Who Will Be There

This past winter, I was talking to a guy, who I shall refer to as Disturbing Fetish Guy, on Bumble who said, "Is that really you in your profile pictures?"

"Yes," I said. 

"I'm just asking because I've been catfished before," Disturbing Fetish Guy said.

"I'm not a catfish," I said.

"But you look really young," he insisted. "How old are those pictures?"

I've been told by many people that I look young for my age. I went to the movies recently, and the cashier asked to see my ID because I bought a ticket to watch an R-rated movie (Everything Everywhere All the Time - awesome movie! I love Michelle Yeoh!). Apparently, although I am forty-one years old, I still look like a teenager. Or maybe it was my Mickey Mouse T-shirt. 

"Well, people often say that I look young," I said. "But they're all pictures from the past two years."

"You do realize that I'm eight years younger than you, right?" I didn't like how he made a point of mentioning that, as if I'd done something wrong. If he'd matched with someone eight years younger, I doubt he would have said, "You do realize I'm eight years older than you, right?"

"Yeah, it says so in your profile." 

Then Disturbing Fetish Guy asked me what my racial identity was (he belongs to a different race). I told him, and he said, "YES! My friends and I all want to date women of your race. You're like the Holy Grail of dating." 

I didn't even fully register what he meant at first, but eventually, I thought to myself, "Annnd we're done here." I don't like anyone who tries to fetishize my racial identity. I put my profile on Bumble on "Snooze", which means that you can make your profile invisible to everyone else on the site. It also means you can't see anyone else's profiles until you deactivate the Snooze option, but at least you can take a break for as long as you want without deleting your profile.

When I first joined an online dating site, I was still in my twenties. I felt excited, nervous and hopeful that I would meet someone special. Seven online dating memberships and countless bad dates later, I don't feel hopeful anymore. 

I thought I was finally ready to date again, which is why I set up a coffee date with a guy last fall, who then stood me up at the last minute and didn't even explain or apologize. 

Ever since I turned forty, I've become a lot less tolerant of other people's b.s., like the guy who wrote this in his profile: "Respectfully, if you're vaccinated I don't want it. The nano particles from within it transfer person to person. Your DNA/bloodline is forever changed. Welcome to the new life of a cyborg." (I WISH I made that up, but I seriously did see that in someone's profile.)

I am vaccinated. I got the booster shot too. If I am a cyborg, does this mean I now have superhuman strength? Does it mean that I can pick up people who cut in front of me in line at Starbucks and toss them out the door? Because that would be awesome. (Whenever people cut in front of me, I revert back into my Chicago persona and start yelling scary nothings in their ear until they move back.)

I put my profile on Snooze not just because of Disturbing Fetish guy but because I'm just sick of it: online dating, the weird stuff that people put in their profiles, the awkward/bad/boring first dates, the unrequited crushes, etc., etc.

I spent the last few months binge-watching House on the Peacock app, where you can watch certain shows for free. I was able to watch literally every episode of the series for free on that app while I was working out. In one episode, called "One Day, One Room," a patient played by Katheryn Winnick tells Dr. House, "I'm going to base this moment on whom I'm stuck in a room with. That's what life is. It's a series of rooms, and who we get stuck in those rooms with adds up to what our lives are." 

Another thing I noticed about the show was who stayed with the patient in the hospital room while they were receiving treatment. Sometimes it would be family members. Other times it would be the patient's friend, and in one episode, it was the patient's dominatrix. It made me wonder who would be in the room with me when I go into end-stage renal failure and end up in the hospital.

I have to get tested every six months to ensure that my kidneys are still stable. I was tested recently, and the results showed that my kidney function has declined since last December. I am still at least a few years away from the end-stage, but I know that eventually, I will be hooked up to dialysis machines three times a week, for hours at a time, until I get a kidney. 

I think that the right person for me would be someone who would be "in the room" and willing to be there for me at my worst moment, and who wouldn't judge me for it. I recently binge-watched the TV series Girls (they have the complete series on DVD at the public library in College Town). I watched it and thought, Was I as self-absorbed and annoying as these characters when I was twenty-four? 

Nevertheless, it was a very good show, and my favorite scene in the show is the one (FYI: Adam is cursing a lot at the beginning of this scene) where Adam literally runs across the city to be with Hannah when he finds out she's having a nervous breakdown. (Side note: do you notice that in romantic movies and TV shows, the guy often starts running when he wants to be with his love interest? Harry did it in When Harry Met Sally, for example.) 

I thought that scene from Girls was really romantic and moving because it showed how much Adam loved Hannah, and how he was willing to be there for her at her worst moment.

There were other patients on House, M.D. who didn't have anyone in the hospital room with them, and that showed a lot about what their lives were like too. It made me wonder if I would be one of those people who would end up alone in a hospital room. I definitely wouldn't want my parents there. They would just make it worse. They always do. I still haven't told my mother that I'm sick. My father knows, but he recently told me that he doesn't want to hear about my health anymore; he thinks I talk about it too much, and he doubled down in an email he sent, where he berated me for how I'm dealing with this disease. 

My parents have been unhappily married for more than forty years. When you grow up witnessing how much your parents hate each other, it tends to warp your ideas about love and marriage. I think that's a major reason why the idea of remaining unmarried for the rest of my life does not scare me as much as the idea of being married to the wrong person just so I won't have to be alone. I think if you marry the wrong person, you will still be alone in a sense. Being with the wrong person makes you feel like you can't fully relate to them or like they won't be there for you when you need them to be. My parents were wrong for each other from the beginning, but they will never get divorced because they're both too stubborn and proud to do so. 

My mother said to me on my birthday a few years ago, "But aren't you ashamed to be an old maid?" 

"No, I'm not," I said. I wanted to say, I think you should be ashamed for asking me that question, especially on my birthday.

I try to picture myself with someone in the future, and I can't. I've been alone for so long that I've gotten used to it, and I even prefer it sometimes. As I've stated before, being single comes with a certain kind of freedom. 

Now that I'm in my forties, most of the single men my age who live in College Town (and there aren't that many of them) are divorced with children, and many of them don't want to date me because I'm too "old" for them. In movies where middle-aged women date younger men, the men are often very romantic and sensitive; they genuinely want relationships with those women, like in the movie How Stella Got Her Groove Back. But in real life, or at least in my life, younger men just want to hook up, like the thirty-year-old guy on Bumble who asked me what my bra size was and the twenty-nine-year-old guy who immediately asked what my address was and whether he could come over within two minutes of our first (and only) conversation. 

Also, now that I'm in my forties, I somehow feel less anxious about being in a relationship. For me, the "happy ending" was never really about a guy. For a long time, it was about my work because I'm a workaholic. Now it's about living my life on my terms for as long as I can. It's about getting a kidney sooner rather than later so that I don't have to be on dialysis for too long. It's about making the most of the time that I have now, while I still have it. And I think that's nothing to be ashamed of.

And I suppose it's just as well that I'm single, considering the idiotic and horrifying decision made by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. But I could go on for several posts about that. I'm still full of fury and fear about it.

What about you? Do you have a favorite romantic story or movie? (One of my favorites is While You Were Sleeping, partly because it's set in Chicago and also because I love Sandra Bullock.) 

How I Became a Neurotic Workaholic

Two years before I left Chicago, I suffered a nervous breakdown and went into therapy. There were several reasons why I sought counseling, but the catalyst was that my best friend of more than fifteen years had ghosted me a year before. The last time we hung out, Former Friend told me that "it's not very attractive" to complain about work so much, even though they had vented about their job many times. After that, every time I suggested getting together to have coffee or lunch, Former Friend had an excuse for why they were too busy. It took me months to realize that they no longer wanted me in their life, which crushed me, because they were one of the only friends I had left.

In high school, I used to hide in my bedroom and shovel handfuls of peanut M&Ms into my mouth when dealing with my parents and sibling was too much for me. I gained thirty pounds in one year and struggled to lose the weight for years after that. I eventually lost weight by working out regularly and cooking healthier meals.

But after Former Friend ghosted me, I started binge eating and gaining weight again. I knew I needed help when I opened my refrigerator one day and realized that I'd filled all the shelves with large bags of peanut M&Ms. I was still in grad school at the time, so I went to the counseling center at my university, and they gave me a list of referrals to therapists who offered low-cost counseling.

At first, I felt ashamed and sad that I felt so alone that I had to pay a stranger to listen to me. But over the course of the next two years in therapy, I learned that there is no shame in seeking help when you need it, and I learned a lot of valuable things.

My therapist said that I suffered from depression and anxiety, including social anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. My anxiety was connected to my workaholism, she said, because I always felt like I couldn't relax unless I got all my work done. But due to my graduate studies and multiple jobs, I always had a lot of work to do. My social anxiety was shown through my hyper-awareness of things most people took for granted. When I interacted with my students or with other people, afterwards I would berate myself for something I said or did wrong, and I thought that was all those other people remembered about me. I'd always known that I was neurotic and had low self-esteem, but it wasn't until I was in therapy that I realized how and why I became that way.

My therapist said something that struck a chord with me: "You are an amazing young woman. You're attractive, highly intelligent, and kind and compassionate to others. You've earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree; you're a Ph.D. candidate; you balance multiple jobs, and you're a good teacher. But you can't see anything good about yourself or recognize any of your accomplishments. All you see is what you think is bad about yourself because your family, especially your mother, has conditioned you to think that way."

When students approached me at the end of each term to tell me how much they enjoyed my class and that I was their favorite teacher, I used to think that they were just being polite. I thought the same thing when people complimented me on my writing. My therapist was right: I had internalized the verbal abuse that my parents and sibling had inflicted on me to the point that I couldn't recognize any compliments directed at me as being genuine. Although I hadn't lived with my parents and sibling for years, their voices were still in my head every day, pointing out everything I did wrong so that I was constantly obsessing about it.

I thought of the times my sibling and I fought and how they claimed that their screaming insults were justified because they were merely "responding" to my bad behavior. Sibling did not escape our parents' house unscathed, but is now in denial about the way they've treated us. Also, I always received the worst of it, like the time my father and sibling went out for ice cream, while I had to stay behind because my mother was angry at me; they knew that she would scream at me for hours while they were gone, which she did, but they left anyway. Both my father and Sibling are more willing than I am to tiptoe around my mother. Sibling says that stuff like that is my fault for "provoking" our parents because I talk back to them (my father and mother say the same thing). Sibling also says that I'm being too melodramatic about how they treat me.

I thought of my father, who is not usually as bad-tempered as my mother but who never protected me from her either. He has also made his share of cutting remarks, such as the time I was hired to teach at the college in Small Town and he said that it was good that I was "finally going to start working." I pointed out that I had been working multiple jobs for years, but he said they didn't count because none of those jobs were full-time and didn't come with health insurance or benefits.

Most of all, I thought of my mother, who has always criticized everything about me: my weight, my hair, my clothes, the way I walk, etc. Years ago, when she was visiting and I was out on an errand, she read through some of my course evaluations that my former students had filled out. Although most of the evaluations were highly positive, my mother honed in on the few that weren't. To this day, she reminds me of the bad things that my students said about me, to show that I made the wrong choice when I pursued a career in education, rather than the more lucrative career she and my father pressured me to pursue. Sibling caved in to my parents' demands and chose that career, which is partly why they favor Sibling over me.

I think that's one reason why I've spent all these years working so hard: I wanted to prove that my mother was wrong when she said that I wouldn't last five years as a teacher. But my therapist helped me realize that I shouldn't work so hard to get my parents' approval because they were toxic and nothing would ever be good enough for them.

Therapy also helped me realize how isolated I had become and that I needed something in my life outside of work. When I moved to Small Town, I accepted the invitation of Small Town Guy, who also worked at the college that hired me, to join his trivia team that met at a local bar every week. He introduced me to his other friends. They were kind to me and welcomed me into their group, and for the first time in years, I had an active social life.

I've been thinking about all of this as I've continued writing my book, Obsessions of a Workaholic. I also wondered why I let the Model push me around and why I blamed myself for everything that happened. My therapist might have said that I'd been conditioned to believe that the problem was solely within me, not in the people who treated me badly. But I don't put all the blame on my relatives for why I fell for the Model.

When he first messaged me on Tinder, I had just recently moved to College Town. I was lonely for the friends I left behind in Small Town. I wasn't attracted to the other guys I'd met on Tinder or Bumble. I'd been rejected by most of the guys I'd had crushes on in the past. The Model was exactly the kind of guy I've always been attracted to but who never even noticed me before. The fact that he not only noticed me but wanted to be with me was flattering and thrilling, like a fantasy come true. And despite the awful way he treated me, he did have a few good qualities.

For one brief, desperate moment after I found out that he had used me to cheat on his girlfriend, I actually considered pretending that I didn't know about her, because the thought of never being with him again hurt even more. But in the end, I couldn't do it. I knew in my heart that he saw her as girlfriend material, and me as a friend with benefits. There was no way that I could keep being with him, not only because it was wrong to hook up with someone else's boyfriend but also because I'd be cheating myself out of everything else I wanted with him.

Whatever I had with him was a fantasy. It wasn't real, even though I wanted it to be, especially after years of bad first dates and failed relationships. I had fallen back into the pattern of allowing myself to be treated like crap in the vain hope of one day having my efforts be validated with love. As my therapist told me, I needed to recognize the good in myself again, instead of only focusing on what was bad, and to remember that I deserved better.

Some days, it's still hard to do that, especially because my parents and sibling have no remorse for the way they've treated me and still make me feel bad about myself. I haven't completely cut them out of my life for complicated reasons that would make this post even longer, but my therapist taught me strategies for dealing with them. She said that I should severely limit the time I talk to them on the phone and spend less time with them, and I've followed her advice. She told me that I needed to put my foot down with all of them more often, and I have, much to their displeasure, though I still have a long way to go.

I had to put my foot down with the Model too. I never again want to let anyone, whether it be the Model or my relatives, make me feel like I'm someone whose feelings don't matter and who is worthless. Now, I take pride in my academic and professional accomplishments, even though my mother doesn't and my father says I still need to do more. Now, I know that I'm not a loser just because I'm still single at 37, even though my sibling tells me otherwise. I've also lost twenty-five pounds since May, and that makes me feel good too.

"You're stronger than you think," my therapist once told me. "You could have continued obeying your parents and done everything they wanted, but you stayed the course and focused on making your own dream come true instead."

I'm not sharing all of this to make you feel sorry for me. But I wanted to explain why I obsess over things that some people think are not a big deal, and why I regressed into a depressive spiral after I found out what kind of person the Model really was. If it hadn't been for what I learned from those two years in therapy, I might have spiraled even further. I thought maybe this post was TMI, which is why I almost didn't post it. But writing my book-length memoir, Obsessions of a Workaholic, has made me contemplate how and why I became a neurotic workaholic and also includes TMI about my parents and sibling (I do not refer to them as my family and never will). That's why I will have to edit some of it once I finish the rough draft.

What about you? Have you ever been ghosted by a friend? Do you ever worry about including too much information in your own blog posts or manuscripts?

I Give Up

I am a horrible person, and I deserve what happened to me because I should have seen the signs. Or rather, I did see the signs, but I chose to ignore them.

When I saw pictures of the Model with another woman on her Instagram page several weeks ago, I was crushed because that made me realize that there really was no hope that I'd ever get to be with him again. But then just a couple weeks after I saw those pictures, he contacted me, saying that he wanted to see me again. He didn't mention that woman, and I didn't ask. He left College Town to go back to his new place in Chicago, but he said he wanted to see me when he got back.

I wanted to believe that that other woman was just someone he was casually dating. After all, she'd only posted a few pictures of him, and they were all recent. Maybe they had just met, and he couldn't be that into her, after all, if he wanted to be with me again, right?

Wrong.

I couldn't shake the nagging suspicion that there was more to this other woman than meets the eye. So I checked out her Instagram page again and looked further. To my dismay and horror, I realized that she was living with him. There were several pictures of her from months ago in her apartment, the same apartment that the Model started photographing himself in as recently as March. That means that he moved in with her less than four months after he dated me, and based on my online sleuthing, they weren't even dating as of January. She mentioned something about "rebuilding" what they had in one of her posts, which made me think that she was an ex (I think she may even be his former fiancee because he'd once mentioned that he'd been engaged before) and they'd gotten back together.

Could it be that they broke up again, and that he reached out to me after the breakup? Wrong again. Two weeks after he and I slept together, he posted pictures of himself on vacation in Mexico. On his Instagram page, he only posts pictures of himself, no one else, because he really is that narcissistic. I knew that if she posted pictures of Mexico, that meant that she was there with him.

Sure enough, a few days later, she posted a series of pictures of the two of them in Mexico: getting massages on the beach, drinking wine while watching the sunset, her sitting on his lap, etc. She bragged about her "beautiful" relationship with him and how he was the perfect guy (if only she knew!). When I saw those pictures, I realized that he was still dating her when he reached out to me that last time. That sociopath used me to cheat on his girlfriend.

When I saw those pictures, my heart broke, and it was like something froze up inside of me. I recognized that feeling. When I was in high school, I had a huge crush on this guy I worked with at my first part-time job. I asked him out, and he said no. At that moment, I felt something freeze up inside of me. That "something" was the belief that I could find happiness with someone and be his girlfriend.

After my high school crush rejected me that day, I withdrew into my work for years. It was better and safer to be a workaholic. I kept my heart closed off all that time because I didn't want to let anyone break it ever again.

I finally realized, however, that it was time to put myself out there and try dating again. I did everything I could think of to meet someone special. I went to a speed-dating party. I joined a youth group at my church and fell for a really great guy, who fell for someone else. I tried seven different online dating sites. I became friends with Small Town Guy, and watched him fall in love with someone else.

And then I met the Model, and all of a sudden it was like I finally understood what all the fuss was about. I know that whatever he and I had wasn't serious. I know that we weren't exclusive. But that didn't stop me from falling hard for him from day one. I should have blocked him the first time he messaged me on Tinder. I could have saved myself months of emotional turmoil.

When I slept with him that last time, I really didn't know that he was in a serious relationship with her. I really did think that they had just met and weren't exclusive yet. There were all these red flags, but I ignored them because I just really wanted to be with him again. That's why I deserve all the pain and heartache that I'm feeling right now. I never should have agreed to see him that night, and if I'd known that he was in a serious relationship I wouldn't have. I'm a horrible, stupid person. But he's worse.

I texted him to tell him that I'd found his girlfriend's Instagram page and seen the pictures of them together. He didn't answer. I texted him again to tell him to delete all the texts we sent each other. I was afraid that she might get suspicious too one day, go through his texts, and find out about me. She might track me down somehow and confront me at the school where I teach. That may seem unlikely, but you hear stories of women angrily confronting "the other woman" all the time. As they say, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned". If she did that to me, my professional reputation would be destroyed and I might even lose my job. And then I'd fight back against BOTH of them as hard as I could because my work is all that I have left and I'll be damned if I let either of them take that away from me.

He didn't answer my other text either. I thought at first that he was too much of a coward to apologize or explain himself, but then I realized that he just doesn't care. He doesn't care that he hurt me because he never cared about me. What I don't understand is why, if his relationship is so perfect with her, he would reach out to me to hook up. It's one thing for him to treat me like crap because he doesn't give a damn about me (although that doesn't justify what he did to me). But it's another thing for him to betray her when he supposedly cares about her.

He still comes back to College Town a lot because his friends and family live here, and he goes to my gym when he comes here. If I see him again, I might do one of several things: 1) "accidentally" drop a weight on his foot; 2) "accidentally" drop my fist on his face; 3) tell the biggest bodybuilder (preferably one with a bad temper) at the gym that the Model hit on his girlfriend; or 4) ask him why he did that and tell him that it is not okay to treat me like that.

The Model's girlfriend has no idea that he's a cheating liar with no conscience. She gets to live "happily ever after" with him, and he gets away scot-free with cheating on her and breaking my heart. And I get nothing.

Unlike the Model's girlfriend, I am no longer a romantic. I am a cynic, and can you really blame me? I'm thirty-seven years old, and I've been on many bad dates with the wrong guys and failed to make a real, lasting connection with any of them. I'm sick and tired of trying. Maybe this is the universe's way of telling me that I don't get to have a "happy ending" with anyone and that I'm meant to be alone for the rest of my life.

That feeling I had that day that my high school crush rejected me, that feeling where I felt my heart closing up against everyone else, is back, stronger than ever. My Bumble membership expires next week, and I'm not going to renew it. I'm going to renew my focus on my workaholic life because at least there, I can focus on becoming a respected scholar, continue climbing the academic ladder as a college professor, and also devote myself to my writing too. At least those things can make me happy, unlike a narcissistic sociopath with no conscience. If I'm meant to find love, I'm going to let it find me, because I'm done trying. I'm just done, period.

If you were me, would you confront him? Or would you just ignore him? (And don't worry, I'm not going to tell his girlfriend what happened. She probably wouldn't believe me, especially because the Model is a master manipulator and would convince her that I was lying.)

P.S. I'm sorry about the negative tone of my post. It was either write about it or down a bottle of liquor. I figured it was better to do the former.

A Workaholic's Regrets

Although I finally earned my Ph.D., I didn't get to go to my graduation. I didn't have the time or the money to make the trip, just so I could walk across the stage and accept my diploma. I really wanted to go, because I spent years working for that Ph.D. I think I deserved to be honored for it, even just for a moment. Missing out on my graduation made me think of other things I've missed out on.

When I was in my twenties, other people my age went on cross-country road trips and backpacked across Europe. I shelved books, folded clothes and resisted the urge to bitch-slap rude customers at least fifty times a day.

Other young people dated and fell in love, opening their hearts to people. I dated a soldier who told me I was beautiful. I didn't believe him. When he called me, I was irritated that he interrupted me while I was working. He stopped calling. I dated a graduate student who was quiet and kind and genuinely wanted to get to know me. But when I was with him, all I could think about was my work. He stopped calling, too. Every time a guy tried to get close to me, something inside of me froze up and I pushed him away, immersing myself in my work like it was some kind of barrier.

My friends and acquaintances climbed the corporate ladder, got promoted, and became richer. I worked as an adjunct instructor, earning less than janitors. I was on my feet for nine hour shifts at stores, resisting the urge to throw hangers or books at twenty-two-year-old supervisors on power trips. No matter how hard I worked, I was still barely able to support myself.

Friends couldn't understand why my workday didn't end at five P.M. like theirs did, or why I spent most weekends working. I didn't have the time or the money to go barhopping with them. Most of them stopped calling too, except when they wanted to tell me about their loving relationships, children, and successful careers (while asking me very few questions about my own life).

Long after my college classmates walked the stage at graduation, I was studying for my master's degree and then my Ph.D. I took seminars where professors told the entire class that my work was not good enough. I pored over books in the library until I fell asleep, where other students' snoring woke me up. I resisted the urge to scream, "Studying is not SOCIALIZING, people!" at all the loud undergraduates in the so-called quiet study areas.

People my age carried briefcases or diaper bags, while I carried a book bag. They went out for lunch or ate with their coworkers in their fancy office buildings. I ate alone in school cafeterias.

I moved far away from home to teach at a new school. Although I'd worked multiple jobs before, I am working longer hours here, at a full-time job and a part-time job. To my dismay, a third of my full-time salary goes to taxes and benefits, which is why I have a part-time job.

I teach larger classes with more students. My days pretty much have gone like this: teach, meet with students, grade papers, watch TV at home, yell curse words in foreign languages at my neighbors, and sleep. I have little time for anything else. That's why I haven't written any fiction and I've hardly blogged over the past few months, despite my earlier resolve to write more.

I looked in the mirror one day and saw the lines in my face, the gray in my hair, and the weariness in my eyes. I realized that I'd given up or lost everything for my work: my friends, boyfriends, my youth, alternative careers, a city that I loved, and now, my writing. I have become a true workaholic. And I hate it.

I look back on my life and regret that I spent so much time working, even though in most instances, I didn't really have a choice. I did accomplish several of my goals: I earned my master's degree and my Ph.D; I've taught at multiple colleges; I've taught high school; I became self-supporting; I became a good teacher. But I didn't think it would mean losing everything else that mattered to me.

I'll always be a workaholic to some extent. But I finally realized that there has to be more to life than work. Otherwise you'll be the kind of person who dreams that she's working even when she's asleep, or the kind of person who becomes so tired and stressed out that she makes voodoo dolls and pokes them ominously whenever her annoying, inconsiderate neighbors look at her.

What about you? Do you consider yourself to be a workaholic? Do you have regrets over certain things that you gave up or lost?

Crying in Public

Last week I was waiting at a bus stop after I left the hospital (I had another doctor's appointment). I saw a small bird on the street, and it was hardly moving, but I knew it was alive. I thought maybe its wing was broken, but I couldn't be sure. I stood there, watching the bird, not sure of whether I should go out and try to help it or what I could do to help it. Suddenly, to my horror, a car drove over the bird and killed it.

I screamed. Several people heard me scream and kept walking, their eyes averted from my face. One guy who had also seen the bird die tried to comfort me, but I couldn't help it; I just started crying.

I read somewhere that one of the things about living in a big city is that you can cry in public and no one will notice. I've found that that's true. I cried the whole bus ride home, and no one looked at me.

I hated myself for not saving that bird, for not running out to the road, scooping it up in my jacket, and bringing it to a vet or an animal hospital. If I had just done that, that poor bird might still be alive. That bird looked so small, and it must have felt so scared, lost, and alone out there on the road. I kept thinking of what I had seen, and I couldn't stop crying.

I wasn't just crying about the bird. I cried because the doctor told me she was "concerned" about what she saw after she examined me, and she significantly increased my medication (which means the painful and uncomfortable side effects have only gotten worse since then). I cried because that meant I wasn't getting better, and I wasn't sure if I was ever going to get better.

I cried because I was scared. I want this medication to work and to cure me, so that I don't have to get surgery. I don't want to get surgery, and I don't want to go permanently blind if the surgery doesn't work. And I only have student health insurance, which I don't think would cover the entire surgery anyway. I'm having enough trouble trying to get referrals from my primary doctor so that my insurance company will cover all these doctors' visits and medical procedures. The insurance company is trying to make it so that I have to pay for everything myself. I don't have the money to pay for everything, and I don't think it's fair that I should be denied surgery and go blind just because my insurance company is full of jerks.

I cried because of all the work I have to do. I have to give a huge presentation to the entire English department in less than three weeks, and I'm not ready. I haven't had time to work on it. I've been undergoing all these painful medical procedures, struggling to stay awake due to the drowsiness caused by the medication, and spending hours waiting in doctors' offices, clinics, and hospitals (they won't let me use my laptop in there). I also haven't had enough time to send out all my job applications and missed an important deadline for a school that I really wanted to work for.

I cried because I'm supposed to get a fellow graduate student to make an introduction for me at my presentation. I've been to the other grad students' presentations, and they usually get their friends to write introductions that are filled with praise for their work. I asked several people to do my introduction, and they all said no. I rarely socialize with the other grad students, because I don't like going to the bar that they all hang out in (I don't like bars, period. In hell there is no "closing time" at bars.). And it's not like any of them invite me most of the time, anyway. Anyway, I can't even drink alcohol or soda due to the medication I'm on, so I don't really feel like drinking a glass of water and watching everyone else get drunk. I'm dreading getting up in front of the entire department and having no one do my introduction (even my own advisor was unwilling to do it), which will make it painfully obvious that I am an outcast.

I cried because I was angry. I'm angry at the people who refused to do my introduction for me. I'm angry at the people who claim to be my friends and that I can talk to them, but they won't even return my calls or my texts, even though they know what I'm going through right now. I'm angry that even if I send out all my applications right now, my chances of getting hired are slim to none because the fact that I'm a good teacher means nothing compared to the fact that I am an average scholar.

Most of all, I'm angry that even though I don't look sick or act sick (though I'm thankful that I don't look or act sick), I really AM sick. I don't deserve any of this. No one does. I don't know why this is happening to me. I've always been relatively healthy, and I always feel frightened every time I go into the hospital. (This is why I'm glad that I never went to medical school. I doubt my patients would have been okay with the fact that their doctor was more terrified than they were.)

I thought I would be able to go off the medication soon and that it would work. I thought I would get better. But I'm not getting better, and it just makes me furious at the whole world.

I'm sorry that this post is pretty depressing. I try not to write about such dark topics, but sometimes writing about what I'm going through helps me deal with it, if only a little bit. But I'll try to write about something less depressing next time.

What about you? How do you deal with it when you feel mad at the whole world? Also, do you know what you're supposed to do when you find an injured bird?

What I Like about Twitter

When I first heard about Twitter a few years ago, I dismissed it as just another fad that people would get tired of eventually. I did read a few people's Twitter pages, and they mostly Tweeted stuff like, "Going to work. Ugh," or "This is a yummy lunch," along with a picture of whatever they were eating, or a string of "@s" that just said stuff like "LOL!" It didn't really hold my interest, especially since I don't really care about what other people are eating, unless they're going to share their food with me (because, you know, free food!).

I also dismissed it because I suspected that several of my students, who were constantly tapping on their phones during class, were either on Twitter or Facebook. (Side note: I can't help wondering if the current generation was born with tiny cell phones clutched in their fists, because they never let go of their phones.) I disliked any kind of distraction that kept them from focusing on the lesson, and I didn't really see the point of being on Twitter OR Facebook.

My opinion of social networking sites slowly changed after I started blogging. Before I started this blog, I was too shy to show my work to anyone, unless I was in a creative writing class and I HAD to share it with other people. I kept my writing hidden in notebooks, and I kept my dream of becoming a writer hidden from almost everyone.

What I like about blogging is that it gave me the opportunity to "meet" other people, many of whom were writers, who I probably never would have met otherwise. I like reading everyone's blog posts, and I like the "dialogue" that we all get to have, not just in our blog posts but in the comments that we leave for each other.

I set up my own Twitter page a few months ago, partly because of two people who were on Twitter: Joyce Carol Oates and Pope Francis. As a Catholic, I admire Pope Francis, especially because he seems to be very open-minded and is working hard to make some much-needed changes in the Church.

As a writer, I admire Joyce Carol Oates; I always thought she would be one of those writers who shun social networking sites in order to focus exclusively on their novels or short stories. But she Tweets frequently, and even though I don't agree with everything that she writes, it's still fascinating to follow her train of thought.

I started following many other writers and agents on Twitter, as well as a couple literary magazines. It's a good way to find out about writing contests and agents and magazines that are accepting submissions. It's also a good way to find out about new books that other people have written.

I also follow a lot of "joke bloggers", people who write witty and funny one-liners. Some of them are celebrities, like Conan O'Brien, Steve Martin, and Ellen DeGeneres. Others are stand-up comedians or just regular people with a great sense of humor. Reading these people's jokes makes standing in line, my daily commute, and dealing with annoying people a lot easier, especially because doing those things gives me something to Tweet about (and it gives me something to do when I'm on my commute or standing in line).

When I'm having a stressful day, logging onto Twitter and reading about what's going through people's minds often makes me feel better, especially when they Tweet something that makes me think, Yes! I thought I was the only one who felt that way!

I also like that you can "star" or retweet people's Tweets; it always makes my day when someone does that to what I've written, because it makes me feel good that other people are reading and liking what I'm writing. I like being able to "talk" to other people on Twitter, especially because similar to online dating, it's much easier to start a conversation with someone online than to just go up and introduce yourself to an interesting person in real life.

I think that a lot of people join social networking sites like Twitter because they want to make connections with others. It's not the same as an offline connection, of course, but it's still something that makes people, including me, happy. And I think it makes everyone feel like they're not alone.

Twitter and this blog allow me to express myself, because so much of "real life" consists of me holding my tongue; I know that if I say what I'm really thinking in real life, I'd get in trouble. But I can say what I want to say online (though I do censor myself in many ways, just in case), without as much fear that people will attack/criticize/reject me as a result. A fellow Twitter user, who calls herself Sigourney Beaver, Tweeted this recently, and I think it's something that applies to a lot of people, including me: "I'm more myself here than I am in some real life situations because I've just learnt to censor things. This place can be my escape sometimes."

What about you? What do you like about social networking sites, whether it's Twitter, blogging, Facebook, etc.?

What I Don't Tell People at Graduate School

1. I think that the work of Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway, and Richard Wright is more important than the work of Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, and Karl Marx.

2. While you are listening attentively, taking notes, and asking intelligent questions at lectures and workshops, I am checking my watch for the thirtieth time and thinking, I'd rather explain string theory to the Kardashians than be here. Actually, I'd rather let the Kardashians explain string theory to ME than be here.

3. When I sit quietly at my desk in the office that the teaching assistants share, I try not to hear about the parties and outings that you plan together. And I try not to let it bother me that I'm never invited.

4. I feel much happier writing fiction and creative nonfiction than I do writing a dissertation that hardly anyone will ever read (even though I know that there's a chance that hardly anyone will ever read my fiction and creative nonfiction).

5. Oh, my dissertation? I've written about a hundred and fifty pages of b.s. so far, and you?

6. When you laughed at me for staying in the office to work on a Friday night, I never told you how I was tempted to pour soda all over your books and papers after you left.

7. I really do think it's great that you've won awards for your work. The last time I won an award was when I worked in retail, for being a fast and efficient worker.

8. The only people who think I'm doing a great job are my students.

9. I've burst into tears in the ladies' room and started stress-eating Starburst on more than one occasion.

10. I'm always nervous and stressed before I have to meet with my professors, and I'm even more stressed after I've met with them.

11. Sometimes grad school feels like junior high all over again with its "cool kids" and its "cliques", and I'm the weird outcast all over again. Back then I was smart and I earned good grades; at least I had that. But in graduate school, I usually feel like I'm anything but smart.

12. I gave up on trying to be included in the grad school cliques a long time ago. When I'm away from grad school, I go bike riding by the lake when it's warm. I write in cafes and take one-night classes at StoryStudio. I dance at the gym. I go to book signings and other literary events, where I meet authors (last week I got my picture taken with B.J. Novak, aka Ryan from The Office, at his book signing for his collection of short stories!). I read books without any footnotes in them. Those things make me happy, and they give me something to look forward to when I'm at school.

How about you? Do you keep secrets from the people that you work with? Do you still encounter cliques now that you're an adult, or were they left behind once you left school?