You were always in denial, obviously. Nobody wants to be labelled. Even a "positive-vibes" label disgusts you. Nevertheless,
You cannot deny that you, if not anymore, absolutely were a Perfectionist (not to be confused with "high-achiever"). &Yesterday, the proof was undeniable.
The pandemic put a wrinkle in the plans you had, at that time, the plans that moved you to the place where you were located, &thusly, those plans were shelved. &Then you went on with your life pursuing The Pursuit. Storms calmed, &when courage swelled, you began living your life again, &on the wind you blew to a new location, an island, &there, money, literal money you picked up off the sidewalk, lined the path upon which you trod. To be fair, money frequently lines the path upon which you trod.
Around a year later, after grueling months of transition/change, drought. The path was no longer lined with money. It spit up Tokens, three of them, in three weeks. &Then, you felt the winds of change. &Then, the winds changed. &Then, you quit.
&So, for the past month, you've been free.
as in, some are going to be faster than others,
and some will even be considered abnormally fast,
so is it unfair to think of snails as slow?
In this freedom, a realization that befell you during the Happy_Covid_Times resurfaced. You need to go back to school. Not to finish what you started, you did that already &finished with two "worthless" degrees. What you need, instead, is to go back to school to actually obtain the education you need in order to do the thing that you, as an adult[see endnote], want to do with your life.
&So, you perused an old freshman-thru-junior-years transcript from Baylor University (you graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder), &the first thing you noticed was the "B" in the chemistry class (Intro to Chemistry, etc.) you took the fall semester of your freshman year.
You remember having "failed" that class. You remember having earned a "D." You're not sure what to make of this. That "D" was why you quit it all, you thought. You look over the rest of your transcript, &you are blinded by something upon which you cannot put your finger.
You cry yourself to sleep, because you feel too stupid to go back to school. At least, that's why you think you're crying.
As a nocturnal person, you awake at night, &you feel better. You even feel good. You prepare to go for a run with the bodybuddy/lifemate. &As you get dressed, your self reveals to you your sadness, &you begin to cry, hard.
When you were a freshman in college, at a prestigious school for aspiring medical students, getting a "B" in a class was equivalent to failing, according to you. You received one "B+" in high school, &that ended your chances of being valedictorian, etc. That "B+" meant that you were a failure. So, naturally, you "failed" at your chance of going to medical school. You couldn't hack it. You quit being a pre-med student.
To be fair, you already knew you didn't want to be a doctor after completing a Med-Prep program for high school seniors your junior year, etc. That program taught you everything you needed to know, &you knew you didn't want to be a doctor, but when you're seventeen, it's difficult to find the words, especially when you knew you were disappointing a lot of adults, etc. &So, you went off to college pretending to want to be a doctor, &then college proved to you, according to you, that you were too stupid to be a doctor, cause you got a "B" in your freshman chemistry class. A failure.
You thought you were a fucking failure for getting a solid "B" in a college-level chemistry class at a prestigious science college. You thought that you were too stupid to be a doctor. You remember this, very vividly. &You try very hard to not-beat yourself up, now, in the present.
Standing, sobbing in the arms of the bodybuddy/lifemate, you finally admit to yourself that you are indeed a Perfectionist, &being a perfectionist nearly ended you.
You went on to study the thing you loved, art. You were good at it, &you liked it, &it took your mind off of all of your other problems. Until it didn't. &After your roommates started commenting on how skinny you were, you knew you couldn't go on. Your problems were becoming visible. So, you quit college &took a break.
It lights, but it won't stay lit.
You're wrapping your mind around how incredibly stupid you were for how "brilliant" you were. To this day, you feel the pain of how stupid you felt. You remember how you felt about yourself. You're grateful that you do not feel this way about yourself these days. You're even more grateful that you didn't end it all back then.
A new path has broken ground, &you can see, finally, how it is that you can get to the place where you want to go, where you want to be. But the journey is long, not long enough to discourage, yet long enough to require full commitment, &things must change, yet again, having but one year settled.
You decide.
&As you &the bodybody/lifemate stroll home along the path you always trod after the beach loop that ends at the rocky tip where the ocean splashes its significance upon the rocky shore, you find a twenty-dollar bill on the ground.
You would've stepped on it, if you hadn't seen it first.
[endnote] when i was in high school &seriously contemplating college, i got in the worst fight of my life with my adopted parents. i couldn't understand why i had to go to college if i didn't know what i wanted to do with my life. this should have struck them as odd since they were so sure i wanted to be a doctor. according to them, i had mentioned that i wanted to be a doctor when i was like six or seven years old, and so they went full-steam ahead. when i proved to be an obedient student, being a doctor was not only possible but reasonable. and yet, i screamed and threw a fucking fit that i had to go to college when i didn't know what i wanted to do with my life! i didn't know what i wanted to do with my life. i didn't know that being a doctor was the thing that i would be doing with my life. i was so mad that i had to essentially commit to something when i didn't even know what i wanted to commit to. i was a sheltered child. "bulldozer" parenting doesn't even scratch the surface.
my point is that i, personally, think it's really stupid to go to college without the expressed knowledge of what JOB you can do with whatever degree you want to get. i know how stupid i sound. i know that i sound so fucking stupid to admit that when i went off to college, nobody had explicitly described to me that i needed to go to college so that i could get a JOB, which means that i should study the thing that whatever JOB i want requires, etc. yes, "smart kids" frequently lack practical life skills.
anyway, i did NOT want to go to college, because i did NOT know what i wanted to do with my life, and so, i really did exactly what i should've done, which is, whatever the fuck i want, and i did that. as aforementioned, i have two "worthless" degrees, but i do not regret my education. being intelligent is always going to be an advantage, and so, doing anything that increases your intellect is never a waste of time.
however, if you are a young person who is reading this, and you feel similarly to the way that i describe here, i would encourage you to go live your life. get a job, make some money, learn how to live this life. acquire the skills needed to simply survive. one day, you will realize what it is that you want to do, and at that time, college will still be there, waiting for you, waiting to teach you what you need to know in order to be able to do the thing you want to do. in the meantime, you can always do whatever learning you can do on your own with the help of your public library. books are FREE at your public library!
*sigh* to be young again. i'd only go back if i could keep all of the knowledge i have now. otherwise, what's the point?