a very long rant exposing all my insecurities

This has been a very bad week.

It started out bright and early Monday morning with a rejection call for a summer job I interviewed for on Friday.  I spent the rest of the day reeling...I had thought the interview went well, and I felt very well qualified, maybe even over-qualified.  So it was humbling to say the least to get turned down.  And it reminded me that in just two short months I may be jobless...  that scares me more than I care to admit.  The fear of failure is almost crippling.  I have a degree that is almost worthless, and I'm headed into a bad job market to make things even worse.

But I was reminded of my need to trust God for my future.  I had calmed down a little by last night, ready to take on a new day.

Today was probably worse.  Well, it wasn't exactly worse until about 30 minutes ago.

It started out when I realized I needed to schedule my defense ASAP because the grad school needs to know two weeks in advance when I'm going to defend and the date for final turn-in of my thesis is two and a half weeks from now.  Complicating matters is the fact that my advisor has medical issues and has not been in the office or responding to emails for a week now.  So I called him to try to figure some things out, and he was clearly not doing well... and so the conversation didn't go very long and I didn't really find anything out - he just told me to talk to the dept chair.

So I scheduled the defense.  I even called him back but he wasn't able to talk to me, so I wasn't able to ask him if the defense date worked for him.  I just had to go by his class schedule and hope for the best.  So I thought it was all figured out.

Wrong.

I just got an email from him saying he's going to be in Seattle that day for a doctor appointment.

I don't even know what to do now.  I desperately want him to be on my committee - he is the only one who has even seen my thesis before, and I'm terrified of what will happen to my grade if suddenly someone else is my chair in the bottom of the 9th inning.

And that is added to the pressure I feel over the thesis in general.  So much is riding on it, and I pretty much know it's going to get me a mediocre grade, and I want so badly for that not to be the case.  I don't think people at school (professors or students) know how much doing well here means to me.  My future hinges on my grade on this thesis, and it's just too much pressure.  As I look to my future, I see retail, or waitressing, or something equally terrible.  That scares me, because I have put so much time and effort into an education (six years now) and it might amount to a pile of nothing.  I want a PhD in history so badly, but I don't even let people know how much that would mean to me, because I'm terrified I'm not good enough.

Failure looms, and I don't know how to deal with it.  Everyone around me finds success, and I don't have the personality or the skills or the intelligence to find success.  I'm far from home, and in two months I am going to have to find a job without the safety net of family, friends, and acquaintances...without connections. I'm scared.

nerdy tears

Today I handed in my thesis, so tonight I begin to realize just how close I am to having my masters' degree.  And although I'm happy, mostly I'm just filled with a sweet sadness.  Beyond all the uncertainty that the future holds in regard to jobs, beyond the excitement for a new adventure and starting to pay off my student loans, I am mainly realizing how much I will miss this whole school thing.  Sure, sometimes it is stressful.  But that's how life is, I think.  I will miss this life so much.

There's little worse than not being taken seriously.  Sometimes it feels like it is doubly hard for me to be taken seriously, although for different reasons in different contexts.  Most of the time it's just me feeling inferior or out of place.

This weekend was such a good example of that.  I was staying in a ridiculously nice hotel where I felt constantly under-dressed.  I don't really have the correct professional clothing, I don't possess the cultural skills that are necessary to thrive in the nicest hotel in the city.  I am constantly reminded of my farmer girl status.  I love that part of me, but sometimes it makes it hard to cope with the "big city" or "high society."

I also feel inferior because of my relationship status.  Sometimes it stinks to be the "single college student."  I'm stuck in "kid" mode.  People view me like a grown up kid, sometimes.  It is only exacerbated by the fact that I don't really date all that much.  (technically speaking, not really at all)  I constantly feel this wide gulf of experience and outlook that separates me from those around me.

But I wouldn't change it for the world.  I love being a simple farm girl from South Dakota who is almost 25 and has never been in a serious relationship.  It's who I am, and the world can just deal with it.  I'm naive and inexperienced, and I don't quite fit in in the "big city" yet.  But I'm an adult, and I only wished to be given the opportunity to be seen as an equal.

time

Time flies by with a speed that is utterly frightening and totally unrelenting.  Just two months from now I will be done with school and on my way home for my sister's wedding.  I may be flying home, in which case I will return here after the wedding.

Or, I might have a job in Georgia.  Or Massachusetts.  Or Virginia.  Or somewhere else crazily foreign to me.  I may be driving away from this state forever two months from today.

I'm so excited.  I'm ready for a new adventure.

But my heart hurts, too.  I truly love this town and the people who have made it some of the best years of my life.  I love the mountains, I love the water.  I love the rain, and I love the buildings.  I love the culture, and I love the ways I have stretched and grown through my time here.

And I'll miss it, I know.  I'll miss it with a deep, lasting pain that will remind me always of how real this was, and of how good it was.

And maybe, just maybe, someday I'll get to come back.

I know part of me hopes I never have to leave.

Late night descends, and she turns her music on to drown out the screaming voices in her head.  It's always worst at night.  Maybe it's the isolation, or maybe it's her body screaming for sleep.  Maybe it's the darkness, or maybe it's her mind finally rebelling against distraction.

In any case, she can no longer run.  And so she turns the volume higher.  There's something comforting about the repetitious beat of the drum to soothe her frayed nerves.  Something about the emotion-filled singer's voice that reminds her, however obliquely, that she is not alone.  She welcomes the pain, knowing that there is only to welcome it, for to push it away for another night will only make its eventual attack worse still.

The song changes, and the switch to a happy song is almost too much.  Grating on her consciousness, she insistently clicks skip.  Waits for a more soulful alternative.  But no, yet another advertisement reminds her that even to seek solace through music can be a tenuous aspiration.  The next song comes on.  Much better.  But it's too loud.  Now it's too soft.  To find a balance between void and jarring is nigh impossible.

But all of this is but posturing.  Obsessing over the music lets her forget her pain, if only for the span of a few minutes.

In any case, those few minutes were all she needed.  The armor is back, and she breathes a sigh of relief.  Maybe not tonight, after all.

She clicks skip again, looking for a happy song.

the ostracized II

She was never cool.  From the moment kids were old enough to understand physical appearance, she was left out.  She smelled funny, she was socially awkward, and she wasn't as pretty as the other girls.  Her only friends were others like her.  In this small town, that meant the other poor girls from working-class families.  They didn't think of it in terms like that - she was simply not popular.  But at the end of the day she wasn't liked because of who her parents were and what she represented to a small-town culture that valued the American dream.

She had so many dreams, so much she wanted to accomplish.  But the harsh reality of her disadvantages meant that she floated through life post-high school from job to job.  At times she struggled to find work.  She tried to make a life of her own, and failed over and over again.  She looked to men to solve her problems, to take care of her.  Only by sheer fortune did she escape pregnancy.  The rest avoided her.  She represented failure to them, and so she was consigned to the same social rank her parents came from: "bottom of the barrel."

They hated her.  They made all sorts of judgments about her.  She was the ostracized.  She was judged on the basis of things over which she had no control.  Before she was even old enough to drive a car she had been consigned to an almost certain future.  The rest judged her, forgetting that they were also the product of their environment.

They grew up in well-to-do middle class families with social standing in their small community.  They were athletic, good looking, and knew the right way to dress, speak, and act.  They belonged.  They took these privileges and turned them into moral attributes that they found lacking in their ostracized classmate.

The most she could hope for in life was their worst nightmare.  And they faulted her for it.  They felt justified in their judgement by their successes, which were really not successes at all - just the result of their privilege.

God, forgive us.

the horrific power of words

James 3:6 - "The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body.  It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell."

Tonight I started thinking about the horrific power of words, of the perfect impossibility of taking them back, of their instant autonomy upon departing from our mouths, of their fire-like properties.  With the strike of the match against the matchbook, the fire begins.  It starts small, but takes on a life of its own, burning all in its path with a mind of its own.

So often our words start out so small.  They set the whole course of our lives on fire, leading us down a path to which we find ourselves irrevocably committed.  We make promises with our tongues, promises we are entirely unable to keep, promises that mean suffering for those we love the most.  Promises that we can take back only on pain of a broken word.

Our tongues are so sharp.  With our tongues we build ourselves up, tearing down those around us.  With our tongues we construct fortresses of ambition, of pride, and even of fear.  We think ourselves wise, we think ourselves smart, superior, even.  We educate ourselves and use our new found knowledge to remind our acquaintances of their inadequacies.  When our fortresses crumble around our feet, we do not learn.  We build them again.

And we forget that true wisdom is found in humble service, in becoming less, in silence.

We forget the power of silence.  We forget that to listen brings healing.  To listen is to be wise.

We forget that words lack any power for good in this world saturated with empty promises and cutting words.

"What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?  Can such faith save him?  Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to him, 'Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,' but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?" James 2:14-16