Until It's Over

Reading about writing just makes me want to write. I no longer have the time to sit outside in the sun (or the rain) and think about words with affection, to sketch for hours and then write about the sketching and then repeat the process. And if I do have the time, it feels irresponsible. So I'll just blog in the middle of the night instead.

For the last few months I have been seeking with complete abandon a sense of... nothingness. This is difficult for people to understand. My body has begun deteriorating in strange ways, and due to lack of funds, and because of the school's insufficient (impolite, judgmental, expensive, useless) health insurance, I am tired all the time. I know that in high school I felt tired a lot, and sometimes thought I had mono (even though I'd never kissed anyone). This is different.

So it is exhaustion. I am not suffering because of teenaged drama or annoyed with my parents or stressed about prom. I am exhausted, to the core. The stress of my new life is mostly enjoyable. (Which, in retrospect, is probably why when the doctor asked me if I was stressed I said, "No, not really.") If you take away the excessive reading of sentimentalist works and the vomit-inducing James Joyce, my classes are pretty swell. The rest of the stress is still new and exciting, because my marriage is not yet boring, and likely never will be.

And yet, as I enjoy and revel in the newness of everything, the novel sensation of being a wife, I still want so desperately to do absolutely nothing. I want the world to stop. Not for a long weekend. Not for spring break. Not even just for the summer. I want to wake up one morning and have nothing to look forward to--except the next hour. And the hour after that. And I would repeat that process until I tired of it, or until I found something so intriguing I became impassioned and ridiculous that I chased after it like a dog after a car.

I just want to do what I want, without the pressure. Because honestly, I'm doing what I want right now. I'm reading good books, classics and otherwise. I'm buying groceries with my husband, even if he's impatient. I'm washing dishes and decorating the walls and thinking about the future and writing papers and doing research and learning old languages and and and and. And none of it feels right because at this time they are all just things that I am responsible for. I must do them. I must do homework. I must look for a summer job. I must read my least-favorite Jane Austen novel. I must get a new contact prescription. I must get some blood work done. Wait, that costs $1000? Ok, back to the whole "must get a job" part.

And I don't want feminists and type-A people or my parents or my brother or my friends to shake their heads at me when I say that right now, all I want is that nothing. I want to be a house-wife for a little while. To not be in a classroom for a little while. To rule my own little world for a little while because for the longest time I have made myself SO SMALL just to get something SO BIG finished. I just want to be. Without any pressure. If I wake up feeling like a a tiny ladybug that's what I'll be. And if I wake up feeling like an Amazonian that's what I'll be.

But it hasn't happened that way yet. And I don't know when it will, because there's still something to look forward to, just around the corner. There is always that thing looming the next weekend or "in the Fall" or after things "settle down." I always have to wait "until it's over." But it never is. In this world, it never will be.