First Week Complete

My first week of classes at Lourdes has officially come to a close. I'm not entirely sure how I'm feeling about it yet, to be perfectly frank. I'm enjoying having something to do again. I enjoy the campus. It's beautiful here, and the people are almost disconcertingly nice. I'm struggling with my classes though. I'm seriously filled with fear that my chosen path is not for me. The more I think about it, the more fearful that I become, which is obviously in no way helping.

Things are getting a little better here for me on campus though. I'm getting accustomed to the people that I'm surrounding myself with. The girls on my floor--Lexi, Catherine, M Jay, and Melissa--are all pretty cool. There are a few more, but they rarely come out of their rooms. M Jay, Lexi, Catherine and I spent some time last night hanging out and talking about classes and boys since our Internet was down. I'm the only married student in the dorms, I believe, so I'm probably the only one in our group that doesn't have boy drama. I'm also feeling pretty old because the rest of them are rather young. Melissa is the only one that's older than me, and she's only a few months older.

The campus meal plan has its ups and downs. The food is pretty good when you finally have it, especially downstairs with the all-you-can-eat style thing. The problem is that the food area downstairs isn't always open, so I'm stuck with cold sandwiches and fruit cups the rest of the time. The worst is that they stop serving dinner before I'm even out of class three nights in a row. So I'm forced to go, pick up my food, shove it in my bag, sit through class, and tough it out until I have an actual opportunity to eat it, which usually doesn't come until later at night when I'm at home.

Walking to campus has been really different. I'm not used to having to walk to school each day. When JJ and I went to Owens, we drove about an hour there and about an hour back. This is a 25 minute walk there and a 25 minute walk back. I'm learning to enjoy it, but the first few days took some getting used to. This is actually a really lovely area. There are squirrels and birds. It's been cool lately, so that the walk has been mostly pleasant. Last night, on my way home, I almost lamented not bringing a jacket with me.

My weekend is looking interesting. I'm going to try to order pizza on Saturday night I think. And since I'm not sticking around today on campus until dinner, I'm trying to get as much food as I can at lunch. It might make my walk home a little less than pleasant, but it'll give me a chance to spend the rest of the night in the apartment without having to go anywhere. Probably when I get back, I'll collect my purse so that I can go buy a pack of cigarettes at the local pantry. I know that I quit smoking, and I was going strong for like two years, but I've been really stressed out. Living on campus, being away from my family, friends, and husband, and having to face all the drama of being a nursing student is starting to get to me.

Hopefully, this weekend can be filled with studying and little else. Maybe on Saturday, I'll get a chance to actually relax a little bit--sleep in for once! It didn't work for me today. I had a meeting to attend with accessibility services about taking notes for other students in need. Why that would be scheduled for a 10 AM on Friday morning, I have no idea! On the upside, it's over. It got me here for breakfast and lunch, so I can't complain too hard about that.

For now, I'm going to finish my lunch and face the rest of my day. Walking home, studying, and maybe a movie will be in order for my night. I hope we have Internet back by the time I get back to the dorms!

F.I.N.E. and the In-Between Post

So, somewhere in the midst of my letters project, I think it's time to make an actual post. Maybe it's motivated by my current emotional climate, but I do often find that it helps me to write it out sometimes. I guess I'm hoping for a little of the respite that I can occasionally find in writing.

Lately, I've been full of doubts. Normally, I'm pretty confident. I'm sure it's been clear from the tenor of some of the entries in my letters project that I'm having some difficulties with not feeling like myself lately. I feel like there are components that I'm losing, maybe that I've already lost. Pieces of myself that slip away from time to time. My ease with people, my confidence in myself, my ability to be honest, my faith in my relationships are all plunging.

I think about what happens if I screw up. I think about what will happen to my academic year if I don't get along with my potential roommates. I think about what will happen if I hate nursing, or--worse--if I'm no good at it. How will I choose a new career path? What will I do? Hell, I don't even like taking care of a simple little puppy, so it would only follow that I might absolutely abhor taking care of people. Just because I can stand seeing blood and guts, that doesn't mean that I'll be good at my potential future job. I'm more worried about what it will mean if I'm good at it but I hate it.

I worry about the state of my marriage, though things do seem to be getting better between JJ and myself. The guilt trips and the anger have stopped. We've been much more understanding of each other lately, and I'm more and more convinced that we'll get through this together. There are just times when I miss him terribly. Like today, having a bad mental day, I just want to be held--and not just anyone will do. I want to be held by the man that tells me that he loves me more than anything, that makes "the turtle face" just because he knows it makes me smile, whose hands envelop mine and make mine seem almost delicate (which they are definitely not). I want to be in that guy's arms. Right now.

I'd like to think that all this stress has to do with the total lack of any kind of restful sleep on my part as of late. Somehow, though, I fear that it's deeper than that. It's all coiling just below the surface to collect into one immense break during my semester. At least, that's my other fear here, that I'll be able to hold it in just until it will screw me over big time, at which point the dam will break and I'll crumble.

Lately, I just crave a simple solution. I wonder if I'd have one if I'd been just a little bit prettier, just a little bit skinnier, just a little bit smarter. Even just a little bit. None of those adjectives really seem to apply to me right now, but it would be fascinating to see what my life would be like if they did. Pretty, skinny, smart. How weird would that be? Would my life be easier? Would I know myself?

One of the things that I've been most incredulous about with the whole college dorm thing is my weight. How harshly will I be judged for it? How much harder will my life be because of it? How can I quick-fix it away? I've never been stupid enough in all of my life to consider starving myself or purging or anything like that--not to mention not having the guts to do any of those either--so there's no worry about that. I would really love it if the whole fairy godmother myth were real though.I know what my three wishes would be if I had a genie in a magic lamp.

It would just be nice if I could be calm. You know, they say that when you tell people that you're fine, what you really mean is Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional. I really wish that I wasn't doing FINE right now. Soon enough, I'll find my place again. I simply hate that I've lost it.