"I'm proud of you"

For the last year I've been feeling rather ho-hum (read: really depressed) about my lot in life. Back in February/March of 2009, my cohort in housing were all offered jobs, either while earning their masters, or bachelors-level, but in the field we all wanted to go into. Except me.

It was a very dramatic time in my life, as I waited to hear back from any school while my friends went on final interviews and school visits. As they were deciding on where, of the multiple places that had offered them jobs, to accept and spend the next 2+ years of their lives, I started getting the rejections. I stopped counting them, but there were enough.

I applied to graduate school on a whim in 2010, deciding that once and for all that I needed to do something about wasting my education on food service. I was rejected. I knew I would be, but it still hurt. Later in the year I decided that if my current bachelors degree was inadequate, then perhaps I should just get another one. This is what I started on Monday.

Its going to take me until 12/11 to get this second degree, if all goes well, grade-wise. I am hoping by the end of BA #2 that I will have a high enough GPA that I can go into graduate school. I will be two full years behind my former cohort. They will have advanced degrees and I will not. Though I am trying to do good by my own future, I'm still feeling low, dumb, and a bit like nothing I do means anything. Or, I did.

Tonight I was talking to a friend I met through student affairs, but who did not attend my undergrad. I feel no need to be better than him, feel no validation in a difference between us. I am ashamed to say that I do with those who went to undergrad with me. I am less than them for not having started a masters yet. I thought everyone felt this way about me, in that way that you think that everything that you do is the norm when you are small, because its all you know.

Tonight, E proved me wrong. I was chatting with him about my homework and he said 4 small words that actually made me cry. "I'm proud of you"

It was like he was validating my very existence. I matter. Someone thinks of me in a positive manner.

I can go on now.