I crossed the border, and the officer asked me so many questions. Do you still have a presence in the US? I wish, I really want to have a presence on campus right now. Are you doing anything during this gap year of yours other than working at a cafe? Not really. What do you mean not really? Well, I mean no, I said reluctantly. I don’t want to accept that. The knowledge that I’m working as a barista rather than finishing off my senior year of college makes me nauseous. I can spend all day telling myself about how I have grown as a person this year, but the truth is, sometimes I’m embarrassed. Sometimes, I’m ashamed. I’m still in pain. My dean judges me, the border agent judges me, and even the crisis line thinks I’m reaching out too much. Last time I texted, I got an auto message that I don’t usually get, saying that I would be capped at 45 min per 48 hours. So where do I go when I’m struggling 24/7? When I can’t turn my brain off? When I want to ignore the reality that I’m not at school but it simply haunts me? These are facts I can’t ignore, and I wish others wouldn’t ask me so many questions about it. It stings enough as is. No need to rub it in like that.
Maybe one day, years down the road, I’ll look back at this year and acknowledge that it was a small setback. But right now, it feels earth shattering. It feels like the tectonic plates are moving in my brain and there is a massive earthquake that will force me to either rebuild from scratch or just give up. I didn’t even know that it was possible to feel the way I do right now. It feels like I was at the pinnacle of success and I just came crashing down. But like the blog post said, “here I am living and going to Portugal and showing up to work, despite it all.” And I hope that I will become a mature, emotionally resilient woman because of it all. These are growing pains.
I keep thinking about that scene in Grey’s Anatomy, where Dr. Derek Sheppard checks in on a patient who had just woken up after undergoing a life-saving surgery that required cutting his entire head in half, down the nose and splitting the lips, to remove a tumor every other doctor found inoperable. The patient is writhing on pain, making pained noises through his scarred mouth, wide-eyed. Derek says, “hey, this is not the pain of dying. This is the pain of getting better.” Growing pains, I suppose. And I hope that in the long run, enduring this crappy moment will be worth it. I feel like there’s something here in this world calling me to stay. I can’t ignore the painful facts, but I can step back and imagine them shrinking, one star out of trillions in the universe. A very small part of the big picture that is my life. One year away from school in exchange for 80 years of hopefully happier times.
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