I Don't Want This Life

You probably remember August 21, 2017 as the day of the total solar eclipse. People nabbed their pairs of the special glasses you could use to look safely at the spectacle. The news covered it. Scientific website livestreamed the event (which I was grateful for, being in Newfoundland at the time and at a poor vantage to view it properly). I spent the day thoroughly cleaning my apartment-style dorm. I was the last of the roommates to leave, and thus responsible for making sure the public areas passed muster when the school did their end of term inspections. I was due to leave for a trip to Ireland (half research, half pleasure) the next morning, and was interspersing my bouts of cleaning with revisions to the ethics proposal I must have approved for this trip's research to even be permissible. I felt the normal amount of stress such a situation would foster, but nothing crazy.

But apparently I was wrong about that.

I remember August 21, 2017 as the day I ordered a pizza to eat while I cleaned/studied/watched the solar eclipse online, only to discover that I couldn't eat it because every time I started to chew a bite my throat would tighten and I would become convinced I was going to choke on it and die (since no one else was in the apartment, or probably even the dorm building since I had gotten permission to leave two days after everyone else). I had to take tiny bites and chew them double or triple the usual amount of time before I was satisfied I wouldn't choke, and even then sometimes the tightness in my throat made the swallowing painful.

It was a stress response. Or maybe anxiety. It had to be. I'd never experienced anything like it before and I was a wreck. Eating is, for better or for worse (usually for worse), the thing I turn to for comfort when I am stressed. To have it become a manifestation of my worry and fear and dread to the point that I couldn't properly consume sustenance - well, that was new levels of awful for me.

Tonight I'm feeling a bit like that. I'm not eating now. I'm trying to go to sleep. But my throat is closing up and I feel a tightness in my body but especially near my lymph nodes, and I'm getting the sniffles and a sore throat and I've been exhausted all week and I'm wondering if I'm getting sick or again if this is just a manifestation of all my worry. I just got done moving and now I have to move again. I need to do my taxes, twice because of two separate countries. I have a wonderful girlfriend and I want to keep her happy with this long distance thing until my trip to visit her at the end of April, but it's a trip which will probably mean I can't pay my bills the next month. I'm moving into a house where I'll probably have less space for my stuff and have to pay more money, but I have no choice in the matter because my roommate decided she was moving without really consulting me. I need to apply for a new job that will pay me enough so that I can actually afford to pay my bills and not go in debt buying gas and groceries each month, and even have enough leftover to start paying off my debts, but again - trapped.

I feel overwhelmed and helpless and like I have no agency in my own life. And I hate it.

I feel like I messed up my entire life to the point that I'm never going to have anything or do anything or be anything worthwhile and I might as well just give up.

I'm tired and I can't sleep. Just like a year and a half ago I was hungry and couldn't eat. But as the eclipse reminded us that day, the heavenly bodies all keep spinning merrily along. Life continues, even if we suffer.