Have you ever physically felt like you came through something?
I think we all come through things without realizing it.
If we’re lucky, sometimes old emotional pain slips away. You hold onto something for a long time but then, all of a sudden, you find yourself being calm about something you used to be agitated about. Something that used to trigger bad feeling or angst stirs no major reaction from you and you go, “How about that. I’m okay, now.” Do you know what I’m talking about? How you can come through things without realizing it? Emotions, man. Wild stuff.
There are other times, though, when you come through something or you enter a new space and you know you’re different. You know because you feel physically changed and it’s a light-switch moment.
I turned in my thesis yesterday. I have one class left to attend. There’s a reading and a paper to hand in but I say to you this night that the graduate school clock is ticking to a stop and I literally feel like a different person. (That’s “literally” as in “literally” and not just as in “totally.”) I feel like a new woman. I feel like I want to cry. New people cry, you know. Ask a baby.
I have been away for two weeks due to my job, the ending of school (see: thesis) and the website server migration, which is now complete.* The last time I saw you, I hadn’t spent three days and hundreds of dollars making two copies of my 1,512-page thesis. I’ll tell you more about the thesis later; for now, I just have to reconnect and tell you that I missed you and that I am not the same Mary.
Except, of course, that I am. And the foreword to my thesis, which I will post tomorrow, discusses this exact topic.
I missed you all very much. The PaperGirl break scared me. It really did. This blog is such a huge part of my life, a place I devote hours and hours and hours to every week, day after day, week after week, year after year. If I didn’t maintain it, what else would I be able to do?
Maybe a 1,512 page book? But you wouldn’t be there, so what’s the point?
I’ll tell you more about the thesis tomorrow and I’ll post the foreword, too. Fair warning: In the next week or so, I’m going to do something I’ve never done before: I’m going to do a Pendennis / PaperGirl Pledge Drive. My student loans are coming due, I’m working at a startup, the server migration was not free, and … well, I asked a few friends if I should do it and they grabbed me and said, “YES, MARY.” If you want to get ahead of the curve, there’s a “Donate” button up there that should work beautifully, thanks to Julie.
Tonight, I cried in my kitchen. I asked myself if I should start up the ol’ PG again or not. And I wept to think I wouldn’t.
*I’m working with Julie to tweak and revamp the website. Now that school is 97 percent done, this is actually possible. I know it needs help — and I’m interested in working on the blog’s formatting for readability and aesthetic. So please standby and be patient. I’m going to make it very nice, I promise!!
**IMPORTANT: My blog used to weirdly, horribly, be a different URL than my website. Don’t ask because I HAVE NO IDEA WHY. Anyway, if you have a bookmark or a subscription, please, please, please change your whatchamacallit to this: www.maryfons.com/papergirl … Pendennis thanks you and so do I.