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so one small weight has been lifted. i wrote my yiddish exam today. i don't anticipate a very good grade, but the course was never FOR a grade. i feel mildly satisfied with what i learned this year, and i'll probably continue studying it on my own. i have to think jews and germans, after all. gotta get back in that mindset...

oh yeah - that mindset. i was crapping my pants about my eventual return to that "mindset" a few days ago, when everything was looking like it was caving in on me. i was thinking about the fact that it is nearly the middle of april, and that i move may 1st (or hopefully a few days sooner), and how fast the months seem to be zooming by. this led me to think that there would be only: may, june, july, august, then BOOM! i'm back doing my master's degree, this time with the end fully in sight - no ifs, ands, buts about it. it's craptastic, if you ask me.

"scared shitless" is a prominent feeling for me these days. perhaps it's my encroaching birthday, which makes me think about encroaching 30-hood. my gut churns. i'm scared of many things right now - scared of not having my job in the future, scared of having to find some adult occupation, scared of never being able to grow up. so many of my feelings have this angsty aftertaste to them...the words "i feel foolish" have been repeatedly zooming across my brain like some kind of banner. is there a point where one finally feels their age? or at the very least, "grown up?"

i don't know what it would take. now that i've stopped dying my hair, i can see the stray greys - very prominent to me. i continue to dress like a 14 year old boy...even retaining some of the same clothes i had as a teenager. my short stature and babyface in the mirror make me feel like i'm trapped in this state of arrested development, like oskar in the tin drum. oskar chose it for himself, though - fighting against the grown-up horrors. am i "choosing" it? for real?

i guess i expected the feelings of hurt, of sadness, of inadequacy and pain to dissipate with age. as i sobbed in my shrink's office yesterday, my hands covering my face and my mouth open in that silent scream which wrenches the pain up from my abdomen, i thought "when is the fucking pay-off?" *IS* there a pay-off?!? what if there isn't? what is all this pain for, then?

i have been forced to assess my capacity to go it alone. i might have been wrong to think that i could. as fred said, i attach so strongly - my family, my friends, my lovers. and it hurts me equally as strong when they don't, won't, or can't give me some of that attachment back. some of that devotion. some of that loyalty. i had that in d.; she would have gone the whole way with me, but i don't know how much of it was because of 'me'. what did i give her that would make her want to do that, want to marry me, for pete's sake?

i gave her arrested development.

if all i have to offer is myself, then perhaps that's what i'm offering. it seems to explain why my affairs start with such huge, excitable, freeing BANGS and then fizzle, leaving one or the other parties dissatisfied. i offer an escape, but moreso one of those "holiday escapes" - a package deal, trip to cuba, several nights in a resort with prepaid meals, where you can believe that a life where you suffer or have to work in order to survive does not exist. it's always a round-trip ticket, though. you gotta leave sometime.

but the plane touches down and you're back in that dingy airport, waltzing through the door and finding no-one there waiting for you with your name on a sign, no smiling face for you, no flowers. could there be a more humiliating parade? one tries not to make eye contact with those smiling faces, because they fall when they are disappointed that it's you, not the person they thought would walk through that door.

the vacation is over. there are things to do, and lives to live, money to be earned, and why aren't you earning any money, dammit?! stop acting like life is a vacation, k., and suffer through it like the rest of us. don't you see how pleased with are, what with our lives being so Together? if you suffer OUR way, there's a pay-off.

your kind of suffering? that's for losers and poets, and i ain't seeing any published work.