My sauce

So I think I kind of killed body.  Or came pretty close to it.  I just plain old did it in.  I didn't even know that was possible. And at age 24?  You're done?  I mean, stayed off the sauce, the smokes, the drugs and every other thing I knew to, and I thought I'd be good to go.  But just plain old hard work?  Stress?  Really?  That can do it, too?  When it becomes your addiction it sure can.

I remember so clearly being in school, in work, living in DC, being so stressed that I would just shake, doing so much that I never could finish anything - that life.  I remember thinking, 'just hang in there. One day you'll look back at this time and feel so proud of yourself.'  Yet as I sit here, paying my price, I don't look back with pride.  Yeah - I made it through. Yeah - I got those two initials on a piece of paper.  But I look back at that time with regret.  So much regret. 

Things were just really ugly. Working so hard, accomplishing so little, always feeling like a failure. My boss was always mad when I had to leave for school and my professor was always mad because my boss sent me on another trip. Yet I kept going through the motions, day after day. Work full time. School full time.  Same time.  Hang in there. One day this will be over. One day you can call the shots. One day, this will all make you happy.

There wasn't one part of me, the real me, living that life.  And I knew it.  Admit it at the time?  no chance.  I was doing what I was supposed to, right?  I was putting in my dues.  I was saying yes to everything and anything to show what a hard worker I was.  And I was.  I just had absolutely no idea how to do any of the things I said yes to.  I remember being in my desk by 8 am - working until 4 - racing to class, running into the building, always stressed, always late, class until 10, library until midnight, then the time came. my make up time. I would go back to the office, the one that didn't pay me, mind you, and sit in front of my computer trying to figure how to do the job that I told them I could do.  That I wanted to do. The one I thought I wanted to do. Yep, I reaaaaallly wanted to write 150 pages of code for data that I wasn't even allowed to know where it came from.  my dream.  They thought I would just learn it quick, cheap labor - she'll pick it up, yet they might has well have been asking me to write it in Russian.  There was that much of a gap.  I would try so hard to find help online, yet by 3 or 4 am - I really was no closer.  And too proud to admit it.  I would head home, defeated, destroyed a little, and sit in my bathtub in the pitch black dark, wondering if I really could do it another day.  I'd sleep about 2 hours, get up, talk myself into it, and do it all over again.

I remember I became so used to always frantically moving that I honestly couldn't stop. I couldn't sit on the couch. I couldn't take a break. I have an extra hour?  I'm gonna go run 10 on 1 hour of sleep.  It's 2am and I need to finish this paper? I'm gonna drive to this library so I can get some work done. (:)  See?  I couldn't stop.  I couldn't be still. Especially not long enough for my mind to tell me I was in over my head. I would just go, go, go - and then, well then there was a crash.

As now I sit, I think the price I am paying is relatively small compared to a life wasted on a dream that just wasn't mine.  No matter how hard I wanted it to be. 

I wonder how old most people are when they have this realization.  Is it after a big change like this? A death? A divorce? Do some live there entire life without ever having the guts to walk away from a life they chose too young?  Guts wasn't what was asked of me - I had no choice - I had to walk away. I was forced to lay down, look out all of those windows and really think about it. And I thank God for it.

People ask me what I would do if I got better tomorrow - would I go back to that life, make all that money and live out that dream that I worked so hard for?  Or would I dive into photography full-time and really try to live off of that.  My answer has changed a little more with each year of this.  I used to think I'd go back in a heartbeat - I'd be so grateful to be able to work all day that I would do anything.'  Then it became more of a well, I would do it but less coding, more qualitative stuff.  Now?  Hmm - I wouldn't.  Not in that way.  I love research and I will always be fascinated with it - but those numbers have to mean something to me - and until I could find a way to be as happy with that life as the one through a lens - I choose the glass. 

And that is scary as hell to admit.