I meant to take an hour nap when I got home, get up, and go to mma tonight.

Instead I either turned my alarm off in my sleep or something, ended up sleeping for closer to two and a half hours, and missed mma.

And I had dreams about fanfiction and ducks dressed like templars.

Yeah, I don't get it either.


Also I have serious things I really need to write about, but.

I'm lazy right now.

For some reason I've been so fucking tired today.  I keep waking up and then going back to sleep and having weird-ass dreams (my most recent one basically was me not being drunk but feeling drunk and unable to do much of anything and I was getting thrown around a lot and it was weird).

I don't know if it is from working out or from just my general mood being in the fucking crapper but.  It is weird.  I feel weird.

Managed to get to the gym three days in a row, so that is good.  I just need to keep the momentum going.  Maybe make Wednesdays my rest day since I have so much other shit I'm doing then.  I just really fucking need to get into a routine again, or something.  I hate the way I look and stuff, so...yeah.  Gym.  Exercise.  Etc., etc.


Also I'm feeling down and worthless and stuff which makes me not want to work or do much of anything so I guess it was an accomplishment that I eventually dragged my ass to the gym.  And I was able to read Kings Rising, finally, so that was good too.

I just keep thinking about things.

My state of mind is really fucked up right now for obvious reasons and it is bleeding into other aspects of my life.

Example - I'm convincing myself that my friend no longer gives a shit about me since getting a girlfriend.  Never hangs out with me, never comes home, didn't even acknowledge me at the party I was at, or ask if I was alright after leaving after maybe 10 minutes.  After being away for six months because of breakdowns, he hasn't made any effort to try to hang out (except for one awkward lunch) with me without his gf and stuff.

But whatever.  It's fine.

I'm the platonic chick friend so I'm automatically kicked aside when romance comes along.

And people wonder why I isolate myself as much as I do.

It's safer.

A friend had his engagement party today.

I tried going but got emotional since I've been thinking about stuff all day.

So I left after like...what, ten minutes?  Something like that.

And another friend didn't even say hello to me or anything, but that's fine, I guess.

I'm feeling very drained right now.

I just found out that my cousin committed suicide.

I wasn't very close with her, but...

I just wish she hadn't felt so sad that she felt like this was her only option.

As someone who has been on that edge, I don't have to imagine how she felt...I just wish she had been happier.

She was always so kind...not very talkative, but always nice.

I still haven't received any sort of email back from the three professors I asked for help around a week ago, so I'm kind of on my own right now and kind of screwed.  In a weird way, though, I'm past the point of caring?  If I really cared as much as I once did, I would be freaking out a lot more than I currently am.  I can't bring myself to care right now about anything related to school, which kind of sucks because it is where I am right now and everything and I had been hoping that a semester off would have revitalized things but...no, they haven't. 

I can say this: I currently don't feel sad, like usual.  I just...don't feel much of anything most of the time.  Or rather...even that isn't exactly accurate.  I get angry at things, frustrated, even happy.  But these are fleeting, and when the time passes, I'm back into a state of nonchalance and...blankness, if that makes sense. 

Like...I feel so far removed from being happy that I don't know what that even means anymore.  

I know I'm still miserable, really.  I think the fact that I can't muster up the ability to care about anything I''m doing says that enough.  

More and more I become aware that academia isn't where I should be.  But do I struggle through the dissertation to get my degree?  Just focus on that and don't bother with any other papers? 

I've already said that I want to do something where I actually make an impact on people's lives, for the better.  

Some other things that I'm passionate about are dogs, women's rights, LGBTQ rights, fantasy fiction, fiction in general, math (pure math, not the statistics stuff I'm currently doing)...

Basically, I think my path is pointing towards more activism, somehow.  

Or being a writer. 

Maybe I can do both?  

I just don't know how longer I can stand the suffocation of academia.  

So instead of doing any work this weekend (despite that I need to have evidence for some serious shit by Wednesday), I cleaned the house while rewatching season 3 of atla and played a fuck ton of Rise of the Tomb Raider (which is so much fun omg).

Despite having a project that I'm interested in, I'm still not passionate enough to get myself actually doing it seriously.  Which kind of blows, but I guess that goes hand-in-hand with my disappointment and hatred of academia.

Oh, and I did email three professors asking a serious question and not one of them emailed me back so that's fun.  Thanks guys, I kind of don't know where to start in finding the data I need and need your help but sure, radio silence is cool too.


Tomorrow I should write down things that actually make me passionate.  I came to a conclusion recently that I think I want to do something that actually makes a difference in people's lives.  Like, I want to have an impact on people.  Even if just one-on-one.  I think I want something like that.  And I've been feeling more and more that academia is not that place.

Started playing Rise of the Tomb Raider and it is really fun so far!

Also went with a friend to lunch and then to arcade and then had some adventures at Walmart (including unsuccessfully looking for the unmasked Kylo Ren pop, sob).  Would have been nice if roommate B came, but he had meetings, and then of course I didn't see him at home because he never comes home anymore.

So my bill for Bing came in and basically said that I didn't get the full tuition scholarship that I had been getting, resulting in me owing them apparently over $2000.  And now I'm panicking because I can't afford that and I was under the impression I had the full scholarship since it was what I had always gotten and people told me before I went on leave that nothing would change and now I'm afraid they were lying to me and fuck.

why am I still here.

Instead of doing any work this weekend I spent it finishing the novelization of The Force Awakens and blazing through The Song of Achilles and my god it was fantastic and sad and wonderful.


I don't want to read academic stuff I just want to read fun things from now on.

But tomorrow I should get back to work, unfortunately.

I just had to dig a splinter out of my foot that was at least an inch long.

Don't know how that happened, really, but...interesting way to start today.


Apparently the admins at school are thinking about proposing a dog ban and I'm kind of freaking out about it.  Because I've brought Callie in - yes on some days where I just wanted her to come with me - but more for help if I was feeling super anxious or depressed or anything that day, and she helped me deal with that.  So now I'm thinking I need to get her classified as an emotional support dog, just so that I can bring her onto campus when I need her to be with me.


Also went to lunch with people yesterday and had a good time.  And back in my office and roommate B's girlfriend was being welcoming and nice and stuff.  I need to get to know her a bit more, but I shouldn't let my annoyance with his actions impact my judgment of her.

Sad today.

Mostly because my afternoon discussion section was garbage and because roommate B confirming that he's going to spend so much time at his gf's and despite that he said he'll make time to do stuff with me, I'm skeptical.

Maybe I'm just skeptical because I'm sad.

Or vice versa, I don't know.

I was also at school for around 10 hours today, so I'm super tired.

Cereal for dinner.

So at my session today, I was able to explain to Nancy some good that has happened over the past few days - my asking roommate M about some house-related things, and my professor in my advanced research seminar class being kind of awesome.

But also the bad, which has been kind of piling on.

First about roommate B and his girlfriend, and how I'm feeling very left out and whatnot, and again it was suggested that I speak with him about stuff, because he might not realize that he's been basically absent in my point of view and that I'm feeling this way.  It's just tricky with new relationship-type stuff.

And then, and maybe even more importantly since I've come into some new information, is the miserable state of our department at the moment.  There is so much high school bullshit happening that I don't even know where to start.  When a friend of mine - who has been basically ostracized within the department for what I now understand are dumb communication errors - starts crying upon seeing me, not only because I'm personally back, but also because she's just so relieved to have someone who is her friend and who won't make her feel unsafe...that's all sorts of fucked up.

I've been out of the loop when it comes to the drama within our department, but I was able to finally hear her side of a story and now I'm more aware of the miscommunication and the mob mentality which followed and how bullshit it is.  And it just...angers me and fuels my cynicism - we're supposed to be academics and yet we fall into the same dumb tropes as, say, the fucking Tea Party: we don't like what you're doing/don't like that you disagree with us, and we disapprove of whom you've chosen to become friends with, so fuck you and your children and your children's children.  Without listening to the other side.  It's even worse because we should know better.   

Between what has been going on within the grad students and what has gone on among the professors, I just have little faith in the department as a whole.  When will they all decide to turn on someone else?  For what reason?  I don't really trust a lot of the professors anymore, given some of the shady shit they've pulled - the ones I do trust I can't really work with as an Americanist, since they're basically all Comparative people.  And now I can't trust the grad students because of this mob mentality shit which has deeply hurt a friend of mine who dared to disagree with the majority (and even that is kind of up for debate, since again, miscommunication).

They all also accused her of something that she didn't do, and instead of asking her - like I did - they just continue assuming behind her back and I trust her to tell me the truth so if she told me she didn't then she fucking didn't and please stop this fucking witchhunt.  I wish I said something a month ago, but I didn't know what to do and I was stupidly afraid of speaking up (probably due to said mob mentality) even when I should have and that was me being a bad friend but I'm done with that now, after seeing how all of this has affected her.

I won't go on a white-knighting crusade, but I will at least try to speak up if I hear bullshit now.

And hopefully I can act as a shield for her, in some way.  Maybe just by being around, I can help her not feel so fucking helpless and alone.

I know what that is like (less due to bullying and more due to my own depression, but still), and I never want someone else - who is an awesome person who works hard and is super fucking nice and actually acts like the adult she is - to feel like that.

I actually was decently productive today!

This morning I cleaned out the entire kitchen, so it looks actually quite nice at the moment.  Did so while listening to Star Wars songs, which made it feel more epic than it actually was but hey...anything that gets me doing shit is always good.  Plus I've found that I don't like cleaning when other people are home?  I'm not entirely sure why, to be honest...I just feel tenser when there are others around and I'm trying to clean (more so for common spaces than my room).

But yeah, so that is good; I started in on the living room also but I kinda was all...mentally done cleaning by that point, so maybe I'll do that later on in the week.

(And then I told roommate M later when she got home that I really would like for it to stay that way, which includes putting things away, washing dishes within 24 hours of using them, wiping down countertops, etc., etc.  Luckily, she responded that if she didn't comply with any of my rules, I could feel free to yell at her, which I appreciated...it showed that she's willing to go along with the plans I set out.)

I read three articles (so far; might try to read another before bed), and while I would have liked to have read more, it's better than nothing.  I'm trying to bolster now my race and politics literature, and then for anything I want to do I want to take an intersectional race+gender approach, so I'm trying to look mostly at things like that.

I was also good in that I stayed in the living room rather than my bedroom today.  More work was done and I felt less trapped.

And I read a lot of The Force Awakens novelization!  It's good for me to continue reading for fun also, so I'm going to try and do that as much as possible.


Roommate B still hasn't come home at all which...I guess I shouldn't care but I've barely seen him since I've returned, and it kind of sucks when your best friend in the area seems to not care enough to see you as much once he finds a girlfriend.

Which is, I suppose, the story of my life.

So yesterday while I was still at my friend's, I texted best friend saying I was sad and being stupid as fuck and she called me, so I ran out with Callie, and proceeded to get hysterical and finally told her about my suicidal ideations acting up again.  And that my being around two couples as the fifth wheel is exhausting, and I'm reminded always of the ease to which I'm replaced and stuff.

She calmed me down and explained that I'm not replaceable (even though I doubt that greatly), and that others just have different priorities and that's not a value judgment on me or anything.

Still though, I hate being surrounded by couples, and I am surrounded by them.

And I don't know...I just feel like people probably had a better time last semester without me around bringing them down and being all depressed and stupid all the time.  I should probably just stay away from everyone.

I dunno.

I'll write more about this tomorrow.  It's late now.