More of the latest

Off to the right hand of the screen you may notice a new page element. To be honest, I kind of feel like a douche for creating it in the first place and, as such, don't know if I'm going to keep it... But yes.

For those who've followed my blog/life for a while, you probably know that I had to drop out of school when I lost the battle with FAFSA and AU financial aid. Both sources explained that because I still have occasional communication with my family, they cannot prove or believe that I don't still get money from them and, therefore, refuse to acknowledge me as a financially independant student.

End result? Your tuition is due. Pay or drop out by...TOMORROW. (True story. I had twenty-six hours notice to pack up and evacuate.)

I've long wanted to start some sort of personal fund raiser, but, again, I feel really douche-y doing it. I know that people can respond in absolutely incredible ways when there is a need... I don't know. I guess maybe I'll stop before more desperation is revealed. I hope that somehow, eventually, something will work out and I can go back to school. Maybe this (and you guys!) will be able to help.

A more thought-out continuation

Well, I don't know how to directly link MP3s into this thing, nor can I find an actual music video for this song, but I want to put it in so...here is. It's just the song with a boring backdrop that never changes, but the point is that the song is there and in good quality (unlike most of the videos, which are cell phone video recordings of live performances).



The song is called 'Swing Life Away' and always manages to make me feel a little better. Granted, I'm still feeling quite shitty about the money situation, but despite how romanticized the song is it's still a reminder that Crystal and I aren't the only people in a really bad way who nevertheless manage to get by.

In fact, it got me thinking about pretty much all my close friends who've ever been eating disordered or major depressive or just plain crazy... One of the biggest consequences that never gets mentioned publicly is DEBT. All of us seem to be in major sort of debt. More than half have been forced to drop out of college. We've all got incredible hospital bills looming over us, nutritionists, therapists, psychiatrists, medications, ER bills and surgeries.

Continuing briefly on that last comment: yes, surgeries. I have no doubt that, in some way, my poor physical health contributed to me needing my shoulder surgery when I did. I've had joint problems for some time which I have no doubt are resultant from malnutrition taking a toll. Many other girls have nasogastric tubes to pay for, surgery to correct gastroparesis or perforated esophaguses. Surgery and eating disorders have a pretty damn high correlation from what I've seen. I mean, lets be honest.

Eating disorders don't just f-k with your head: they destroy your health. They suppress your immune system leading to a higher instance of other illnesses (i.e. chronic mononucleosis, in my case), brittle bones and osteoporosis, weakened muscular system, damaged tendons and ligaments, liver and kidney problems, tooth decay, on and on. These are all the quiet consequences no one notices until the systems start to break down, and then don't realize that they are, in fact, due to the eating disorder.

Sooo... I'm in a lot of debt. But I'm also not the only one. Maybe I just complain more, and more publicly? Who knows... Today I'm calling AES and the independent lender and working out payment plans, as well as sending off the first small check to start repaying my hospital bill.

I keep trying to remind myself that yes, I've got a lot of people to repay, but I'm only twenty years old. (Did you know that?) I may feel like I'm fifty, but in reality my parents aren't even quite that old. I've got a long time left, hopefully, and if by some freak accident I did kick the bucket then I wouldnt' have to worry about those debts anymore, anyway. Even if it took me ten years to repay these I'd be free by the time I'm thirty.

That's really not so bad in the grand scheme of things...

Right?

A departure into the semi-philosophical

I'm not sure what to do with my life. As of your Sophomore year of college you're supposed to havea pretty good idea where you're going in your studies and career pursuits, which I thought I did. Then the gods and godesses or perhaps just the Nameless Malicious Forces That Be decided once more to give me special attention and mess with me just for the hell of it. Now that I'm in recovery mode, I'm not so sure I want to try to get back on and continue in the direction I was headed.

I hate college. Really, I do. Classes almost invariably feel like a waste of time as dozens of braindead students lock themselves before the flapping mouths of their professors, ingesting the material only to spit it back out on command. There is one acceptable way to learn, one acceptable truth to memorize. College does not accomodate diversionary thinking. Hell, learning is its own flunking religion in this way: one path, one way to believe, blind memorization and acceptance of pre-established theories. The only difference is whether one accepts reason or spirituality as the ultimate guiding force.

The worst part of college study is the grading system. That's what locks students into the right way, wrong way thinking, since if you don't answer with the material desired or the manner proscribed, it's unacceptable. You're forced to abandon independent thought for the sake of impressive grades.

It's a big part of why I was such an awful student, to be honest... I'm afraid I'm rather an impossible person if you want to force me to conform. Damn the chains of religion and the educational system! I shall break them with my wildly rebellious, nonconformist self! (Haha.) I got into more than one quite literal verbal battle with my teachers, even in the midst of their lectures. (Anyone remember my child psychology professor? Or the time we had a guest speaker in my Deprivation of Liberty course?) If I disagreed with the material and the answer I was supposed to supply on the test, I would put my own answer. Sometimes even a snarky comment about how the right answer would be x but here's why I think it's incorrect or incomplete.

Don't get me wrong, though. I adore studying. It's the college system that I reject. For the reason of curriculum I loved studying at a university! It provided me with the resources, direction, and motivation to keep learning. I do a lot of this on my own, true, but not as intensively. I flourished in the college environment and delighted in the abundant resources. I loved being able to approach certain teachers outside the class environment with my thoughts, opinions, questions, conflicts. (Notable awesomes: Professor Reichler, to whom I'll forever be indebted, Professor Mastrangelo, Professor Middents, and Dr Gillespie who actually managed to get me to appreciate the value of literary interpretation as well as authorship.) If I could stay in that scholarly environment forever, all expenses paid, I'd probably do it.

....Where am I going. Jeez. Okay.

I love learning, education, scholarly pursuit. I hate college for its pointless busy work (COUGH, PROFESSOR FREAKING THOMAS, COUGH) and narrow-mindedness (GOD I HATE YOU PROFESSOR THOMAS. I don't know what I want to do with my life.

I'm actually happier right now in my menial job as a cashier and baker at the Cheesecake Factory than I was pursuing a career in psychology. I like a job which doesn't over-tax me and allows me time to think, write, read, and pursue learning on my own. I like to have a job in which I have fun. I seriously don't think I'd be happy as something important, a psychologist or doctor or researcher.

Then the problem comes in. Do I seriously want to keep working these unimportant, going nowhere jobs just because I enjoy them? Do I want to let myself be a nobody forever?

Or... Will keeping these pay-the-bills jobs give me time to become someone on my own? Will I have the dilligence and talent it takes to make it out there, do something, go somewhere without the rigidity of college?

I know that I want to write. Every experience feels like, and is, just a new way to gather material. But am I ever going to USE it? The only thing I ever write is this damn blog. I don't have a growing collection of MS Word documents, unfinished or even barely begun novels, nothing to show for all the things I say I mean to write. For that matter, I can't even think up any plot ideas. The only crap I can think to write about is my own life. Blah blah blah, whine whine whine.

SIGH. So that's my dilemma. College, grad school, doctorate and career or random jobs and endless blog entries?

Crap. Again.

Sadly, I had a post all prepared in my head but events conspired (as they so often do) to overthrow all those planned out anythings in my life. It was all a normal, routine day (well...ish, considering I'm at my parents' house instead of home). I was down in the city running errands, going to a checkup with the orthopaedist, then on the way back wanted to swing by the old apartment since apparently the people at AU are worthless and have been forwarding all my mail there.

Mail in hand, headed to the bus stop. Waiting at the bus stop, opened the mail. According to a letter received from AES, since I dropped out of school my loan payments start March 1st 2007 instead of five years after graduation. ...WEPDIGAJPAJG?!?@!

Okay, please, help me with the logic here. Loan company refuses to give student loans, forcing student to drop out of college. Loan company then comes sharking after student to repay old loans. They're expecting me to pay with what, exactly? (Blood?) The whole reason I have to drop out in the first place is because those a-holes refused to give me any financial assistance this year and, as such, I can't afford school!!! If I can't afford it now, how am I expected to afford the loans I wasn't supposed to have to worry about until 2014???

It always happens like this. Whenever I'm starting to feel somewhat okay about things, think they're on the incline, another shitbomb falls into my lap. I say it every time: there is someone up there who refuses to see me happy. (Family, don't start. If you're going to say this is god's loving way of pulling me back by making me desperate you can think again. Since god is sovereign over events, all this is his fault in the first place and he'd better stop causing new and improved crap if he wants me to grovel.) Is my life just some sort of f-d up Dick and Jane parable about good behavior?

Over and over I hear people tell me what an enouragement I am, how they are inspired by my story and my strength to keep fighting. Well you know what? EAT ME!!! I need HELP right now, not empty words, and obviously whatever 'strength' people think I have counts for diddly squat when a person actually needs to survive.

I spend my days fighting for air from the moment I wake up, battling and kicking and screaming and demanding my right to live and have a life, and it's never enough. I get trampled, discriminated against, shoved through cracks in policy outlines, mummified in red tape, ignored when I plead for help and hounded when I have nothing left to give. I can't afford a car without working and I can't get to work without a car. I've made t'shirts and just want to give them away and talk to every girl who wants one, to get the message out, and I can't even afford postage unless I receive money. I spend hours writing letters and Christmas cards and e-mails to people I care about, even if they don't know who I am. I walk around all day looking at the world through a writerly screen, searching for things that matter and things that don't. Turning every life event, store manequin, weird commercial into a blog entry in my head, something that might make people laugh or think or feel.

At this point I don't even see the point in school. The bureaucratic torture chamber has driven me mad, I can't see how the education, no matter how beautiful, is worth it. I'll teach myself on my own as I have since grade school. I'd probably get a better education that way. But I wouldn't have a f-ing piece of paper certifying I'd done the study and graduated from the university and so I'd get automatically fed minimum wage.

Bridges are looking mighty damn better than the alternatives right now. Just when I'd finally gotten thinking that maybe I really DO want to stick around.