So - I just feel the need to write this somewhere. I had lunch with professor
yesterday, and today I stopped in to talk to another fellow professor-visitor,
and both encounters un-nerved me. Both fantastic people, extremely vital,
confident, articulate, high energy, involved in many important academic
projects such as working on a second book, or putting together an international
conference on Islamic law from an Islamic Feminist perspective . . . I came
home and curled inward feeling the intenisty of my mental diabilities.
At Yale -- before John -- I was like them. Confident, direct and radiating
high energy and a aura of having a right to be here, of being headed in a
direction, intellectually provocative and articulate . . . What happened
between me and John, the way he cooly persuaded me of my patheticness and
shallowness -- of my lack of acumen -- those moments still cling to my insides
and rob me of the life force I sensed in these professors.
It is NOT that I do not fight it. I do. Really intensely. It is just that
when I am with people like this, I become aware, by comparison, of how much I
got damaged from the breakdown. I sleep with sheets on the bed now. I can
teach my classes in an ordered and logical manner. I no longer crawl under the
bed to hide. I like to hear music and no longer cringe at sensory input. I am
cogent and no longer scream or babble in a senseless manner or lay still for 17
hours without moving. But the life-force is dimmer.
Much dimmer. And I do not know if I can acquire it again and yet to "run" with
these people, to make it again in academia I must. I have three
cocktail/dinner parties I must attend and I am afraid. I have had no one in my
home as a friend for two and a half years. Now I must be clever, friendly,
outgoing, and "there."
A student in evidence came to see me today and she told me I was a fantastic
lecturer -- then a woman who works at the school came up and said "everyone
loves you!." I was near to literally bursting in tears -- I feel the pressure
to both perform and appear sane so intensely. I am not getting much done
besides teaching and I must. The applications should of been out a week ago.
The dissertation is sitting here not complete . . . This is Rocky music time in
a real kind of pinch hitting way -- I wish I could hear the music in my head,
but mostly what I hear is whispers of "you're so pathetic" as he throws me to
the floor and I cry out in pain as my head hits the rail of the bed . . .
Okay. Going to try to work. Never say die.
Rosena
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