Kroe: humble pie revisited

Is this the blogging hotline today or what????

I see that I have not been explicit enough in my final post (if I can't get my ideas across to Leasle, I don't have a chance with anyone else), so here's a new attempt:

It was Thursday, and I was having an ordinary late lunch break, when I received a text message from Leasle's mother. It contained more or less the same message other people were trying to get across in their own little ways. But this one... it got to me. Don't know why, but I got really, really sad - feeling utterly misunderstood and sorry for myself (it's not a charming attribute of mine, this knack for self-pity, but I guess I've got lots and lots of unquestionably charming traits to make up for it, so I don't really care). "How is it, that they don't see what it's doing to me? Missing deadline after deadline, starving myself, and they still want me, no, expect me to carry on????" This type of complaining chimed on in my head for the next two hours of work.

Then, I had another break, and fortunately it convened with Kurt's break as well. So we talked, and talked and talked. Told him about everything from my perspective, he told me of all his friends and acquaintances regretting their decisions to quit school at some premature stage or other. And that still didn't do it.

But like David, later that evening, and Cindy my therapist the day before, Kurt concluded his advice columnist stint with the request to make up my mind, take a decision, and be done with it.

On Friday, still reeling from the text message and the bloggy bickering, I decided to go to the university adminstration on my lunch break and finally make it official. But as I headed into Sint-Pietersnieuwsstraat (from Brabantdam onwards, mind you - i.e. closer to the offices than than the faculty buildings), I heard a distinct voice within (common sense?) telling me to go face my feelings at the English department, before I decided to run away from them forever.
I went, I saw, I did not quite conquer.

Obviously I was hoping to have my feelings of the previous weeks reinforced. Instead, I bumped into Julie on the threshold of the Rozier. Julie had started her university days back in the autumn of 2000 - that's right, we'd sit together for our Swedish pronunciation seminars and our English poetry classes. And now, there we were. The quiet girl turned into a confident academic, working on her PHD and several research projects for the English Linguistics Department. And there was same old, same old boisterous me - apparently brilliant & born for this line of study, yet distubringly shakey in the mental department.

To be sure, I'd seen Julie more or less regularly, over the past few months, so her success did not unduly shake me or make me envious or anything. It 's just that it made for an interesting contrast, seeing her, embodying "all it takes",as I was about to go tell those inside the building that I'd finally made my peace with the fact that I embody anything but.

Even more interesting was, that Julie was one of two people I'd explained my situation and my position to, face to face, and who'd immediately accept the validity of my sentiments & judgement.

We said our goodbyes, wished each other good luck, and I entered the building, predictably I suppose, welling up.

I cried my way across the hall-way, I cried my way to the English literature department even - a place I hadn't set foot in for over a year. I returned to the Linguistics department, reading the backs of the books - novels-, neatly stacked into the old old cupboards, as I had always done. Even when I wasn't a student yet, but 18 and very very eager, and every seemed so exciting and new.

So I cried some more (luckily there was no-one in sight), and I knew: I've loved this. This has been me. All of me I found acceptable at the time. It's clear that I can't allow myself to develop a fresh dependency on my studying identity, and the (lack of???) successes attached to it. But it's equally clear that I can't leave it all behind, either - not even for a year, or a full season, for that matter. I can't pretend I'm indifferent to it. I can't pretend I don't want it.

I want to complete whatever I need to complete. On my own terms, yes, and in my own time, to boot (Sara, if it means I have to do some more exams, bring it on - I always ace exams, even in my most horrific headcase days). But no longer accepting my own stupid & irrationally high standards.

I want to deliver. I want to hand something in. Not because I've seen the light and I think that having a master's is essntial. Anyone who knows me at all, knows that I laugh at money-issues (for those who might be reading this and don't know me: no, it's definitely not because I have money), so that's no valid argument for me either.

Why do I want it, then?

Simply because I love it. And it amounts to one more thing about me, I need to accept about myself.

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself/and what I assume.... " - cousin Walt

Axxx