OK then. It’s Monday afternoon, and I’ve been incapable of making myself go to class for the last few days (Thursday, Friday, and now today as well). Part of that is because the last few months have borne an incredibly disturbing resemblance to the events of five years ago, both in terms of situation and approach, and the idea of reliving that set of circumstances scares the faecal matter out of me.

Five years ago, I was supposed to go on a study-abroad programme, a notion that was axed by my family who wanted to know “how much further abroad” did I want to go, since I was already studying in the US and not in Pakistan. This decision was taken at the end of the summer vacation, which meant that I had to cancel my enrolment on the trip three days before I was scheduled to fly out, then had to figure out where the fuck I’d be living, since I’d passed up on university-offered housing. That took a few months in and of itself; I commuted into DC from as far away as Manhattan occasionally, leaving my textbooks on the inside window-ledge of my friends’ ground-floor apartments, running to class and groping around windowsills frantically, trying to find Economic Theory texts while double-checking to make sure I’d actually remembered to bring my homework along instead of leaving it in a cousin’s house or friend-who-lived-on-the-other-side-of-campus’ apartment.

Good times.

And when I had finally managed to move into a dorm room on-campus, and things looked like they were starting to settle down a bit, I met a guy. Of course. We’ll just call him Juice for now (long story), but the short version is that we started chatting online, and then met up at his house in College Park, MD, where he was a student. I thought he was attractive; he definitely had a personality and was fun to be around, but after spending the night at his place and attempting to hang out with him for a bit, it became abundantly clear that he (a) wasn’t interested in anything more than a quick fuck, and (b) wasn’t looking for a boyfriend or even someone to date for a bit. A month later, he was dating someone I knew from the bar/club scene, who ironically enough, looked a great deal like me. And that really hit home because it made me feel as though there was something wrong with me as a person; that something about me made him think it was OK to treat me badly or lead me on.

And then I got sick, and had to sort out all sorts of family drama and the winters were awful and I hated my classes and couldn’t get myself out of bed in the mornings, and it only gets worse and worse the more you put it off, but I had no energy and the treatment I was on only made me worse for months and months, until I wound up sitting on the corridor outside my room and idly cutting myself. Nothing deep, nothing attention-seeking, there was a little alcove that no one ever went into, where I’d tease out drops of blood on my skin, not because I wanted to kill myself, but because I was so sick and tired of always being sick and tired and of not being able to feel anything but a dull throb of, I don’t know. Anger? Sadness? Frustration? All I remember from that time is being perpetually exhausted and those occasional bouts of slipping an edge into my skin made me, just for a second, feel something—even if it was only a sting of pain.

At the end of the semester, when the Redheaded Wench and Regine Chocolat realised how badly off I was, they dragged me to the counselling centre, which turned out to be a complete waste of time in all ways but one: the counsellors sent me for a full physical, which revealed that I was trying to function with an aggravated case of mono. Neatly clinching the loop, I had got it from Juice, who was the only person with whom I’d slept that semester. The exhaustion, combined with my (admittedly unreasonable) plunge into “romance” with Juice and his subsequent behaviour had plunged me into full-on seasonal affective disorder as well, so by the time I got all the results and diagnoses back, I sat there staring at the physician (who I’m sure was convinced that I was planning unpleasant scenarios involving him, a syringe and the hot pink stethoscope he kept fiddling with), wondering what the fuck I was going to do.

As you can well imagine, I was not a happy camper that year.
And now, the cycle’s kicking in again. For some fucking stupid reason, I liked Ozzie, and it’s only been a week or ten days since we hooked up, but I find it immensely depressing that he won’t respond to one or two text messages that I’ve sent him, or answer his phone, despite the fact that I’ve tried to make it clear that I enjoy his company, not just his body. That’s the most horrific thing about rejection; when you have someone who doesn’t even want to be friends/acquaintances with you, no matter what their own personal issues may be, you always wind up feeling a little bit guilty. What is it about me? Was I too eager? Did he not want to see me at all? Did I bore him? Am I just an unpleasant person? It’s made worse when you’re offering your company and friendship, because it makes you feel somewhat worthless, or at least incompetent in some sort of fundamental way. Making friends in London is difficult enough, but outright rejection of your presence is even more awkward, because it makes you (or at least me) wonder if the only thing that you’re (I’m) good for is a one-night stand, if that’s all you (I) should expect from anyone in terms of treatment, and if it is, then what’s the fucking point of just going out and meeting anyone because obviously you’re (I’m) only worth a fuck and the chances of meeting anyone are pretty much non-existent.

It’s a nasty spiral, and logically the perspective is riddled with more holes than a particularly perforated Swiss cheese, but knowing that on a rational or intellectual basis doesn’t make things any easier on an emotional or intuitive basis.

London’s winters make me feel like shit; everything is grey to begin with, and when sunset occurs at four in the afternoon, for someone who’s used to enormous amounts of natural light on a near-daily basis, that’s not good. My coursework is exhausting me easily, to the extent where I can’t face the thought of getting out of bed to go on-campus for lectures anymore, preferring instead to “study” at home. I’m enjoying certain parts of the law course, but not enough to motivate me into spending another year or two qualifying as a lawyer in order to work here in London, and my family’s starting to turn the screws by “suggesting” that I may be happier working as a sales/equity person at one of the larger investment banks (an idea that I’m not actually entirely averse to, since it seems at this point to basically involve socialising with people for pay).

But the deal-breaker (or so it seems) is that I have to find a new place to live. My current flat, which I love, was owned by a friend of my brother’s; he left the city and asked my brother if he’d be interested in taking over the mortgage. My brother agreed, and seeing how aggravated I was with the process of finding a liveable space in London, offered to let me rent the flat at about half its normal price (he actually didn’t ask me for rent at all initially, but I felt exceedingly guilty about that, so we agreed that I would pay as much as I could reasonably afford to within my budget, and to be honest, for what I’m paying I’ve got a fantastic deal (two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a full kitchen, hardwood floors, track lighting, a concierge and a gym in the building, next-door to a huge supermarket, easy access to shopping and public transport…you get the picture).

And then it turns out that having lived here for barely ten weeks, I have to find a new home. My brother just received the mortgage paperwork recently, and it turns out that his friend got the worst financing deal in the history of mankind—the mortgage payments on the flat cost about £700 more than had been originally assumed. Translation: that my living here means that instead of breaking even on the mortgage payments until I leave, my brother’s basically paying in the extra £700 pounds to cover my ass. It’s a sum that can pretty easily be made up for if the flat is rented out at its fair market price—if indeed such a thing exists in London—and because of this annoying “conscience” thing, I don’t want to live here longer than I have to. I mean, I want to but I know I shouldn’t, and wouldn’t want to put my brother in the position of having to ask me to move out/come up with the shortfall, because we’d both feel crappy about the exchange. Money’s not tight or anything, but given how he already paid for my college education, I don’t want to take anything more from him. So add flat-hunting to the equation now.

On the grand scale of things, none of this is really particularly crucial or a ball-breaker, a fact of which I’m painfully aware. But it is disturbing, it is distressing, and I find myself waking up in the middle of the night (or not sleeping at all), wondering what the fuck I’m going to do if the rest of this plays out the way it did five years ago. For now, the light treatments are helping, as is the fact that I have until mid-January to find a new place (and perhaps if the mortgage is restructured, I won’t have to move out at all), but this whole “career” thing is a bitch. Admittedly, I’m sick and tired of living hand-to-mouth; I hate the corporate world, but I like having the ability to walk into Harvey Nichols to buy a jacket that I want without having to worry about how many meals I’ll have to replace with cans of soup or Ramen. And giving up on law after finishing the basic coursework for it also makes me wonder what the point of all this was in the first place. If I was going to end up corporate anyway, why didn’t I just go straight on to complete my PhD, just so I could hear everyone refer to me as “Doctor”? Minor complaint, but it’s really irksome now.

One step at a time, I suppose. That’s the only way to take it.

In other news, I came across a blog today that I (for the first time in a LONG while) enjoyed immensely. It’s been added to the links, but go see The Accidental New Yorker if you haven’t already