dark hour

**DISCLAIMER: i get like this every once in a while. it passes. like right now for example? i'm feeling pretty okay... so don't let this convince you that i'm dropping out of school. i am NOT dropping out of school, people!**

i actually think i touched on rock bottom yesterday.

mentally, at least.

i mean, on the way home from my night class, and from being "on" the entire day long dealing with these massive bouts of anxiety, i actually felt every ounce of adrenaline leaving my body. i was on BART and realized that i just had nothing left.

nothing.

and i got home and my brain just...quit. i didn't want to do anything anymore. i didn't want to study. i didn't want to take a shower. i didn't want to be a law student. i didn't want to change out of my school clothes and into home clothes. i didn't want to eat dinner. i didn't want to think about what i wanted to drink. i didn't want to work up the energy to care about the next day. i definitely didn't want to be a law student anymore. i didn't even want to be lawyer. i didn't want to take the bar. i didn't want to be in the bay area. i didn't want to be anywhere else. i didn't want to go to work or write memos or think about legal issues.

i mean, and i literally mean, that i just...stopped working.

and then i got up this morning and the feeling was still there. so i vaguely remember changing into my friday uniform of jeans i wore at some point that week, a tank, my uw hoodie from freshman year, no make-up, and my hair (unbrushed) in a pony tail. the only thing i could think to do was put on earrings, and that's just because they were already out on my dresser and i didn't have to actually choose them.

so i went to class in a blur, took a 3 HOUR exam in drafting, and went to lunch with M. and L. i felt like i was floating through the day on auto-pilot. you know, like when you're there but you're not really? i mean, i sat there, and i tried to talk, but i felt really...punchy. like everything i said was way more exaggerated than i meant it to be. it all sounded foreign coming out of my mouth, like my brain was slightly in the background just trying to cope with the day to day. like i was scraping the bottom of the barrel for energy to form sentences and get them out, and because i knew that i was trying to overcompensate and it all just came out...forced. and not only was everything i said overloud, but also negative, which usually isn't the case for me (at least i don't think it is). i couldn't get my self over the fact that i hated being here. i didn't want to go through another week or month or , God forbid, another entire semester. i just didn't have it in me to do it.

and i was angry that i was going to do it anyway.

i was thinking about that a lot today as i was listening to muse's "absolution," which is amazing btw.

i was thinking about why i'm here, trying to be a lawyer, and whether or not i still want to do it. or if i ever wanted to do it. it all comes down to your parents, doesn't it? i mean, my parents are amazing. they're great parents. and i can honestly say that if it wasnt' for them, specifically, i wouldn't be here. because i've seen too many childhood friends and neighbors, who were so similarly situated to me, go absolutely no where because they didn't have my parents.

i asked my dad when he visited how he and my mom managed to raise 3 fairly well-adjusted girls. and he said it worked because he and my mom almost had a silent agreement that one of them played the heavy while the other was more nurturing. and while i know that they both probably have some criticisms of each other and they way they parented us as individuals, i wish i could just tell that whatever they did worked. it may not seem that way sometimes, especially when you look at the problems in me and my sisters and you nit-pick at all the flaws, but everyone has flaws. we can't be perfect. but we're not bad. and that's because whatever they did worked.

but what i've noticed is that i whenever i get into moods like the one i'm in now, i tend to blame them. or my dad, i guess i should say, more specifically. i blamed him because, instead of fists in faces, he used the phrases, "i'm so disappointed in you," or, "you know that's unacceptable, right?" i guess he never realized that we probably would have preferred the fists.

but those words shaped us. me, most of all, out of my sisters. i couldn't stand hearing them, couldn't stomach it. and sometimes, even now when he hasn't said that in so many years, i still get shaky when i make myself hear his voice in my head biting out those five little words.

"i'm so disappointed in you."

"you know that's unacceptable, right?"

and it was mostly about grades. there was a time when i was in highschool, and my dad would call, when before even asking me how i was he'd ask how school was. that was the priority. school. me.

but i can't cast blame elsewhere anymore, and i don't really...haven't for a long time. i love my dad, he's one of my absolute favorite people in the world. and i can stand back and realize now that i was/am lucky to have him, and to have had him balanced out by my mother. because i have so much now that i wouldn't have without them. and i'm so lucky. so lucky.

i just bring this up now more as a criticism of myself than of him. because it think he's come to understand, if only a little, what these words did to us. maybe not to me, but i've fought for him to understand what they did to my little sister. and i hope that he's got that.

it was a little too late for me, i'd already come to internalize them. so when i was in college, and my grades were slipping, i'd hear that voice in my head.

"i'm so disappointed in you."

"you know that's unacceptable, right?"

and i'd pick those grades right back up. this mentality transferred over to different parts of my life as well, but i don't really want to get into that now. i'm trying to stay focused here.

anyway, then i got to lawschool. and his voice has become my voice, saying that i'm not going to disappoint anyone, i'm going to be something that they call be proud of. i'm going to be a lawyer. i'm going to go to school and be smart and get a good job.

even if i'm hating every single second of it. now that's work ethic. (N. calls it being the most stubborn person he's ever met).

but if i'm honest, then i'll admit that i'm not really hating every single second of law school. i love working for tribes. i find the work rewarding. but it's the thought of being "on" every single second of every single day for the foreseeable future that just has me feeling so trapped. because i have to stick this out. i've started. i'll finish. i have to stick it out.

i'm just not sure i want to. at least not right at this second, which is all i can really speak for since my moods have just been chaotic lately.

i tell myself that i need a vacation. it's true, but truth means so very little. my friends tell me i need sleep. can't i sleep when i'm dead? i tell myself that i won't take the bar, i'll take a year off instead and trying to just live normally and see if that works for me. but then i hear the voice and i chicken out.

i need to do something with my life.

i guess i just don't know what yet. and that's probably what terrifies me the most sometimes.

ulgh. what can i say, it's been a really bad couple of weeks.

i was thinking that most of my blogs just seem so...depressing. isn't that an indication of my life? or is it just that when life is good i'm out living it instead of blogging it? who knows.

this got way longer than i intended it to.