All of My Bullshit Excuses

1. I'm too depressed. Well, I'm not depressed anymore, but clinically you could argue I was during that first month.

2. I'm not suicidal anymore either, but you could argue I was that first month too, and that takes a lot out of a person.

3. I think I have narcolepsy. No, really.

4. My IBS totally came back. Dr. Don would say it's not a coincidence.

5. In November of 2005, I entertained the idea of not returning to Stout after the third semester. When I chose to stay to finish sophomore year, it was because I wasn't ready to leave the people, and while I don't regret that decision, those months from January to May were also some of the darkest I ever had. What I am trying to say is that I really "checked out" about a year ago, in more ways than one.

6. In my mind, it was my only way out of Dodge.

7. I really didn't think it was gonna be that hard. I mean, I get it, school is hard. But I didn't know how lonely I would feel. I didn't know how the homey feel of UW-Stout, with its on-campus housing and on-site athletics and plethora of local businesses, would so greatly differ from City University of New York Brooklyn College, a commuter campus where people go to class for two hours, go back home, and ... that's it. No smiles and no hellos. I didn't know that I would not make any friends. I didn't know that I would get shushed when I would ask for directions. I didn't know that anything registration-related had more red tape than FEMA. I didn't know that by the time I knew who would hold my hand, it would be too late. I didn't know that it was not a coincidence that from eighth grade to my fifth semester in college, the only time interval in which I was actually successful and GOT MY ASS OUT OF BED AND WENT TO CLASS AND GOT A'S was when I was living with a strange boy from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin who would shake my bunk in the morning and turn on CMT to get me going by 9:00. He had a birthday yesterday, by the way. Happy birthday, Whitey.

8. If I could do those first two months over again, I totally would. But I can't, and I can no longer do the "If I close my eyes it will all go away" routine so greatly used by my mother, who learned it from her mother, who I have no doubt learned it from hers. So this is the part when I face the music, when I talk to the registrars, tell them to either let me withdraw now or go halfsies for the rest of the semester, because it was all an illusion. And the illusion that I, who never worked hard in school a day in my life, could be a prestigious full-time student, that the illusion that I could actually amount to anything, the illusion that I could be worth all of the money and the hype, the illusion that I could actually function as an adult, has been thoroughly debunked.

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