Saturday, July 24, 2010

Letter to my adviser, lack of motivation, guilt, loneliness

Hmm... It's been a while since I last wrote an entry here, but I've finally gotten around to it. Sound noble, magnanimous, and selfless? Unfortunately, no. The reason I'm writing is because I'm actually feeling rather low - as in the hollow, mid-afternoon low, not severe depression.

I've come back to the States, and so my life in France is officially over. No hard feelings about that, though. Maybe it just hasn't quite sunk in yet.
The reason for my blues is that I'm supposed to be writing a letter to my to-be adviser at college, based on "The Dew Breaker," a book we were meant to read this summer, which was to serve as a starting point to introducing ourselves, our interests, our academic goals, etc. Well, obviously I've read the book, and I've actually written out a fair amount of notes about it, but my perfectionist nature is interfering with me actually furthering my work on it. I've started composing, but I'm getting all obsessional, reading and rereading the different instructions they've published in various locations on the university website, in their e-mails, their letters, blah blah blah. And the frustrating thing is that each set of "instructions" for the letter is different. So, I feel rather uncertain about whether the letter should be a reaction to the book, an analysis to give us conceptual and philosophical material to discuss upon our meeting, or more of a quick critical analysis of an interesting aspect of the book before making a quick link to myself and expounding on who I am, and what I want to do.

Ugghhh, this is frustrating!

Oh well. The other annoying thing is that I view this as an important task at hand which I really HAVE to do, and it's causing me stress and guilt for not having yet accomplished it. I'm experiencing similar feelings to those I had in June, when I was meant to be revising for the BAC, but was feeling exhaustion and extreme lack of motivation, and thus ensuing guilt.

Part b of this is that, though this is summer, I feel I must accomplish this task, and cannot do anything else (read: anything pleasurable) until I've accomplished it. Sooooo, I'm sitting here, at the desk in my dim little attic room, suffering self-inflicted isolation and penitence, combined with temptation and deprivation. I just... feel lonely. Whenever I'm at work on my homework, my parents feel like I need to be left alone - or at least my mother does. I've told her, many times, that no, I do not need to be abandoned in a corner to slog away at the unpleasant task at hand. But she just doesn't seem to get it. In any case, it's times like this, when I have a lot of work, that I feel the most alone. My parents "leave me be," with a feeling of self-righteousness, as though they are accomplishing a difficult, heroic task, and I, in my solitary confine, find myself in an dark void, unsupported and unloved, with nothing to occupy my time with but unending toil.

To alleviate the solitude, I try to garner some sense of closeness to other human beings, and stretch out my soul on youtube, watching various people's vlogs, as they talk about themselves, their day, yada yada. It helps fill the emptiness. I also do research, on EDs, on college courses, etc, etc.

However, the downfall of the emptiness and this subsequent coping device is that I lose my time in what others would deem "procrastination." But it's not even procrastination! It's a feeble attempt to make myself feel less alone. Nevertheless, I spend much less time working on what I should be doing, and my feeling of lack of motivation and depression escalate until they reach dangerous levels.

But all the while, my parents blithely go through their day, lost in their own little world, as though I don't exist and they really don't care about me.

It's a horrific cycle, really, and I don't know what to do about it.

I think I'll try to go back to my letter to my adviser, now. I'm not even going to reread this, because I always cringe when I reread my writing, or the expression of my emotions. Sooo, sorry if there are any terrible typos or wonky sentences.
Ta ta for now!

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