thinking in the shower

i always think best in the bathroom. for some reason, it's a place i can just zone out and focus, especially while i'm in the shower or brushing my teeth. today i'm worried about money, my career after i finish grad school, getting my work done, and appreciating my time with my mom. the money thing is really tearing me up. i decided not to take out private loans, which was a mistake, and have seriously eroded my savings. i'm supposed to live on $9k a year, which will never happen because my rent is more than $1000/month. i always assumed i'd have a job by this point, and that would provide me with an income to live a comfortably frugal lifestyle. instead, every month is a financial battle, especially now that my insurance is screwing me over. i don't know if i even want to be part of my field-i need to figure out my interests, and where i fit in because i don't want to be part of the flourescent-light, 9-5, losing part of my soul every day for a very very small amount of money. i can make more doing almost anything than i can in my field, something i didn't really realize when i got into it. i also didn't think that i'd be in this particular position in my life of caring for my dying parent. i'm really confused and feeling not right. coupled with a summer job application that's due this week for a position i'm not even sure i want, or could even take depending on what happens with mom, my regular course load which is heavier this week, needing to exercise and join weight watchers to do something about the incontrollable binge eating, and trying not to have a breakdown is a lot to handle for me right now. the things that keep me on track, i.e. tennis and therapy, cost more than i feel comfortable spending, so extra tennis time is out. i'm just very tense and stressed out. but keeping a smile and happy attitude nonetheless even though i'm starting to despise being at the house. life is just very hard right now, and i don't see it getting easier any time in the near future. i'm juggling so many things that i'm worried about what will happen when things inevitably start to fall down.

Memories of N.

i found out that N. died yesterday. she was so ill, so consumed by the diseases which wouldn't let her get help and unable to get out. she was suffering so much. i knew i couldn't help her, and i was so wrapped up in my own family problems that i couldn't face her. i've been thinking about it, and there was another reason too: i couldn't bear to see what she had done to herself, intentionally or not.

my memories of N. are old and vivid-A, J, N and I squeezed into the backseat of a minivan after dinner with our parents, playing some sort of detective game. i remember watching ghostbusters in her basement, and the way that A's bat mitzvah videographer followed her around the party because she was so magnetic. i always felt that N. looked out for me because i was the youngest. over the years, she would come into starbucks, and i would catch up briefly and note how thin she'd gotten but know i couldn't help. she reached out to me and gave me some good advice, and i couldn't reciprocate. i couldn't reciprocate because i knew it was so much bigger than anything i could do, and i would be so distressed that my friend was wasting away; one more trauma and my already fragile self would shatter into a million pieces. and now she's gone.

L wrote a song for her, just as he wrote one for mom, and he just kept repeating about how she was breaking his heart. i cannot imagine how painful this is, and was, for L and C. it's not unexpected, because this was the inevitable ending, but it has completely caught me off-guard. she was only 28. and the disease was so horrible, a mental jailcell that was forever locked. the word i keep coming back to is tragic, tragic for anyone who even briefly knew about the situation.

i'm trying to look at this in a positive light, and see this as N's last bit of looking out for me-she's prepping me for mom's funeral. i have no idea if we'll go to the gravesite, or what we'll do in general besides attend the service and sit shiva. if nothing else, my memories of N will always be happy ones, touched with sadness and a sense of the futility. shalom, N.