Clutter

I had a lovely Thanksgiving Break, but I woke up this morning and lay (lied?) in bed for an hour thinking about all the things that were stressing me out. All the clutter in my head. I picture crinkled balls of paper, tangled red yarn, strips of caution tape drowning out crowds of good thoughts. Bad thoughts include and are not limited to the following:

-Going back to school tomorrow, writing three term papers, planning a lesson for my baby freshmen tomorrow
-My brother coming home from his mission in January and trying to friend me on facebook; me eventually having to explain why I've blocked and then defriended my entire family
-This time last year, when I had to write several term papers, I was more suicidal than I've been in the whole last year, and it was basically hell, and I'm starting to get worried about that happening again
-I have to go to therapy on Tuesday (well, I mean, I don't have to go....I'm the one who made the appointment), and therapy is helpful but also stressful and what are we going to talk about and how much am I going to cry
-Thanksgiving is over and wasn't too terrible with my family, but now I have Christmas to worry about, and for Christmas Break I actually have to stay at my house, instead of this break where I only had to be there for three hours on Thanksgiving

And so on and so forth. It was not very restful. 

In contrast, Thanksgiving Break was lovely. I watched three Harry Potter movies and a ridiculously adorable adaptation of Snow White, tried to catch up on Once Upon a Time (I am now officially on episode 8...of season one), and spent one whole remarkable day just reading my favorite Harry Potter book (which is the fourth, which is THE BEST ONE OKAY except for the seventh and okay possibly the third). I graded student papers and read one essay for class. It was the best five days of the entire semester.

School is hard. Grad school is harder, and grad school at BYU is the hardest. I'm just throwing that out there. I guess the light at the end of the tunnel is that there are only two more weeks of actual school. Two weeks of writing papers, staying up late, frantically cramming, planning a final for my poor hapless students. I'm hoping I can keep the suicidality down this time around, but I'm not sure how. I guess that's what I can talk about at therapy tomorrow. In the meantime, I think I'll keep focusing on my good old Harry Potter books, watch the sporadic tv show, and maybe kick of my Sailor Moon rewatch:

Sailor Moon is the best, and don't try to deny it. 

Otherwise, there are still helpful quotes to read when I start having existential crises about faith and God and religion and the future, including this one:

“…through all our lives we are faced with the task of reconciling opposites, which, in logical thought, cannot be reconciled… do it by bringing into the situation a force that belongs to a higher level where opposites are transcended – the power of love… Divergent problems, as it were, forces us to strain ourselves to a level above ourselves; they demand, and thus provoke the supply of forces from a higher level, thus bringing love, beauty, goodness and truth into our lives. It is only with the help of these higher forces that the opposites can be reconciled in the living situation.”
~ E. F. Schumacher

And maybe by rewatching Beasts of the Souther Wild, which was the best thing to come out this last year. Here's the gorgeous clip I'm showing my little BYU students tomorrow

And, as always, here's the poem of the week. Not a happy poem, but a beautiful one, and I find solace in the strength of words. I hope it helps in the coming weeks.

There was a point in our lives

where if I slit my throat, it was you who would bleed.
You say goodbye too often in autumn.
Tonight the last leaf fell off the tree beyond my bedroom window,

and I could hear the sound of branches aching for love to wrap

around their leaves like limbs.
It was three a.m. in the last stretch of May.

Springtime calls for heartbeat symphonies

and when we pressed our bodies together they coincided like

chords, like staccatos when I ran my hand down

your spine.
Fog is one of the top reasons that drivers get killed each year.
In the backseat of my car we almost caused

the hundredth casualty,

but all I got were bruises in the shape of apologies

along my thighs.
There are certain people who leave scars when they go.
Tonight I cut my thumb while I was peeling an apple.

I thought of you.”A Rendition of Autumn, Shinji Moon