Assorted Thoughts - Teaching
4:02 PM. I think I maybe just had the worst depression meal imaginable. Two chicken sausage patties and two chicken sausages, with sour cream as a dip. I feel it in my stomach, and it is a very unpleasant sensation.
I just found out I'm teaching 1st and 5th graders. I have no clue what I'm doing. Genuinely no idea. I mean it's not like I ever knew anything about pedagogy to begin with, but I feel more comfortable teaching high schoolers, simply because I can talk to them normally and treat them like adults, at least in some capacity. It's kind of a nightmare scenario considering I'll be arriving after the semester has already started and I doubt I'll have any time for training or orientation, since that already happened in August.
On a more positive note, I'll be seeing my old professors in the department of Modern Languages tomorrow, to give my thanks and farewells. They made me. I still don't consider myself a successful person, and I despise it when people describe me that way, but any and all of my accomplishments can be attributed to them. Dr. Huang, Dr. Zhu, Dr. Mangione, and Dr. Firat. Their classes have all been the most intellectually rigorous classes I've taken. Temple’s Political Science department is a joke in comparison.
They're also the only professors I've had to give me my flowers. I'm not comparing myself to her, nor is this a judgement on this student in the slightest bit, more of a judgement on the department—but the Poli Sci Instagram account recently made a post celebrating my former Chinese classmate for getting Fulbright Taiwan, she had a minor in political science. They didn't do anything for me. They also didn't do anything last year when I got CLS. This isn't a big deal, but I think it shows that I was never appreciated as a student by the Poli Sci department.
Rant about Poli Sci aside, Dr. Huang asked me to speak to her students because she “considers me a model student”. I wouldn't consider myself that, I think all my accomplishments have been a result of happenstance combined with some hardwork, but I especially feel uncomfortable being presented in this light to her students because I was a runner up for Fulbright. I know I still got it, and that's what matters, but I got it because someone didn't want it, not because I made the cut. I think about it this way so I don't get high off the feeling of accomplishment, you're still second place buddy.
Rant about my inadequacies aside, I'm meeting them up for lunch. Apparently we're going to get Cava together. I'm really looking forward to it. But since the semester has started, I'm really scared of running into Angel on campus. I don't want to feel sad or bad tomorrow. I just want to have a good day. So here's to hoping I don't see her.
4:22 PM. I think with every relationship that has ended, I have, without fail, managed to disgrace myself and show a complete lack of respect for myself. Just saying the absolute most pathetic things in the hope that it'll change their minds, it makes me sick thinking about it. I think I'm genuinely going to vomit just remembering it.
For example—I really don't want to say this if I'm going to be entirely honest, but with this most recent relationship, I said that I would be open to an open relationship just to stay with them.
When I think about having said these things, I want to cave my skull in with a hammer. I've done this sort of thing three times, and I still haven't learned my lesson. I wish so bad, so so so bad, that I could just respond to those fateful texts with an “Ok” and just move on. To be as unfazed as they are. But I just can't, it's just not me. I'm not nonchalant, and I don't want to be.
They should remake Being John Malkovitch, but have it as Being Massin Larbi, and it's just the most depressing and pathetic look at a person's existence.
4:31 PM. I think I outdid myself by calling my disease The Joke. It's really an apt name. Like there's thousands of examples, but one that's been going through my mind recently is how they told me when they first ended things (for mental health reasons) and I asked if we could still hang out they said “Yeah, you mean a lot to me, I'm not just going to ghost you.” Something along those lines.
The obvious joke here is that it was a lie. But there's more layers, and that's what makes The Joke so genius. The lie was cemented in stone as soon as it was uttered because the neurosis I exhibited after realizing I was cheated (?) on made certain that they would never want to see me again. And then there’s the other joke that I actually didn't mean anything, since I was replaced within…let me check my calendar…a week.
Maybe this is my lack of self-respect speaking, but I don’t really blame them for the way I was treated. I mean it obviously hurts, but I have no one to blame but myself. Just imagine being in their position, you’ve stopped liking this guy and have already started liking someone else, and you tell this person you’re done with them, and they just can’t shut the fuck up, all they do is blow up your phone with questions about “why did you stop liking me? “did you ever like me?” “did you use me?” “why did you cheat on me?” I mean it’s just exhausting, and I’m not entitled to an answer to any of those things. But that’s a really hard thing to do, accepting that you won’t get an answer for any of it. And even if you get an answer, it’ll never satisfy you, because you’ll never know if they’re being truthful, especially if they’ve already lied to you. It’s a very torturing way to think, and I don’t blame them for designating me persona non grata.
It's all a joke, and all you can do is laugh at it and move on with your life, because if you focus on one joke for too long, it stops being a joke and it starts being sad and then you start looking for ways out. But if you move on from it and start thinking about the next joke (don't worry there will ALWAYS be another joke around the corner) then it just stays as a joke, and nothing more serious.
4:41 PM. The theme of my therapy session yesterday was self-love. My therapist asked me, after I had read to her a couple of things I had written, “Do you think you have love for yourself?” I responded by asking her what she thinks. Her answer was an immediate no.
And that’s kind of sad when I think about it. I have the pride part of love, I have the arrogance, I have the ego, but at the end of the day I don’t love myself, I don’t give myself grace. Even with the things I wrote above, maybe I should be charitable to myself, and understand that I have a personality disorder. Maybe I should respect myself and understand that it is in fact a fucked up thing to just toss someone aside with half-truths and vague explanations when you are done with them.
But I won’t think that way, and I don’t really want to. I’m quite comfortable loathing myself. I rationalized this to my therapist by telling her that the self-loathing and the relentless criticism keeps me improving as a person, makes me able to recognize my flaws and take decisive action.
I do wish I loved myself. But I also wished I didn’t act in a way that made me hate myself.
It’s stewing in my mind a bit more, and I’m going to double down on it. I deserved it, I think. In some way. I can’t bring myself to feel indignant. I was in the beginning, the very very beginning, when I first realized I was cheated (?) on. But that was just emotional shock, it’s been stewing in my mind for three months now and I think it really is all my fault.
Regardless of how I feel about all of that, it’s all in the past. It already happened, there’s no use in re-litigating it over and over again, especially three months later. I wish I could just pick a narrative or a way of conceptualizing the facts and move on.
The only thing that’s real right now, in the present, is the incredibly uncomfortable reality that I will never again be able to spend time with someone I consider incredibly important and special.
And I better get used to this feeling, because it’s going to happen again and again and again.
4:54 PM. I hope I am a mature enough person to be a teacher. I think I am. I know I am. What’s so beautiful is that these kids don’t realize that they’ll be giving me so much more than I could ever give them. That’s the thing about children, they’re such a glaring and strong reminder of the beauty of life, and how it really is all a joke at the end of the day.
:)