Dancing in my Room

I’m not the university type. It’s officially official.

It doesn’t matter how amazing some courses can be, or how euphoric I feel when I’m looking at a manuscript from 1556, it doesn’t matter.
Because when alls said and done, with the crisp pages between numb hands, the smell of old-world knowledge heavy in the air, and the 16^th century ink under tingling fingers, you start to realize that the ink is rubbing off on your sweaty digits and no amount of English rulers or Inquisition Inquisitors can save you now.
And when you get those exams back, and the ink bleeds under running tears, you realize that you have no idea what you’re doing.

You’re going to do a four-year degree. But that will only work if these 57, and 58%’s on exams change because you need at least a high 70 in each class to take the next step.
You’re going to be a librarian…then what? Go to “Library and Information Sciences”, take some classes, probably fail those too, and realize that you’re not right for university.
But then what? What else can you do? Nothing, that’s the answer, nothing.
So you go home from tutorial, blindly stop at the drug store and do what you do best: buy chocolate and an Archie comic.

Now what are you doing, stupid? Oh, you know, increasing your weight with chocolate and skipping class. The class that, just last week, you found out you got 57% on your exam.

Now what?
Well, now you need a hug. A huge, all encompassing hug but there’s no one around to give you one. And you won’t ask for help, oh no. It’s not educational or academic help you need, no, you can sort of understand why you got the marks you did, its emotional help you need right now, but you never ask for it, do you? No, too afraid.

Middle child syndrome? No, there is none. That’s all made up by us middle children. But maybe, just maybe us middle children have created this “syndrome” to such a perfect extreme that we feel the need to live up to it. So you did, didn’t you? You lived up to it and now look where it got you: too afraid to ask for help. Too afraid to tell your own mother how depressed and radical-minded you feel. Too afraid and self-assured in the “middle child syndrome” that if someone does offer help, you get mad, mad because in your middle-child-mind you see their reaching out as some kind of blow you both your ego and your emotional walls and you panic. You panic and get angry.

So now what?

Too scared to ask for help, too scared to act on your emotions, too scared to do anything but sit…and wait for the next round of marks to prove to yourself that you’re not the university type.