Who am I now?

The above heading is actually the title of a Kurt Vonnegut story, which is in Welcome to the Monkey House. Actually this posting takes it's inspiration from one of today's metafilter posts-WHO were you on Sept 11?

Well I think we all know who I was. I was a girl who thought she was very lucky to be so happy. I thought that everything was just beginning to go right. I thought I had everything ahead of me. I was just starting on a new job, by the end of the year my boyfriend would be living with me, or so I thought, and it seemed like everything was going to be better and brighter and more fun. I was scared, but in a good giddy kind of way. Conversely I wasn't really worried about my health or depression. In fact I was thinking, for the first time in five years, of terminating therapy. I had lots of friends. I went out all the time. I had someone to read to in bed. I looked forward to going home as there was someone waiting there. I felt like I had grown up, like I had finally done what I set out to do I had arrived, I had succeeded or at least begun to. I felt great.

Now I'm miserable a vast majority of the time. Often I can't sleep at all ( I could sleep with Eric, it was the only time in my life I consistently slept well). I have no boyfriend, my job that I worked so hard for-that I was so proud to have-is a dead end. Often I look around my apartment digusted by myself. I worry about who will take care of me when my disability decides to strike again. I worry about what will happen when walking gets too difficult, when going to grocery store and getting my own prescriptions will be too much for me ( like when I was 12 and was in a wheelchair of 6 weeks). I worry about losing all my money and living out of a paper bag. I'm much heavier now and as a result I'm depressed about my weight. I worry and fear the future instead of looking forward to it. I'm more isolated than I was then. I spend a lot more time online and a lot less time working on my classes. Most of the time I feel that what I do has absolutely no impact on my students. I cry almost every day. I got that giddy feeling in my stomach maybe four or five times in the last two years, but only very briefly. I dread going home as I have nothing to go home to. I used to see such beauty in people, take such joy in stupid things. A little boy on the bus asking his nanny when the first school bus was invented, my favorite teacher telling me to come in to her office and have vanilla wafers with her, a little girl with pigtails on the top of her head like horns. Now every day I hate people a little bit more. I lose hope a little bit more. I'm tired and depressed and I'm tired of being tired and depressed. I'm still in therapy, although I switched therapists.

So that's how I've changed. Nothing about keeping rations in my desk or worrying about the subway. Nope, it's far far worse.

Welcome to the New World Order

HOWEVER having said that- I have decided to come up with a list of things and I am going to do them. Now many of them are not short term goals. They are things that will take a while, but if I pull it off, things will have to get better. At least I'll know I accomplished these things ( not listed in order of importance):

get a PhD ( in english-most likely)
go to Italy
go to France
go back to England
go back to Scotland
go to New Orleans
go to Mexico for Spring Break
go to the Cloisters ( in NYC)
go to the Bronx Zoo
make a bunny shaped piggy bank
go to the next silent party no matter what
take a ceramics class
take a photography class
get this site uploaded to its new home and redo the template
finish writing the story "Research"
edit my old work
spend more time out doing different stuff ( suggestions?)

that's about it for right now-not a bad list though