This has just been a dreadful 18-ish months. The biggest obvious thing of course, but smaller things - losing a few friends to various deadly things, losing a cousin. But also: the minister of my church leaving, replaced by an interim, now replaced by another guy who wants to do everything differently. University president leaving and while his replacement seems good, still, it was a change. Losing two colleagues to admin, and as a result, having added duties myself. Having a health scare in January that fortunately turned out to be nothing. And then of course, everything that everyone is experiencing "together"
(The only way we are in this "together" is like being in a public pool when someone urinates: there is no non-peeing section, just like in many restaurants, the "non-smoking section" was in name only.)
And I think my personality has shattered and collapsed. I saw a former student in the hall - I am pretty sure who it was from his eyes and hair - and greeted him and was immediately like "wait I used to be kind I guess?"
I feel like I am sorting through shards of who I used to be, and going, "do these two pieces fit together? Do THESE?" and I don't have any glue and I'm afraid some of them have got lost. And I feel like I've burned through all the goodwill/tolerance people had for me and I'm like "okay you absolutely need to stop whining now because everyone is Tired Of You"
Or, it's like that scene in "Inside Out," where the girl, after being moved across the country and losing literally everything she knew, even down to now being ridiculed in class, had all her "personality islands" start to collapse.
I've never experienced this degree of extended upheaval/discomfort/isolation in my life, and I don't know how to deal with it. And of course, my brain goes to either "what lesson am I to take from this" or "what did I do wrong, that I should be so punished for it" and neither of those are helpful? Maybe? The only lessons I'm getting is that I'm a tiresome person and that life is harder than I could have hoped. And as for lessons: well, Thou Shalt Not Whine may be one. Or "You're in this all alone, so just deal with it"
Maybe eventually I'll be able to put the pieces back together? I don't know. I don't know if there's enough of the old me left, and I feel like any new thing I tried to construct now would not be as good as what was destroyed.
2 comments:
I think all of this is heavy and hard and making us into different people. And hopefully, hopefully we can see each other when this is done.
I'm reminded of the "No smoking section" of an airplane. I was in the last row, row 23. The smoking section started with row 24. You'd think the smoke would know to stay in the smoking section. But NO!
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