My partner raised a very valid point sometime last week. It was something to the effect of: "You like the subject matter. This is something within your field and you absolutely adore your professor. What went wrong? I'm trying to understand but it just doesn't make sense. You're supposed to love this. If you love something, you don't just let it go that way. You do everything you can to make it work."
Like a wooden stake to a vampire's heart, my partner then burst into tears with what came next.
"Before you came along, I had no intention of ever going back to the academe. You did this, you made me want to go through all this again. If you're looking for reasons to get up when you fall, then just think of this. This might sound cheesy as hell, but love, I thought were in this together."
Everything fell apart in me. There was no way to rationalize what was happening without sounding like an excuse. To find the love of my life in tears at the thought of my recent failures was unbearable. "I'm not just doing this for myself. I'm trying so hard, and when I think of what I'm doing, I think of you." It's been on my mind for days. It rings endlessly, further accentuating how mediocre and selfish I've become or might've always been. While I'm getting by on what I could salvage from my parents' weekly budget, my partner, with a full-blown fever for days desperately tries to stay awake to study quantum mechanics. She would fall asleep in between pages and upon waking would immediately resume reading.
"Love, I'm doing this for us."
If I've spent so much of my young adult life trying to inspire action in people because of my involvement in hardcore punk, why couldn't I do this for the only person who makes me want to see value in anything?
I feel like the most undesirable person in the world for all of this. A lot of the time, it's this thought together with the idea that luck does not equate to worthiness.
What else could I do? She's already here and I'm sure as hell there's a reason why. I admire everything about this person and the life she leads and for all the good I see in her, she chose to see what good I had inside of me; regardless of whether or not I saw it in myself.
I still don't see it. I'm not sure I know how to see and act in line with the value in everything. My mother said it takes practice. I really hope so.
It might be too late to save that one subject, but I can't let this stop me from getting where I need to be for someone I love. My parents could only ever want the best for me. Alva chose to stay because she could see something worth believing in. I just found out that my grandmother gave her last breath setting aside pennies a week to send me to graduate school.
All of this, if anything, means the world to me. I might be sick but who isn't? If I kept myself from giving in to impulse control once, then what's keeping me from doing so again? No one. Nothing.
It's one thing for me to know things, it's another thing to take things to heart. It's everything to love and act in knowing.
Whatever I do, I'll do for us. If I have to get hurt to be able to stand on my own two feet, so be it. Seeing the burdens you bear, you can't do this alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment