Sorry I have been a real slacker on keeping up with this.
I am going to start on a down note but promise I will try and end it well. I am finding I don’t take to dorm life very well. It has been really tough, especially the last few weeks. I have been here a month now and while school is going good, my personal life sucks ass. I found I HATE my dorm. It is such a flashback to being in prison again. Although at least with prison, I wasn’t stuck alone in deafening unbearable silence, I would rather have all the noise of prison, than the oppressive silence of the dorm. At least the slamming doors, and rattling of keys as the guards came through for the hourly bed checks was in a way a form of assurance that someone was there and gave a crap whether you were in your bed and alright in the middle of the damn night.
I am going to start on a down note but promise I will try and end it well. I am finding I don’t take to dorm life very well. It has been really tough, especially the last few weeks. I have been here a month now and while school is going good, my personal life sucks ass. I found I HATE my dorm. It is such a flashback to being in prison again. Although at least with prison, I wasn’t stuck alone in deafening unbearable silence, I would rather have all the noise of prison, than the oppressive silence of the dorm. At least the slamming doors, and rattling of keys as the guards came through for the hourly bed checks was in a way a form of assurance that someone was there and gave a crap whether you were in your bed and alright in the middle of the damn night.
While prison was an impersonal place, there were still people close at hand that cared, my roommate, never had an issue with me waking her up at night to talk and vice-versa. Of course out in the real world it is a totally different dynamic and when a person is lying awake at night overwhelmed with the strangling feeling of everything closing in on them, it is inappropriate to call someone in a panic and say I can't freaking take this any more. I have never been claustrophobic before and while I still am not that bad I can more identify with the feeling of how the space can close in on a person.
It is so lonely here, I still know very few people and the ones I have gotten to know are not the kind of people I choose to hang out with extensively. I think having no one close to do things with and just being shut up in here all the time only adds to the overall feeling of being in solitary confinement. Kind of makes it overwhelming at times. I am glad my friends that I contact regularly are there for me even though they are miles away because they do make it bearable.
Don’t get me wrong, the dorm is nice, it is much more modern than most dorms, has nice sheet rock walls rather than bricks and is actually quite pretty, but having been incarcerated for some 4 years, the whole thing shrieks to me of incarceration.
All the time people tell me how strong they think I am for doing what I am doing now...going back to school, living on my own, the whole 9 yards. I don't see it as strength. I see it as I have no goddamn choice. My life as I knew it is a total joke, in complete shambles and broken up into little pieces at my feet. Nobody is allowed to see the sheer terror at being alone, and wondering if it will be like that forever. No one is allowed to see the heart that has been shattered beyond repair, or the sometimes overwhelming sense of betrayal I still feel, and the contempt with myself not only for putting myself in that position in the first place, but for allowing it to continue. No one knows the regret I feel at being 49 years old and just finally getting around to doing the things I should have done when I was 18 or 19, or how I look at the new people I meet down here, and wonder why they like me, what do they want from me? How long will it be before even for them something or someone better comes along? No one knows the nights I cry because I really don't know what the hell happened, what went wrong? What could I have done to fix it? Then I get over it and once again look down at the pieces of my life and heart lying at my feet, and pick up a piece...is it my life or my heart? Then I try to put it back to where I think/hope it belongs. While on the outside I am not the emotional wreck I was 2 months ago, it is getting better, and at least on the outside now, I have it under rigid of control, so it doesn't show. I am not brave, I am not strong, I am simply doing the next right thing in my life. Every time I come to a decision that has to be made or a step I have to take I just figure out what is the right thing to do for where I want to end up, then I do it. So don't think I am brave and strong for doing this I am merely doing the only thing I can in this situation by putting myself back together and taking the next right step so that eventually I can come out on the other end of it whole. Maybe a bit or even a lot battered but whole.
Chrystine, or should I say Mags, I could not have gotten through these last two weeks without you. you have been there for me constantly. Without your emotional support and Mags swiping your credit cards occasionally I would not have made it. I love you both so much and you have no idea how grateful I am for all you have done.
All the time people tell me how strong they think I am for doing what I am doing now...going back to school, living on my own, the whole 9 yards. I don't see it as strength. I see it as I have no goddamn choice. My life as I knew it is a total joke, in complete shambles and broken up into little pieces at my feet. Nobody is allowed to see the sheer terror at being alone, and wondering if it will be like that forever. No one is allowed to see the heart that has been shattered beyond repair, or the sometimes overwhelming sense of betrayal I still feel, and the contempt with myself not only for putting myself in that position in the first place, but for allowing it to continue. No one knows the regret I feel at being 49 years old and just finally getting around to doing the things I should have done when I was 18 or 19, or how I look at the new people I meet down here, and wonder why they like me, what do they want from me? How long will it be before even for them something or someone better comes along? No one knows the nights I cry because I really don't know what the hell happened, what went wrong? What could I have done to fix it? Then I get over it and once again look down at the pieces of my life and heart lying at my feet, and pick up a piece...is it my life or my heart? Then I try to put it back to where I think/hope it belongs. While on the outside I am not the emotional wreck I was 2 months ago, it is getting better, and at least on the outside now, I have it under rigid of control, so it doesn't show. I am not brave, I am not strong, I am simply doing the next right thing in my life. Every time I come to a decision that has to be made or a step I have to take I just figure out what is the right thing to do for where I want to end up, then I do it. So don't think I am brave and strong for doing this I am merely doing the only thing I can in this situation by putting myself back together and taking the next right step so that eventually I can come out on the other end of it whole. Maybe a bit or even a lot battered but whole.
Chrystine, or should I say Mags, I could not have gotten through these last two weeks without you. you have been there for me constantly. Without your emotional support and Mags swiping your credit cards occasionally I would not have made it. I love you both so much and you have no idea how grateful I am for all you have done.
Okay, enough whining around. I said I would end on a good note and I will. Classes are going well. I have 4 for summer, 3 online and one face to face class, which ends this week. It is only a 5 week class while the online classes run the full 10 weeks of the summer session. Reaching the half way mark here. I am keeping my grades up. Had a bad test last week, but I had missed 2 classes out of 5 due to bronchitis (obviously this was my face to face class) so had missed 2 days of notes and didn’t do as well as I would have liked on it. I should end the class with a B though in spite of it.
Next week my Academic and Pre-Law Advisor will be back and I am going to go in and see him and try to get going on a couple different internships so I can at least stay busy.
I do like being down in Missoula, although it would be nice if spring or at this point summer ever got here. It is the 20 of June and we have had rain every day I have been here but 2. That makes it hard to get out and do anything. Although I do go out and walk along the river paths now. I enjoy doing that and it is good to get the exercise too. The river is higher than I have ever seen in and that includes all the time I lived down here as a kid.
I know when things get to me like they have been lately I just have to keep my eye on my future and it will all be good. Things may suck right now, but I know they will be better. I have some ideas on where I want to go from here (other than just the generality of being a prosecuting attorney somewhere or hopefully getting into the Federal Court System) and am working to make that happen.
Well until next time.
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