People keep asking me what I'm doing once I graduate. I tell them that first all, I'm not even sure if I'm gonna pass my classes at this rate. And if I do graduate, I'll either start selling drugs or become a buddhist monk. At this point, anything is possible. (I won't actually sell drugs, chill mom).
It's hard to make plans for the rest of your life when you can't even remember to take out the trash. I can hardly focus on anything lately. I'll sit down to do work and my mind starts to wander immediately. I daydream about all of the places I'd like to go and all of the music I would like to play. I think about my dream house, my dream family, my dream job, my dream husband... I know that being this wistful is fucking impractical but I can't help it.
I want to be a cellist more than anything, but I've been in pain for two years now. I've pushed through it all this time, but it gets harder and harder. I see all my friends improving more rapidly than I do because they have fewer physical limitations. It's hard to not feel angry. I've been so angry with the people who misdiagnosed and mistreated me- the doctor who shot me up with cortisone and prescribed pills that seriously screwed up my stomach, the physical therapist who encouraged me to come to physical therapy for 5 months (not cheap) while actually making things worse, the teachers who told me to just suck it up and keep playing while I was in pain... But there are also people who have helped me. I'm starting to realize that most people want to help, they just don't always know how. Or they don't have the time. It sucks, but it doesn't make them bad people. I've also become more aware of just how many people have to deal with some kind of pain every day, often much much worse than what I have. It makes me much more empathetic towards everybody. You just never know what somebody is going through, and it's not always on the surface. People can be good at hiding pain when it doesn't go away, and I've slowly become one of those people.
There is a chance that this will be a problem the rest of my life and seriously limit my career, but I'm trying to not feel so angry about it any more. The universe is cruel and chaotic, and it doesn't owe me anything. I wish I could believe that God had some kind of plan for me, and that this was his way of sending some kind of message. Maybe in a dream, he would come to me and say, "Cecilia- You need to leave all this behind and become a zoologist. That is your true calling." And I would say, "Thanks for letting me know! I'll get started on that tomorrow." That would make all of this more easy. Instead, I'm left figuring it out for myself.
But not everything is bad.
Monday, February 20, 2012
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