In the Year of our Lord of COVID Issue #13 Britons v Romans
Days in lockdown: 311
Mood: Stable and cheery
Blah blah blah, remain stable, blah blah blah, doing well with daily life, blah blah blah, I’m sleeping at night.
I’ve decided to start wearing make-up for the first time in over a year so I can feel vaguely human. I’m deciding to go back to a “natural” hair color but keep a streak of an “unnatural” color. The upkeep for all over unnatural color is insane. Thursday caught a cold. I donated blood on Sunday. I’ve co-opted TEH’s old man sweater to the point we bought one of my own. I’m reading books again and I forgot how much I love it.
There. We’re caught up.
A couple of episodes back, I did a post on WONDERFUL THINGS because we all need WONDERFUL THINGS right now while 2021 slowly stretches out to hand 2020 its beer. I predicted on election day the worst was yet to come and we got a taste of that on January 6. (I do love this story of the “liberal lesbian in the family” who turned in her mother, uncle, and aunt to the authorities as Capitol terrorists after the insurrection.) The FBI is prepping state houses for potential protests that could get ugly. So, yep.
This whole post is a WONDERFUL THING because instead of obsessing HOW THE WORLD IS ENDING (or not), I’m giddily obsessing about my upcoming class at Oxford.
In that couple of episodes back, I mention that I signed up for the Britons in the Roman World class and the emails have started coming in for the pre-class work. I’ve gotten my Canvas and Microsoft Teams logins already. It feels surreal to be taking classes again after being out of school for a decade but it also feels super natural. I’ve been tossing around for years on getting my PhD or JD because that is what I was born to do is to learn.
When I was diagnosed with ADHD in my late 30s, I began to grieve for the “what could have beens” with my education and I haven’t really stopped. In high school, I’ve always been put in advanced classes, but my grades were poor. I scored high on tests but would be close to failing classes. I could never understand that for someone who was so smart, how I was so fucking stupid. Why could I not comprehend what came so easily to others? I got a GED and instead of feeling empowered that I scored so high on the test (99% percentile), I felt even dumber for not even being able to complete high school.
I obsessed over going to an ivy league college but as my GPA plummeted and the likelihood of even graduating from high school continued to drop, I saw my life as an endless series of low paying jobs and living paycheck to paycheck. I saw myself in a dead-end marriage and suicidal. I felt like I was cheated out of things for reasons I could never understand, and it burned me hard. And to some degree, it still does.
I try to not be so obsessed with the past, but it’s frustrating knowing my mother knew since I was young I was mentally ill and only she never really addressed it. The mania that shaped my late teens and early 20s could have been, at the very least, kept in check. But it wasn’t. And if it was kept in check, so much potential would not have been lost.
When WorldCom started imploding in the early ‘00s, I took the opportunity to break-up with ex-fiance #2, gave my notice, and moved from NoVa back to Michigan and go back to school. I started classes as a sophomore with an incoming GPA of 1.9 at Aquinas College and graduated 2.5 years later with a 3.4 and a double bachelor’s.
Then, as it goes on, I got my MA and then my MLIS with a double concentration (which Wayne State considered to be two separate degrees). So, now I have five degrees when I didn’t ever think I could get even one.
Yes, I over compensated.
(Additional overcompensation, I want to go to each of my high school reunions, carrying my professionally framed degrees and slapping them on a table like a poker hand while snarling at my high school tormentors, “How about them apples, bitches!” (Immature, yes. But also, very satisfying.))
But time ticks on and after being in college racking up debt for my education, it was time to step back into the real world. So, I got a big girl job and made good money I never thought I’d ever make and now I could afford things I never thought I could ever own new. There was that speed bump from 2014 – 2018 but I eventually got back on the horse and got a better job where I can make six figures fairly easily and I’m no longer figuring out how many hours I need to work to buy my favorite mascara.
But I still do not feel that I am good enough because I didn’t go to Oxbridge or an ivy league college.
People have tried to reassure me that I’m super smart and not having gone to an ivy league or Oxbridge does not make me any less brilliant but failure still attempts to choke me and I feel the hands of hatred around my neck. It is what it is and I’ve spent 30 years trying to reconcile obsession with what cannot be changed and most of the time I am successful, but the rare times I am not is painful and depressing.
But now I know how to study and work with my disabilities. And when the opportunity to take classes at Oxford came up, I jumped at the chance. I even paid extra for CAT points which allows the class to be transferred into a curriculum to count towards a degree in a number of UK universities (including Oxbridge).
(The other best £ I ever spent was when I was in UK in 2012 and Alice took me to Cambridge where I learned I could get a reader’s card to the library system for a mere £10. I still carry that card with me even though it is long expired because it has my picture and name on a Cambridge library card.)
In December I read The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Nora Seed wants to die and at that very last moment before she does, she is given the opportunity to try on her other lives in parallel universes to see if any of those lives would have made her happy. Her regret and frustration of all those lives if a single thing had changed was bitter but there was a certainty that came out of all if it. The lives she thought were perfect were very much not. She may not have found the perfect life but what this experience taught her is the endless amount of possibilities that stretched before her in her existing life. She could be and do anything she wanted. There was no limit to her possibilities.
I am Nora Seed. The regret of not going to Oxbridge is fading because through modern science and interwebs, I can take classes from Oxford at home AND apply it to a degree. I am in fact, creating my own opportunity and I’m going to take it. You never know what will happen.
Interesting Things (or things to buy)
Still hawking my Pops on eBay if you are so inclined to shop
A friend reached out that they were into buying the TomboyX bras I mentioned a couple of episodes back and wondered if I had a referrer code. Turns out I do! ($20 off your first order!)
The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar is the first book I got from the Nowhere Bookshop Fantastic Strangelings Book Club and it is beautiful
Links to Read That are Not Depressing:
Revisiting 'Showgirls', 25 Years Later [PCHH podcast]
Woman caught walking husband on LEASH to get around COVID curfew in Canada: cops
11 Things you can do at home when exploring The British Museum
Dutch officials seize ham sandwiches of drivers arriving from UK
Weekly Tarot Card Pull
Too tired to do it this week.
As always, don't be an ass. Wear a damned mask.
lisa x
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Image depicting the black death in a book by French chronicler
and poet, Gilles Li Muisis (1272 - 1352). Artist unknown.