"shoulding" myself to death

Apr 04, 2008

Sometimes you truly have to hit bottom before you can bounce back. Emotionally, this was my hardest week in law school. I had been doing such a good job keeping my personal problems outside of the law school building. I had this mentality that 'I am in a professional school and no one here cares if I have issues going on or not.' Well, when those issues start to make it so you are too overwhelmed, panicked, and apathetic, then there is a problem. For me, that problem presented itself in the form of me breaking down in tears in my constitutional law professor's office. He looked at my quiz grades on his spreadsheet, looked at me, and said "this doesn't add up...the person who presents herself in class every day, especially in the first amendment debate, is not the person who gets Ds on quizzes" then he started scolding me for not going to tutoring sessions and not studying enough, and I just started crying. He asked me a bunch of questions about my life outside of school, narrowing down different reasons why I might be stressed. The last question was "is there anything going on that is distracting you mentally and/or emotionally?" I hate that question. I hate it. It makes me feel so weak when I have to answer yes. I told my professor about my mom and about moving to DC and living on my own and my dad getting re-married and breaking up with Matt...then I told him the time-frame. The funny thing is, whenever I tell anyone the whole story, I get this look that seems to say "how the hell do you get out of bed in the morning?" I didn't even tell him about my medical stuff (if my prof was a woman I might have). The best part about the conversation with my professor was the look on his face when I told him that I am the maid of honor.

I hate telling people that I see a counselor and that I take anti-anxiety meds. I know that those things are more common than I think and that it is better to get help than to not, but I saw law school as this chance to start over and not be labeled anymore. Well, now I'm "one of those girls in law school who cries." My professor suggested that I meet with one of the academic deans just so there is some form of documentation in case I end up with a D in the class and need to re-take it. When I met with her, she made this amazing statement that gave me a moment of clarity. She said "stop 'shoulding' yourself. you keep saying that you 'should' be able to handle this and that you 'should' be getting better grades. don't do that to yourself. give yourself a break and just do the best you can." No one has ever said anything like that to me ever before in my life. It was always, "Rachel is so strong. Rachel is so put-together. Rachel is resilient..." etc etc you get the idea. Finally, someone is acknowledging that while my life may not be completely tragic, I have dealt with things that have a significant impact on me and it is ok to let them have that impact. My dad likes to remind me how much worse other people have it. Well, of course there will always be someone worse or better off, but that doesnt change what goes on inside of me.

I wrote a letter to my dad last week explaining alot of what has been going on with me. The letter he wrote back is very touching and I'm glad that I had the strength to finally communicate with him about alot of this.

I feel like so much has been expected of me for so long, and it is all finally breaking through. I have cried more this week than I have in a long time. My mom used to refer to times like this as "humbling experiences." Letting people see your emotional vulnerabilities is definitely humbling. However, both my dad and my professor are very proud of me for finally letting them help me.

I have 4 more weeks of law school. Then exams. Then my first year will be over. Thank God.

By the way, things continue to be weird with the current guy. We seem to be playing phone tag alot. I don't even know if I want to see him right now. I'm disappointed about how the scenerio with him is playing out, but like I've said before, I'm learning from this experience...I'm learning that I am strong enough to be on my own and no amount of butterflies can make a relationship solid if there isn't a true foundation. He is definitely in my life for a reason, there are too many similarities between us that can't be ignored.