Absence & school concerns....

I hate not having a computer I can just whip out and post on. There is something wrong with my laptop that keeps causing it to freeze, which means that until I get it fixed (which I have been meaning to do for months) I am stuck using the computer cluster at school or using my mom's computer at home. Since I only visit my mom every few weeks (she's about two hours away from my apartment), that leaves the computer cluster. I feel really weird blogging from a public area. Not that I'm writing anything secretive, but it's hard to just write when you're in a cubicle with three strangers. Or at least I find it to be so.

My job. Okay, I got a job. Hurray! I'm working at the deli in a local grocery store. It's not too bad, and it pays better than cashiering, which is what I originally applied for. The only thing I really don't like is not knowing what/where everything is yet. But hopefully that will come with time. I've only been there a few weeks and I already know a lot more than when I started. The plan is to work there until sometime in May. Hopefully by then I will have a summer camp position lined up.

I am scheduling an appointment to meet with my advisor next week. I am really nervous. I very much want to go back to school in the fall, but I'm worried that I will mess up somehow. How am I supposed to reassure the school that I'm ready to come back, when I'm not even sure that I am?

I'm not the first freshman to have trouble adjusting to college life. I'm not the first student to come to school with a suitcase full of trauma and mental health issues. I'm not the first kid to have a parent become ill. I'm not the first person to be too scared to ask for help. I'm not the first one to get in way over my head. On an intellectual level, I know all of this. But there's still a part of me that feels I should have "just gotten over it" and "handled it". I'm probably not the only one who thinks that, either. And maybe it would have been okay if I'd somehow tried harder or if I had asked for help. But the reality is that I didn't just get over it, and I didn't handle it. And now I still have to figure out how to move forward anyway.

I think the biggest thing I am afraid of is that instead of saying "These were the issues, they're still there, but I'm coping now", I'll revert into doing what got me into trouble in the first place, pretending everything is okay and telling people what they want to hear. That I'll say "Oh, I had some trouble adjusting, and then my dad got sick, but then I took some time off and he died and I Learned About Responsibility and now it's fine." Bullshit. It's not fine. Just because I want more than anything for it to be fine does not make it so.

Did I learn things in my year off? Yes. But I don't think I learned how to make my problems go away. I think I just learned what they are. And while that may be the first step in the process, it is still one heck of a process.

I don't know how to say all of that in a way that will make the school let me come back in the fall.