> ONE MONTH
:-)
Glad to hear you're still alive!
On the other hand, I'm steadily slipping down the grad school slope. I don't
know if school's in me anymore. I'm futzing work, I'm in a deteriorating mood,
and my urgency is down the toilet -- I think the only person left who
expects/wants me to graduate in three years is Adam, if only to prove a) it's
possible and b) he doesn't have to look for a job (i.e. graduate) before I do,
Ernie-like :-)
The move/the disastrous mini-relationship triggered it, but now it's taken a
life of its own. And yet... I still feel functional enough I feel very silly
considering psych help. I feel like I deserve to hit the next bottom first,
since I don't know if this is just regular, normal flopping around.
I wish i'd stop being hypo and just be clearly insane in one dimension or
another: attention, dysphoria, dyxsthimia, ehatever. I'm a head-case
hypochondriac.
In rereading listening to prozac, though, one part came across clearly to me:
reward dependence. I'm finally willing to admit that all my strong-willedness
is a put-on; the real me is painfully strung out waiting for the highs of
external praise (which I never got at home or from myself). Like FoRK...
And the flip of reward-dep is rejection-sensitivity. I'm high-functioning
enough that I can rationalize and redefine away LOTS of rejection (so-and-so
is a bonehead, this pub didn't really matter, etc), what's left hurts to a
ridiculous degree. Perhaps even an unhealthy degree.
For now, my main concern is that affect is out of sync with cognition in one
particular way: emotionally, there is great fear that as self-proclaimed 'big
fish in small pond', I will royally fuck-up classes because I'm being so lazy
about them. That emotion is free-floating, completely disconnected to the
cause (i'm not working, I'm wasting time on fork, etc). This kind of paralysis
-- separation of reward (or at least pain-avoidance) from rewarding-process --
happens to me often enough I don't think it's out of the ordinary. Just the
kind of dive-bombing/recovery cycle I do to dramatize my life for a cheap
high. So even though I haven't begun the ten-day programming assignment due at
11a tomorrow, I can't feel the fear. Tune in tomorrow for the next
cliff-hanging episode...
Rohit