Illusions

I’m so deathly afraid of making the wrong decisions that, sometimes, I freeze and end up doing nothing. I’m the type of person who will think something — however little it may be — over and over just to avoid making a mistake. Because mistakes can be costly, and you never really know the full extent of the damages. In my particular case, a wrong decision on my part will cause my mother so much distress that she won’t sleep or eat for days.

The last thing I need at the moment is to worry about my mother, and yet I do — tremendously. There are few things worse for an only child than to be away from her elderly, widowed mother. I won’t lie, it’s difficult; and while I absolutely love and treasure the relationship I have with her, while I really do enjoy caring for the littlest things, I really dislike having such a heavy heart at my age. I dislike having to make so many hit-or-miss decisions when so many of my peers can certainly afford to fuck up a little.

But I do pride myself on having responsibilities that go beyond the scope of my own little life, which includes shit like school, romance (or lack thereof), health, etc. Things that concern me and me only. I do pride myself on having my feet so firmly planted into the ground that I might as well be a tree.

God knows how many social events I’ve blown off to be home with my mom. People don’t understand, though, and that’s okay. What I wish some people would never say again is, “You know, you can’t be with her forever.”

Yes. I know. That’s precisely why I choose to spend time with her now. Idiot.

When most people my age worry about their personnal relationships and how to keep them intact or develop them further, I feel pretty comfortable about where I stand at the moment. I always had this idea of what being a graduate student would be like. Every time I learned that someone was a grad student, I could imagine them in their own apartment, carrying tons of books around, working in some kind of graduate student lounge, or being at a dinner with their peers somewhere.

It’s funny how I don’t see myself doing any of these things.

My program is so tiny, and my department so poorly structured (or so it appears), that I don’t feel like I have any peers. Seriously. Where are all the grad students? Where can I get work done without a swarm of undergrads surrounding me, their voices screeching about how cute they look and how tan they are? My graduate-level classes even meet with undergraduate classes. And guess what? I’m the only grad student in them!

Jesus fucking Christ.

More and more I feel like I’m not a real, legit grad student. That’s what it says on paper, but that’s certainly not what it feels like. Because I think I know what it feels like. I know what it feels like. And it doesn’t feel like this.

Everything’s still up in the air: my loan money hasn’t come through; I haven’t received my insurance cards; I haven’t found an apartment. I haven’t been here a week and I’ve already tried several times to not just sink into depression, every time picking myself up just enough to get going again.

I feel so detached. From everything.