Due to a pulled muscle in my posterior, I am officially on stand-by.
It's not everyday that I go to a movie and see myself on the screen.
Or maybe I just saw what I wanted to see: the cinematic depiction of all my impossible hopes and dreams. Truly, my own life bears very little resemblance to the story. The startling parallels are those stemming from scenes that haven't happened, and probably never will, but have been rehearsed ad infinitum in the theater of my mind. Why do I prize romance over reality? Why do I want my life to be a movie?
Because the first 24 years have set the stage for a magnificent story, and when I reach the end, I want the whole of the plot to have lived up to its beginnings.
I decided to quit today.
I didn't toy with the idea. I didn't bat it around. I actually decided.
I spent the entire morning in the ladies' crying my eyes out, for you see, I had exhausted my ability to wait until I got home. I can't tell you exactly what I found (and have been finding) so upsetting, except to say that it must be a combination of a million seemingly insignificant things. Altogether, they became overwhelmingly significant and engulfed me like a tidal wave. Drowning in emotion, I clung to my only perceivable deliverance: a less-than-graceful exit from all things grad school. Seeing as I could no longer control my tear ducts while at school, I figured it likely that I may lose it during a therapy session. And that's what every kid needs, a speech therapist having a breakdown.
It can be a somewhat scary prospect when two years of your future, which had previously been spoken for, suddenly become wide open. And with those years, the rest of your working life. I mentally explored the gamut of career fields, from professional harpist to mail carrier. It forced me to face my values and priorities regarding higher education, investments, and quitting. Will I regret not getting my master's? Will I regret being miserable for a substantial portion of my twenties?
I prayed. And I was surprised to realize that I hadn't really done so up to that point. Not about this. I had prayed about a lot of other aspects of the program. The people. My clients. But I knew I was supposed to be there and what I was supposed to be doing. That part was a given.
Then it was taken away.
So I prayed what I had learned to expect from so many other previous trials: Lord, teach me a lesson. Make me feel silly, when I look back on this, for not trusting You in the first place.
My therapy session this afternoon was the best one yet. Everything else fell into perspective. And I felt like a giant tool for telling people I was gonna quit.