I buy my planbooks in the summer for the upcoming academic year because I'm a student and I've been a student for a long, long time and now it's just habit so I do wonder what might happen if I switch to some other planbook-buying pattern. The point here is that I was looking for information from June 2010, which is the last month in that particular planbook. But I confusedly opened the FRONT of the book first and quickly realized I was in the WRONG SECTION-- Summer, 2009.
There are weeks and weeks and weeks with nothing written in them. Weeks when I was in LA or when I was traveling back and forth between LA and SF. Weeks when I was still wrapped up in an emotionally abusive relationship. I vaguely remember feeling like I was waiting for something. Waiting for the Crazy Ex to get his life figured out so that my life could be figured out. Because at the time my life was essentially an extension of his life.
I have jumbled, dim memories from this time. I see that I blogged, there are indeed archives. In July I nebulously talked about being unhappy, in August I avoided any difficult subject altogether. Huh. Nebulously unhappy and avoiding difficult subjects. Yep, I'd say that about sums up the summer of 2009.
There are also some photos from that summer. This is my favorite.
As I mentioned, the pages of my planbook are largely empty from that time. I started writing in it again around the end of August. The things I wrote then? Oh, just normal things. But my handwriting is big, scrawling, shaky, dark. CALL HEALTH CENTER my planbook seems to scream at me.
GET NEW STUDENT ID
4:15 APPT
DO CLINICAL PPWK
Regular school stuff but written frantically, chaotically. Deep indentations in the paper where my pen was pressed hard.
What I see now when I read those words?
I'm trapped.
I'm afraid.
I have lost myself.
I was getting organized for school and clinicals but at the same time I was drowning.
I once had an English professor in college who told my class that the literary concept of foreshadowing is basically a load of crap because you only notice it when you look back on it after the big foreshadowed event has already taken place. When I look at that photo and page through my planbook I feel chilled and dizzy and anxious because I know what was about to happen. My tenuously balanced life was about to come crashing down; the masked monster was about to reveal his true form.
And, spoiler alert, we know that I made it out alive and well. But looking back at the things from that time is chilling. It reminds me of just HOW lost and confused and in fathomless denial denial DENIAL I was. And it makes me, for the hundredth, or thousandth, or millionth time grateful for the chain of events that wrenched me away from the dismal path on which my life was set.
