Not enough.

So, haven’t been here in a while. Partly because I felt I should try and maintain some sort of emotional distance; SP reminds me a lot of a mental landscape I know very well, but like to pretend doesn’t exist.

It might have been working. I never know until things fall down around my head.

It’s not even (not ever) anything big. Just grade averages and rankings and the stress of not knowing, because I need that scholarship but that’s not even the reason. It’s just because I care, I give everything in this course a hundred and twenty per cent and come up worse than people who can afford to go on day trips and think about celebrities when I don’t even get to have meals without a textbook. It’s not a surprise, I’ve known all my life that I’m a little bit slow for how intelligent I’m “supposed” to be (but the people who make those assessments don’t know that yes I got an A in Physics, but I lived and breathed it until the books and papers outside of required work stacked to half my height). But you see the people I’ve known all my life have cared just as much as I do, would have killed themselves quite literally for a 95. Some of them dance for longer than they sleep, work themselves literally to the bone and I can’t grudge them their success – anyone who works that hard deserves it. This hurts in a way I’ve never felt before; these people don’t know. Never been baptised by fire or found any subject impossible, never attempted an impossible subject just to see how it would play out. They see the easier path, open just for them, and they use it. They’re OK with giving 99%. They know how to let things be. I never knew anyone before who even considered that an option. Giving 99% to my college crowd is also known as slacking off, never mind that 50% from some of those people would’ve been more than enough.

I don’t like people who slack off. Maybe just because I don’t get to do it much. Maybe because it’s a crying shame, especially when the people concerned are quite frankly brilliant.

And I’m trying to hold things together because my flatmates are moving in so I need to help and act like a decent human being. But the only thing I can really think about is all the work I should be doing that their presence deprives me of, and I can’t help resenting them just a little bit for expecting to move in a week before term starts and have everything sorted – I’ve been here near enough a month and I’m still falling apart at the seams. It makes me wonder if it really is just me. And I haven’t thought, what’s wrong with you? for a while, but that’s taken over everything. Why aren’t I smart enough, why can’t I get a grip on my feelings, why do I need five hours of sleep. Why I don’t care if my sofas don’t match or if I never travel and if I only speak to four people on a semi-regular basis. Why “the only thing [I] care about is work” – no, that’s not it, I’m not like you and there isn’t enough of me to care about more than one thing at a time. I do need to feed myself somehow so “work” has to be it. Also? Work is predictable: it never ends.

I just can’t stop crying, and all this feeling is a disgraceful waste of time. Disgraceful, period, all this feeling sorry for myself. I can’t afford it; I don’t need to feel I just need to function and of course that just starts me all over again. This part of me is despicable, pathetic, no use to anyone. I need to get rid of it somehow.