Let me "should" you for a moment:
It shouldn't be hard to get off of the bathroom floor.
It shouldn't be hard to get out of bed.
I should be smiley and happy.
I should be shouting from the rooftops.
All the time.
Let's be honest, my life is magical. I have a United States passport, and I have used it. A lot. I am white, I am middle class, I am able bodied. As a millennial I received trophies for participating in t-ball, for getting 5th place in the soccer league. I have just the right amount of familial dysfunction to seem interesting.
Good things happen to me. My world is a beach, and I am constantly sipping from an umbrella garnished cup. And I know, I know, but sometimes there's this darkness and I just can't even...well, you know, get out of bed.
No reason, except maybe for the fact that along with a trophy, millennials were also gifted with a constant gnawing belief that a financial collapse looms, threatening to spiral into a society wide apocalypse. Maybe the anxiety over this possibility has driven me into a state of the medical diagnosis blues. Or maybe I'm just being whiny and entitled?
I doubt my voice. I doubt my choice. They say change is our one constant, but I also harbor doubt with the same constancy. I don't know if going to physical therapy school is the right thing to do.
So why did I start?
1. Sometimes you just have to choose something. Along with trophies and paranoia, privileged millennials are also gifted with the optimism that they can be anything, if only they love it and want it enough. I have wandered for two decades, seeking some ultimate fulfillment at which to throw myself, some thing always around the corner that will cause me to leap out of bed in the morning like a caffeine drip. But I no longer believe that unicorn exists and I grow weary of dressing as a maiden waiting for it to appear. Seriously, I am almost 30. Can't fool anyone with that.
2. My brain is rebelling against a lazy supplication to my fickle heart, prone to breaking for no reason. I'm tired of the dark days. Where does the darkness come from? Perhaps I can just go choke it off somewhere near the source. So I moved back to my hometown, back to the house I grew up in. And it's not that terrible, and I can't explain it, but it is truly the last place I would like to be. I'm supposed to be cool and cool people do not move back home. People who have given up move back home.
There's an idea in yoga that involves dukha and sukha. Dukha is a state of suffering, in bitterness, and general awfulness. Sukha is sweet, lovely, and all the feel good feels. We all want some sukha in our lives. One way to get more sukha is to just be a chill yogi and meditate on love and kindness, save whales, and whatnot. But dukha is also translated as obstructed space. Something that is in the way. The kind of mountain pass you can't just traipse around by winding through the valleys. Sometimes you have to go through the dukha to get to sukha. Plus there are some sort of lessons to be learned in sitting in the dukha and surviving. According to one of my favorite teachers dukha can also be translated as a pile of shit or better yet, a diaper full of it. Here I am sitting in my own shit, waiting to bust through this obstruction.
I am a couple of months into the program, studying physical therapy. How I wish I could tell you everything is wonderful now, that making a choice made me grow up and suddenly I am happy and shiny. The other day I was looking longingly at the coffee maker waiting for a brew when one of my classmates said, "Sometimes I just can't believe I'm so close to living my dream. I've wanted this for so long. Somebody pinch me!" I gagged and wished somebody would pinch me from this mediocre nightmare. She's here with her soulmate of a career and I feel like I'm just dating some guy who has a job and asked me to dance.
And physical therapy school is hard. During the first lecture, I tried halfheartedly to follow a litany of soft tissues and structures around the shoulder, but I felt old, and dumb, and disinterested. When the lecture finally finished, I tried to read the related readings in a text book and I fell asleep on the pages. I dreamt of the well organized liberal arts lectures and socratic method classroom participation of my undergraduate institution. Because I fall asleep and dream over my books I don't learn very well, and I always feel behind.
I make it through the summer by playing, "This Year," by the Mountain Goats on repeat, very loud, probably causing irreparable damage to my ears. "I will make it through this year, if it kills me," the lyrics say, and say, and say, and say.
Now the leaves are changing way too soon and I know winter is coming. The grey and heavy skies haunt me more than any other hometown ghost. I know this. So I pack my toolkit: locate the sun lamps in the library, make a fitness plan, audition to teach yoga at a local studio, and schedule sessions with a therapist.
I'm going to claw my way into some sweetness if it kills me.
Physical therapy school probably will.
