Anna: ................

So I figured it was time to write an actual update and not a quick airport-bitch post like the last one.

Life is stressful. As always. Except that this is the very first time that I've felt in actual danger of burning out/going off the deep end. I don't know if I'm going to pass Arabic. I am barely keeping this hanging on with regards to MUN. And the only reason my other two classes are functioning parts of my life is because I'm spending more time on them than on Arabic.

I don't even know how to say anything. I am having about a breakdown per day. I've called home (read, Utica) TWICE in four weeks to just cry. I literally feel like everything is spiraling out of control and that this term is it for me. Either I make it and somehow survive Spring until summer hits, or I crash so hard that I won't be able to pick myself up again. Its scary, because failure has never been an option for me. If I get anything lower than a B in any class, I might as well kiss law school goodbye. I need to figure out how to juggle school and an internship or two or three to even be considered by a university such as American or Georgetown or basically anywhere that has the kind of program I'm interested in. And I need to be careful to make sure that everything runs smoothly for MUN so as to not go down in history as the batshit crazy president that fucked everything up.

I'm just a mess. I've never been great at handling stress, but this is a whole new level of incapability. I have never felt more demotivated, helpless, or disgusted in myself in my entire college career. I know I fell into another depression cycle after I came back from New York, but I didn't think it'd get this bad. Where my life starts to spin in crazy circles and I either don't sleep or sleep too much and I can't think of anything without wanting to cry. I was depressed last winter too, and I was taking 16 credits (I'm only taking 12 now) and I pulled through great.

The thing is, I keep being lulled into a false sense of security by random mental health things, like an overnight trip to Seattle or a weekend in Salem or something. Both of those were great, but as soon as I got back everything crashed again. I just don't even know. I tend to plan out my life and schedule everything, and while I can usually handle unexpected events and changes in the plan, I don't know what to do with this. I don't know how to handle the feeling that my entire life is about to crash and burn.

I know I sound dramatic, but I literally don't have anything else except school. I'm lucky that I get so much financial aid to allow my mom and I to pay for school, but money is quickly running out. This is my only chance. School is the only thing I have ever really been good at. I have other hobbies, sure, but they're not honed enough for me to make any kind of living on. My whole life has been entirely academically oriented. Do well through junior high to get a scholarship for expensive Catholic high school. Do well throughout high school to get scholarships in college. Do well in college to even be considered for admittance to any type of graduate/law program. Or career opportunity. I don't need to be New-York-penthouse-jet-to-Europe-every-other-week rich, but I want to be successful. Successful in the sense that I am working toward something and that I have attained the goals I worked so hard to reach. In the sense that I am engaging life and learning everyday, not just going through the bare-minimum movements and pretending I'm happy. But the way everything is structured, my worth is based on marks on a paper. Grades, activities, performance at internships, etc. And if I can't upkeep that, then I am absolutely nothing in the eyes of anyone making any of the decisions.

I always hear "failure is an essential part of life. Its a learning experience." Absolute shit. Sometimes failure is inevitable, sure, and you could learn from it if you had the right outlook, but crap like that leads people to think that you don't have to try hard or basically work for anything because if you fail, well, its a healthy organic process of growth. No. No. No. No. I can't stress that enough. Failure is not accepted in the path I want to go into. Failure is a measurement indicator people use to decide who to throw aside and forget about. I can't afford to fail because then everything is over, because everyone is conditioned to look for perfect people who do everything perfectly and can perfectly fill the role of lawyer, grad student, whatever. The fact that I burned myself out/worked too hard too fast/tried to keep everything together but just couldn't at that point in time.....no one will care.

I'm freaking out, obviously, because I can't handle having worked hard all my life to fail now. Maybe it sounds like I'm overreacting, but this is the lowest I can remember being in quite a long time. I don't know what to do. Its not going away, its not getting better after having talked to people and after having taken some time off to think. Nothing is helping and I don't know what to do.

Except say "fuck it all" and buy a train ticket to Cali for Spring Break regardless of what my finances are. I can starve for a while, I don't care. I need to be around awesome people I love in a non-stressful situation.