I'm pretty bad, how are you?

If you think I have it all together, please do not read this post. It will be personal and probably rather depressing.


It's been a very hard few weeks. This semester is supposed to be the end, the culmination, the exclamation point on my collage career. Rather, it is the dregs, the most frantic and stressful period of my life since I got to Hope. I am learning or rehearsing a piece for 5 out of the 6 dance facutly, and am supposed to start work on my own final choreography project to be presented in April. I have one "real" class, that I want to love and enjoy the fun of learning new things, but am so distracted by my other things and my bodily weariness that I cannot enjoy it at all. I will probably be taking it Pass/Fail by next week, so I can enjoy it while not worrying about getting an A. I am doing an independant study project, which involves tons of literature research, a hands-on study of the dancers on campus, and then a big paper. I haven't even gotten to writing a proposal for the study as a whole. I am in class 8 hours a day, with at least 3 if not 6 hours of rehearsal afterwards. And yes, I am still teaching ballet. Today, it was too much.

I'm so tired. Tired of running around without even time to eat a real meal. Tired of going to bed with 8 carefully planned hours in which to sleep, where I waste 6 of them staring at the dark ceiling. Tired of pretending that I have enough energy to get through a class or a rehearsal without wanting to collapse with my head between my knees. Tired of being "excited" about my housemates's wedding plans, or preliminary wedding plans, or anti-wedding plans. Tired of needing to distract myself so I forget the person who usually keeps me anchored is 700 miles away. Tired of learning about the lives of my niece and nephews, my siblings, and my parents through emails, blogs, and electronic pictures. Tired of weather which can't make up its mind whether to be hot, cold, wet, or snowy. Even the days with sun are illogical and grating, with no pattern to their coming or their temperature. Tired of claiming my friends as my favorite people, and then getting nothing out of the relationships but chance meetings and undercurrents of hostility. Tired of being strong.

Tomorrow life will be better. I'll drag myself out of bed, put in lots of eye drops to keep my eyeballs from popping out of my head, suit up in the leotard and tights I've been avoiding for years, and go to class without a second thought. I'll leave a message for Mike in the 5 minutes I'm home in the afternoon, and hope I might actually get time to hear about his day before I fall exhausted into bed. I'll tell myself I'll run those errands that need to be done, see the people that need to be seen, but will really be holed up in here when I'm not at some planned event. I'll greet everyone with a "Hi! Yeah, I'm fine, just a little tired."

Somtimes the last thing you want comes in first
Sometimes the first thing you want never comes
I know the waiting is all you can do sometimes