Unboasting (Part 1)

I’m not quite sure if unboasting is a thing, but if it is, that’s what I’m doing. Since my last proper post (ignoring the reblogging of adorable and uplifting motivational stuff), I have reached the bottom of the bottomless pit of despair, and I have (with the help of some VERY special and lovely friends) managed to claw my way back out of it. The way down: I don’t cope very well with stress and I have known this for a long time; however, I also work at my best when I am under pressure. I saw a graph the other day on here that illustrates it perfectly. A few months ago I had to make the decision to defer my graduation until later in the year (I was supposed to finish my degree in May and graduate in July; I ended up finishing my degree on Wednesday, get my results mid-September, and I’ll be invited to next year’s graduation ceremony), so my 10,000 word dissertation wasn’t due until 1st August, instead of the original date in late April. I also made the decision to do a dissertation in lieu of exam for one of my modules (Shakespeare), which was also deferred until 1st August. When it came to August 1st, I was panicking like crazy; I barely had half the 6,000 words I needed for the Shakespeare dissertation, and I still needed about 1,000 for the other one. Thankfully, my department took pity on me and extended the deadline until Monday, when I successfully handed in my main dissertation, and then again until Friday, and once more until the following Monday for the Shakespeare dissertation. The problem? Every time I sat down and started trying to write, I started to panic. I was so useless, why was I even bothering trying to write this thing when it was all bullshit anyway? I still had so much to write, and not enough time to do it in. I kept calculating in my head over and over how many words I would have to write per day, per hour, per minute, to get the job done, and the answers always made the prospect of finishing look bleaker and bleaker and bleaker. I found a temporary solution to this problem. Stop writing; buy ice cream; feed face; stare into bottom of empty tub; cry. It ended up taking me a whole week to write 500 words. That’s just over 70 words per day. This was really, really bad. I felt like I would never see the end of it, and all I could hear going round in my head, over and over, was Useless. Worthless. Stupid. Failure. And then, in my aunty’s voice, This Is Important. You Must Do This. You Must Finish This Thing. Then back to my scathing internal monologue, Failure. Disappointment. Then, probably because of the stress, the lack of sleep and the overindulgence in ice cream, coffee and energy drinks, my MS symptoms started to flare up. They were having a great party! My right eye decided that it had seen the left eye doing its little jive, and it wanted to give it a try. Then they both decided they’d work together on it, and leave me with double vision for a bit. That was the point at which I reached the bottom of the bottomless pit.



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