Drowning

You remember it plain as day. You were in a dreadful depression for a while thanks to stupid little decisions that you kept making and they kept  causing a problem for your grades. What’s really funny is that in retrospect you don’t even remember what most of them were. So much of it was self doubt, most of the rest was simply failing to prepare. Economics is a very highly complex science and much of it is theoretical. Different aspects and different systems. Different models and different variables. All plugged into varying scenarios knowing that any one scenario involves utilizing more than one model and trying to figure out which is the priority.

You got torched in so many courses because you failed to prepare and didn’t really sit down and chew on what you needed to learn. Eventually you have to start re-taking courses you got D’s in just to up the GPA. Tremendous frustration because they average to the grades rather than replacing them, so if you got an A the second time around, The D and the A averaged to a C+… which is wrong because you got an A! It just took you taking it again.

So there you are with an A knowledge of a subject but treated like you only have a C+ knowledge of the subject. That’s pretty shitty for university to do considering you’re the one paying for it and it cost you a shit ton of money to take a course again just to get a better grade. It’s your time and your money. That’s plenty cost to pay for screwing around the first course.

Depression built on that… you would take a course hoping to up your GPA and you might take a hit in midterms from failing to prepare as much as you needed, and before you knew it you were behind the eight ball because just getting a C didn’t do much good. And every C you got would make it even harder to dig yourself out of the hole.

So if you took a course three times, you would never get out what you needed of it even by getting an A.

And for what? Because jackass ivory tower intellectual Decided that if you can’t figure it out during their allotted time you don’t deserve your degree…. But they deserved to the reap the financial reward of you trying over and over like you were struggling in quicksand of you paying them semester after semester.

It still pisses you off, and rightfully so because that is lawsuit material like you have never heard of. But still you took responsibility for your actions by signing on the dotted line, and there you were.

Late 97 or early 98… Banking. The same 300 level course that dad told you bit him so badly at Clemson; he got a D and was thankful to just get out of there. Torched you even worse. You still remember the final exam. You studied and you thought you were ready to give it a fighting chance, despite the fact that it was going to be seriously tough to overcome how bad the rest of your grades have been all semester… and after waiting an hour for the sake of your dignity so you wouldn’t be the first to turn it in, you turned in the final exam blank with a simple note to Dr. Clary that you would see her next semester.

Be straight with yourself, Atreyu. You had given up. Seriously. As far as you were concerned,  you had no plan. You had no idea how you were going to make it out. And you kept digging yourself into a hole.  taking some elective business administration courses helped some; bringing in a couple of B’s, but then you got bit by the intermodals and another C and D.

Spring of 98 honestly the smartest thing for you to do was cut your losses and leave school. You were spending way too much money per semester to even dream of being able to graduate. You were better off taking that money and trying to restart at a tech school or something. See if you could find a way to just get everyone to ignore the massive failure that you had dug yourself into.

That sinking feeling in your heart that you are so fucking familiar with begin to introduce itself to you. The one that you really don’t feel when you think about it…. but you know it’s always there. Impending loss. Failure.  like living on savings and slowly watching it disappear… wondering what’s going to happen when it’s all gone.

Mom and dad took you to lunch and you were trying to vent as they tried to listen. You said “I Just don’t feel motivated anymore.” Dad said “Then you need to GET motivated!” One of the biggest captain obvious moments you could ever imagine but it actually did happen to you at some restaurant, lolz.

Dad was retired Army reserve. Lieutenant Colonel, 28 years in. Executive VP of his company. He didn’t live in a world where you can depress yourself into failure. It was just an alien concept to him, and he was absolutely no good to you in terms of helping, probably for the first time in your life… and he didn’t know how to process that.

Your trauma – if you can even call it that – was a result of diagnosed chronic depression, determination to avoid the resources of the college provided to those with attention deficit disorder, and a fixation on denial… to which a counselor told you was the natural response of many people to stress – focusing on things that don’t matter to avoid stressing over the things that do… and thus making them worse.

That shit was real though, and you have never gone through anything like it before. You’re pretty intelligent and breezed through high school without much effort; you’d never had to fight your inherent weaknesses that way before.

It pretty much took direct action by God Himself after all of that cost you Flame (well maybe; maybe not now that she finally got her side of it), but God isn’t the one that finally rocked midterms. God isn’t the one that actually sat down and did what you knew you always could have done. You were. God can show you the way but it’s meaningless if you don’t do your part.

But you did, so here you are. Yay.

Different people have different weaknesses. You have yours; and they are fairly mild thanks to blessings you’ve lost count of. Others have wounds that are far deeper. Leading them to places in retrospect so much worse than mere quicksand depression.

You remember staring at the phone with utter disgust as an ex-girlfriend who was trying to be friends with you went back to her boyfriend who hit her. Lil Cathy. She really wanted to be with you, and your time together was fun but… just wasn’t really a good idea, and she really had let herself go while she was married to the guy in the Navy. She and a friend were visiting and her boyfriend at the hotel punched her. You, her friend and one of yours got her out of there and to your friends house  where she’d be safe for the night. She hadn’t even really been with the guy for that awfully long, but to hear it this was the first time it’d happened.

In your mind there is only one logical conclusion; dump the bastard. It’s not like you wouldn’t make sure she got back to Virginia separately. Problem solved.

So the next afternoon when you get off work and heard she had just gone back to him and the two of them left together… she fell into the category so many girls in high school had. Fucking stupid.

I mean you had had it with the nice guy schtick. You’d tried be there to comfort so many girls who just wouldn’t leave jerks, but never physical abuse because A guy hitting a girl was an instant relationship kill in your mind.

To this day you have contempt for poor Cathy. Last you heard she got married. Hopefully to someone else.

You really do have utter contempt for women staying with jerks. You accept that jerks are jerks. You understand they are obstacles through the course of life, and by your nature you are protective and supportive of others. You cannot comprehend certain things through the lens of anything other than absolute fucking stupidity.

Fascinating.

All these years… and you never tied it together with dad and “getting motivated.”

It is objectively clear to you that abusers need to be tossed. It’s not even a question, and frankly you don’t have an ounce of respect for anyone that keeps sticking their hand in what they know is a wood chipper. Simply put… you honestly just don’t have time for that kind of bullshit.

Neither did dad, for a different kind of bullshit.

To people who are emotionally or physically abused, they know what the deal is. They’re not stupid. They understand full well what’s happening but they can’t get past their feelings of coping… just like you couldn’t get past your quicksand of depression.

So… you have two choices. You wash your hands of people in need like you did with Lil Cathy… or you try to find a way to understand the hidden problem that they keep fighting and losing to. 

Your judgment was sunk in a swamp of sadness before God came to you like Falkor from above to save you. As you struggle to come to terms with this realization, two things become clear. You are no Falkor, and if you care, you’re going to have to learn about overcoming wounds you’ve been blessed to never have.

This isn’t the first terrible relationship she’s been in. She seems to gravitate towards them – and she needs help from people that understand a hell of a lot more than you ever will what her quicksand is.

Pray. And learn what she needs from you. She’s not stupid, so stop acting like she’s stupid. She’s wounded. Deeply, and probably for a lot longer than she realizes. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it but learn how best to support her.

And that means shelving your frustration. So yeah… definitely start with prayer.

And if you can’t get past it, do what you need to not make it worse.

Just like dad did for you.

 Start here. https://www.thehotline.org/2017/02/16/supporting-someone-returning-to-abusive-relationship/

And here.

https://www.thehotline.org/2016/09/21/why-do-i-love-my-abuser/

Now… shut the fuck up about it until you have a better idea.