Fear

Lately I've fallen into this state where I just don't care about school anymore. It's a really bad state to be in considering I still have two phases of a project to do plus two finals, but I don't know. I came out of the 120 midterm this week with the feeling that no extra amount of studying would have prepared me any better... which was rather frustrating because I always perform just below the average in that class. I feel like I've already hit my limit in how much I can actually study, but my performance is still mediocre... the recurring theme of my college career since I switched to EECS.

I don't know if it's good or bad that I don't care anymore. I don't really get upset like I used to... I just feel like I'm used to it now. Or have moved on to the point where I know that there're more important things in life than grades. Even though I commit enough of my life to school as it is.

This semester's been... all right. I guess. I've gotten more sleep than I ever have since first semester freshman year, but at the same time it's come at the cost of spending more late hours in lab, and overall feeling more worn out in the long term. I miss seeing people on a more regular basis, but it's okay when I see them I guess. Overall, though... I feel detached from everyone.

It's been occurring to me more as of late how much I take company for granted. I've never been good at keeping in touch with people long distances, so living in the dorms and then this apartment has been a good experience in letting me interact with people more on a regular basis. Especially compared to home, where I hardly talk to anyone anymore. I didn't really have much of a community at home either.

The problem is that even in Berkeley, I rarely go out of my way to talk to or hang out with people unless it's convenient to do so. Living in close proximity with people is convenient. That is going to be less so next semester, as our apartment group is splitting up and we're moving to a smaller apartment on southside (presuming we find a place, anyway). On one hand, this means the majority of Berkeley social life will actually be in walking distance for once... but it also means I'll have to put more effort to actually see people who live outside my apartment.

It didn't really hit me until this week, when I suddenly stopped caring about school and had just stumbled through a midterm, essay, and didn't do a project - but I am actually rather tentative about how things'll be next year. I'm afraid I might just continue the trend that started this year, of just getting more bogged up with work and other preoccupations to the point where I feel like I can't relate to people anymore. It's gotten to the point where these hypothetical scenarios start popping up in my dreams of me cooping myself up in my room more and more, slaving away at some lab or some project, or otherwise just laying around in a mood where I just don't want to see people. I am afraid of becoming colder, of getting to that point where seeing people itself somehow becomes a burden in itself. It already feels like it does.

Furthermore, I am afraid of feeling abandoned. That one feeling I prayed about back in February, of feeling like I'm the only left to fend for a problem that no one else cares anymore. It's not really so much a rational feeling- (although people have apologized to me for feeling like they have abandoned me) - as it is something generated by my own self-pity. But it is dangerous. It makes me get into that mood where I just don't feel like working, and where I just don't feel like talking to people in general. It prevents me from sleeping. It's what causes me to start daydreaming about stupid hypothetical situations - like getting shot or hit by a car and wondering how people would react. Yes, I still do that once in a while. And am really disturbed by the fact that I do.

So I was wading through that emotional pit the other day, when in the middle of it all, I remembered that prayer I made the one night I wrote this:

Last Friday I came home in a state of distress and started crying out to God over the state of the things I saw, because I couldn't really talk to anyone about problems that weren't mine that still somehow upset me as much as if I were the one being offended, and I just wanted to stop caring about those problems because it seemed like not even the people involved actually cared about what was happening. And I thought I was just getting caught up over nothing. Like seriously, why am I the one getting upset over this?

I don't know if the recent developments in my life were the result of God answering that prayer - the part where I asked not to be alone anymore. If anything, I feel like my life has been heading in the complete opposite direction. If anything, I feel like I'm going to feel even lonelier next year, being cut off from much of the community I'm used to seeing regularly. And there are those little things that made me cut myself off even more - losing that damn sweater. I'm still mad about it.

But God kept coming back to me in my head. Reassuring me in the midst of my sleepless grief that I've never been alone, that I will never be alone, because he's been with me all along. Even all those times I yelled at him, those times I just wanted to rebel against him, those times where I acted as if I'd forgotten he existed because I couldn't give a **** anymore.

Why do you still bother with this, I say. Even when I do try to talk to you, half the time I'm wondering if I'm doing it sincerely. Half the time I don't even listen to what you actually say. Besides, I can't minister to people by myself. I've never been able to do anything by myself, not even fix my own problems. I've always had to rely on someone else to keep me accountable, someone to lift me back out of these emotional pitholes. What'll happen next year when I just decide to disappear from everyone's sight?

I have faith in you. Why else did I put you here?

You tell me, why did you put me here? WHY ME?

Ryan, how much are you willing to give up in order to follow me?
--

I know, this is probably the 24434239i5349th time I've heard that question. But it took this time to actually jolt me back into reality.

Now of course, I haven't exactly resolved anything yet. But for once, I'm going to accept this chance and take a risk. To live next year fuller than whatever my fears and nightmares say it will be.

Of course, I still have to get through this problem set and project I've been neglecting. -_-