymore. Not only did I go to a very rigorous high school, but there was all the attendant drama and strain of being me as a teenager. I would plead illness, usually stomach related as I have learned that no one will argue with you if you are vomiting, and spend the day at home, house to myself, reading and watching bad TV (and in the 80’s pre-cable it was pretty bad) and mooning around.
I had the strongest urge to do the same today. I am uncharacteristically exhausted, fighting a bad tooth that needs a root canal and a crown but has to be delayed as the dentist wants his pound of flesh upfront, and it is the last day that all three boys will be safely locked up at school. I have this fascinating new book which is like junk food for a hungry mind – “Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging” by Janice Dennison. I would like nothing more than to lay in the king size bed with the dogs (who would have to be lifted up), watch the Style Channel or CSI, and read, with an occasional throwing in of laundry as a nod to my domestic responsibilities.
I made the terrifying and major decision to go to nursing school full time and gave my 8 week notice last week. The thought of leaving my full time job caused me to hyperventilate and search for a paper bag (all I could find was plastic). Not only have I worked hard to get to this point, even taking Algebra and Chemistry, the bete noires of my youth, again and conquering them. The thought of staying in my job from which there is no promotion fills me with a greater dread. Another year of this and I would be putting my head in the (electric) oven.
It will make for interesting blog posts – going back to school at 42, the gothic and bloody possibilities of nursing education, and hopefully new inspiration for my cobweb laden mind.
The job announcement went up this afternoon. You know how you dump someone, and they start dating someone and you feel a twinge, even though you don’t want them back? I don’t want it, but I don’t want anyone else to have it either. A friend remarked that the only thing more wistful is training your replacement. I will be doing that and moving back into the unventilated closet where I spent the last 3 and a half years.
To beat the metaphor to death, reading the job posting was like reading your exes singles ad – unrecognizable and none of the bad aspects were mentioned. And what they are looking for – I don’t recognize myself at all. Oh. Probably for the best then – they need someone who is slavishly devoted, doesn’t have the yearn for something more and has no wandering eye.
In a real dark night of the soul
May 26th, 2009 | Author: Jessica
When I am blue like right now (or have a case of the mean reds) there are two writers I reach for, often simultaneously, their works worn and stained and dogeared with random bits of detritus stuck in as bookmarks: Bukowski (the poetry) and Fitzgerald (the short stories). On the surface the one thing they share is the love/hate relationship they have with alcohol. FSF is the romantic fatalist, the king of poetic obsession. Bukowski is much darker, his attitude toward women much more obscene and violent, but I always suspected it was the same longing and idealism, just turned inward, thwarted and bitter.
F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of my early and forever loves. In the Fitzgerald vs. Hemingway catfight I am always Team FSF. My dad taught me to love FSF, and in reading him I get the sense of my dad as a younger man, thrilled by the beauty of words and love. My relationship with him would take years of blogging and extended psychiatric counsel to unravel and analyze, but on books and music we can always find something to talk about. You have to admire a 67 year old who loves The Smiths first album (the only good one) and who goes to see The Pogues at 9:30 (staying up much later than his usual post-Law and Order re-run bedtime). We argue the superiority of The Great Gatsby (him) over Tender Is The Night (me). For a couple of years Jonathan Yardley (the critic) lived on our street and we dared each other to knock on his door and ask him to settle that dispute, as well as some (now forgotten) point of contention over For Esme, With Love and Squalor. This is to us as vital a debate as Sticky Fingers versus Exile on Main Street, or Blonde on Blonde versus Highway 61 Revisited. For Fathers Day I am getting him a Drive by Truckers cd and Yaz’s Greatest Hits.
My first Bukowski was given to me by Hannah’s dad, a copy of Factotum inscribed “to Jessica with great affection”. He knew it was something my angry 16 year old self needed and would understand. He also took us to our first sushi meal, made a salad of street treebox picked mixed greens, and made a feast at which course was composed of organs, which my gothic little heart loved. He also made us turn off the Rolling Stones when they came on the radio, saying they were satanic, which only increased their fascination value.
My affair with Bukowski was nurtured by the two chronic and unrepentant alcoholics I lived with from 18 to 20. They also taught me to love Black Sabbath, Celine, Artaud, and Camus. In between they would get insanely drunk and in fits of paranoia stockpile by hiding the liquor from each other. After more drinking they would forget they had hidden it and would accuse each other of stealing the alcohol and then in desperation make a run for more. Days or weeks later we would find a half empty 5th of Odessa Vodka behind some books, in a drawer, behind the unused china. The one time in two years I used the oven I nearly blew the place up: nestled lovingly underneath the racks was a plastic bottle of cheap gin.
I am still missing my copy of “Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame” lent to someone who never returned it (there is a select circle of hell for those people who steal books). I think as a belated birthday present to myself I will replace it and let it rest on its rightful place on the shelf next to The Collected Stories and This Side of Paradise, to be reached for again and again in a real or emotional three a.m. state.
