The last few weeks have been many iterations of one step forward a few steps back. Like a receding tide, I could feel my self growing more complacent at home but at the same time this accompanied a sort of numbness that reflected a backwards progression in my mental state. Apathy and a sense of ennui accompanied my days. Fortunately, there were brief moments of something, (perhaps passion) as I anticipated and developed my costume for Gencon. I would consider this a plateau of sorts over the course of the next few weeks, just because in terms of emotional outbursts there was a sense of calm. And I began to hope that I had found an element of stability.
Gencon was everything I expected and then not. I could feel long forgotten excitement well up in me as my sister and I spent time at the convention hall the Wednesday before the convention. Or the various messages that I used to coordinate seeing the people who I only got to see once a year. But despite this, my anticipation led to no pay off. Even when I saw people who I had missed, or who had made my experiences at Gencon for the last few years something remarkably special, I felt little to nothing. I tried repeatably to enjoy myself, to get lost in the experience, but everything was filtered with at best gray apathy and at worst frustration. There were few moments which I could honestly say were lost in excitement or at the very least a fleeting distraction. By the end of Gencon, I was devastated. I had hoped for some relief from everything in my life that was crushing me, but instead found that the strangle hold that my mental state had prevented me from enjoying or find solace in something that was once so special and dear to me.
I didn’t have much time to consider this as I had to drive the very next day to university in Kansas City. It was surprising but being extremely sleep deprived as I was, did provide some comfort. For at least the purposes of the trip, I was not really capable of reflecting on my experience. It was nice to spend some time with my mom.
When I had gone to meetings about traveling abroad before I’d gone to Oxford, one of the aspects of the emotional journey was reverse culture shock. When I came home the two times, I would not have identified really any elements of reverse culture shock. I kept in fairly good contact with home during the course of the year and I was able to track any substantial changes in my home life (of which there were very few). Jewell, on the other hand, had changed so much that the only thing that could describe the plunge that my mental state took was reverse culture shock. Between having a new building which was finished the August before we left, a complete reworking of the classroom setting with the introduction of our new ipads, half the school population being strangers I had never met, and the many more subtle changes that just made me feel like this was a strange and foreign place. I immediately felt like a stranger and became heartbroken to discover that the people I thought I knew were just as changed. I felt very singularly alone. The worst of it all was that as a senior, who knew that a year was a short amount of time, I had no desire to become familiar with this place again. I felt myself withdraw and the first few days were mentally and emotionally exhausting.
As classes started, I tried to remain productive. There were only two or three problems with this. For one, there were many things that I no longer remembered about the process of registration and about reincorporating myself into the system, so understandably I had to deal with frustrating mistakes. The second was that I didn’t have a lot to occupy myself with. I came to Jewell with the fantastic revelation that yet another of my tutors had up and vanished and that I would have yet again new tutors for the coming year. Additionally, one of my tutors was still in the process of moving and would not be here until September. This meant that my work load was already a bit underwhelming. Two of my classes are physical education, which means no outside work. My remaining class, which I would come to realize, was going to be largely review as my combined tutorial work over the last term at Oxford covered all the material. So as boredom crept in, I became more reclusive.
I was able over the course of this time to remain in touch with the individuals dear to my heart in Oxford. But even that didn’t free me from the weight I was feeling about everything. One of the major problems at Jewell, is that there is very little to do outside of school work. The town square, which is the only thing in walking distance, is very dead most of the time and lacks adequate places worth visiting. This means that most free time must be taken up one of two ways, internet or drinking. Neither of which, I have at late enjoyed.
But here we are, come to the end of another blog post that is me complaining about my life. A life that for most people would be blessed. And I know that. The rational and objective part of myself is still at war with the passionate and emotional part of myself. As they duke it out, I fear that I will lose one or the other. The only conclusion I have come to is that I have changed so much that I no longer fit in this life, as defined by the activities and environment and people that surround me. So I feel constrained and beat up as I try to fit in here, to find a way to survive this chapter of my life. So, I’m sorry. I’m just another privileged person unable to delight in the privileges I have. Who with a cry for attention, can’t just accept the way things are and is therefore so weak. I would say I’m trying but I think I’ve forgotten how.
