lost to myself

The past year has been crazy

three days ago I submitted the second draft of the dissertation - it is really MUCH better. And yet, the cost of making it better has drained me of nearly all my life energy. I am seriously wounded in my soul - depleted. I decided about 10 weeks ago that all I could do was try to finish this draft - no music, no exercise, no friends - nothing but finishing. I had hoped it wouldn't take so long, and that I would have time to re-plenish, to re-member myself, to re-vitalize my already depleted self/soul. But it took me much longer than I expected and cost me much more than I expected.

I can barely feel my insides... barely feel my capacity for love, my aimless loving heart that wants to be captured.

I don't know what I'm doing with myself - am I totally deceiving myself?

I am committed to a totally dysfunctional job - it drains me. There are several people who do such a piss-poor job there that it makes the work for all the rest of us soooo much more difficult.

But I can't bring myself to leave... I think I am meant to be there - to teach what I teach... I think I do it well EVEN THOUGH it makes me crazy sick to my stomach with anxiety.

I am soooooo neurotic, always full of fear and worry. There is a video portrait of Doris Lessing on the Nobel site (she won the Nobel prize for literature in 2007) and she reads a short section of The Golden Notebook ... "with the tiredness comes guilt. I know all the forms and variations of this guilt so well they even bore me. But I have to fight them nevertheless" - that's how I feel about worry.

today my best friend in town will leave and drive 3,000 miles away from me - on a quest to find herself, her "space" - her place where her own soul, her own and necessary place, where her voices may speak to her, her alone, where she can dream - again Doris Lessing's words...

I want that for her, but mostly I worry about myself - and how I will survive such a loss.