9:40 p.m. I’ve literally been reading for twelve hours. Trying to cram one-hundred pages of a late 18th-century novel into a week already bursting with other assignments, therapy appointments, and the overwhelming weight of my daily existence. I have a paper due about this reading at midnight.
Three hours ago, my husband — my hero in all of this — walked through the door and I nearly had a full-on nervous breakdown. I can’t work when he’s in the living room, so now he’s sequestered in the bedroom until I finish this damn assignment, and I am riddled with guilt.
This is what life looks like when you’re closing in on forty-eight and have decided to pursue your life-long dream of acquiring not one, but three bachelor’s degrees.
I am also — at the same time — trying to overcome mental health issues and maintain more than eight-years of sobriety. (And have I mentioned I weigh 310-lbs and need to find the time to do something about that, too?!)
The Cycle of the Perfectionist
I’m a fantastic student when I apply myself. Partly because of my mental health conditions. My OCD drives me to do everything just right—redoing assignments and perfecting infographics until I’m nearly blind. I have the work ethic of a perfectionist… until I crash and burn. Then I just don’t give a fuck. I fall behind, make excuses, and finally have to claw my way back up. It’s an excruciating cycle for me, and it ain’t no picnic for my husband either. But somehow, we manage.
Feeling On the Outside
Often though, I feel as if I just don’t fit in the world I’m living in.
On Campus: Younger students make no sense to me. They seem to want to cruise through life with minimum effort and maximum results. They also can’t spell for shit, and grammar seems a foreign concept—which, for an English major, is a particularly special kind of agony.
In the Rooms of the Anonymous: And honestly? It’s not just the young folks. I encounter it in twelve-step programs too. People say they want what I have, but they don’t want to work for it. It’s a revolving door of folks who either continuously relapse, or tend to disappear—never to return. (Though my hope is that they have found recovery elsewhere.)
Bold, Brilliant, and Broken
Don’t get me wrong… I have a whole heap of my own shortcomings. But the difference is I have learned to own them. I also do my best to try and overcome them. I’m not always successful. I have my fair share of “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days,” but eventually, I do get off my ass and move in the right direction.
Summa Cum Messy is not a “how-to” guide. It’s not about being right or being perfect or even knowing what to do. It’s a report from the trenches on how I keep swimming.
It’s dark, it’s joyful — and most of all — it’s real. My goal is to prove that a person a little beyond the “best years” of their life can revive themselves — and maybe, just maybe, be bold, brilliant, and broken all at the same time.
I sincerely hope you’ll join me.