So, let's try to pack three years into one post. Continuing the themes of years past, this is about school and love.
School:
I'm still in school, but the end is finally in sight. When I went through my transcripts and academic planners over the summer to see what I needed to take, I realized that I was one class away from meeting graduation requirements for the math degree, and one away from the philosophy degree. I wasn't really prepared for this bit of news, honestly. A little bit of giddiness and excitement of course, but a bit of trepidation as well. What is next? What am I supposed to do?
I've been in school since fall of 2002... it's been a long-lasting part of my life, and in some way contributed a bit of stability to my life (along with lots of stress). Now, it ends this December. Is grad school coming up? Do I try to get a job in a math or logic field? I have no clue.
Anyway. Still 4.0, with 140 credit hours under my belt. All of the classes in my major fields have been done for a while, I finished my independent research project last semester. I won "top senior" awards for both the math and philosophy programs last semester, too.
The IU review board decided to disallow one of my fulfilled requirements for the philosophy degree, and I had to scramble quickly to find one more class that would fit my rather packed schedule; I finally finished enrolling in classes just this weekend, and school starts this afternoon. All are random classes meant to mop up those annoying non-major requirements; an intro to astronomy class, a class on classical mythology, and a discussion class on medical ethics.
Love:
When I posted last, I was still licking my wounds over the end of things with Heather. This time, I'm still licking my wounds over the end of things with Sarah.
Sarah was one of the first students technically under my tutelage; she was one of Dr. Rogers' logic students during my first...
So, let's try to pack three years into one post. Continuing the themes of years past, this is about school and love.
School:
I'm still in school, but the end is finally in sight. When I went through my transcripts and academic planners over the summer to see what I needed to take, I realized that I was one class away from meeting graduation requirements for the math degree, and one away from the philosophy degree. I wasn't really prepared for this bit of news, honestly. A little bit of giddiness and excitement of course, but a bit of trepidation as well. What is next? What am I supposed to do?
I've been in school since fall of 2002... it's been a long-lasting part of my life, and in some way contributed a bit of stability to my life (along with lots of stress). Now, it ends this December. Is grad school coming up? Do I try to get a job in a math or logic field? I have no clue.
Anyway. Still 4.0, with 140 credit hours under my belt. All of the classes in my major fields have been done for a while, I finished my independent research project last semester. I won "top senior" awards for both the math and philosophy programs last semester, too.
The IU review board decided to disallow one of my fulfilled requirements for the philosophy degree, and I had to scramble quickly to find one more class that would fit my rather packed schedule; I finally finished enrolling in classes just this weekend, and school starts this afternoon. All are random classes meant to mop up those annoying non-major requirements; an intro to astronomy class, a class on classical mythology, and a discussion class on medical ethics.
Love:
When I posted last, I was still licking my wounds over the end of things with Heather. This time, I'm still licking my wounds over the end of things with Sarah.
Sarah was one of the first students technically under my tutelage; she was one of Dr. Rogers' logic students during my first semester of mentoring for the class. She and I sat next to each other then, and I thought she was flirting with me at the time, and even caused a little bit of a problem between me and Heather when she invited me to a party.
Four years later, she showed up at one of my mentoring sessions for a different class, sent me a note through Facebook a week or so later, and then we spent a few months talking. I was wary of dating her, but she was insistent. I thought she was highly attractive, mind you, but she was only 23, things were screwy with her ex-boyfriend, etc. I finally caved in, we went on a date, and the relationship pretty much exploded. We went from 0 to 60 in the span of two dates, broached the subject of love within the first couple of weeks, and we began spending all of our time together.
Problems, though. She was-- is-- significantly mentally ill. A beautiful girl with a beautiful mind that just happens to go haywire. It didn't help that she had just spent seven years in an abusive relationship, groomed by her ex to become non-self-reliant. She comes from money, and had a massive trust fund. From what I saw of her finances, he drained her of a few million over the relationship, and up to the end was using her money to pursue other women. So, her self-esteem and her ability to be in a healthy relationship were severely lacking, and her issues with men in general and partners in particular were numerous.
Oh, and the money thing-- she still had a lot-- allowed her to follow her whims, no matter how impractical or harmful, and she didn't have to work, so she was idle, bored, and rich.
Connecting those dots. We loved each other; she loved me fiercely, and I tried to keep things stable and sober for her. Her brain would make her dangerous when I wasn't around, and with school and work, I couldn't be around much. Multiple suicide attempts, stints in mental hospitals. Her last suicide attempt was a massive attempt, and she suffered brain damage. She damaged the portion of her brain usually thought to be responsible for impulse control.
She managed to spend several hundred thousand dollars during a three month stay in a rehab clinic, then came home and went on a four-month long manic binge. She bought me expensive stuff at random. I'd look at a watch in a store, and she showed up at the house with three watches. $6000 watches. She'd come over with a box, turning out to have bought me dozens of suits. She bought the house next door to hers so that I would have someplace to put my arcade games, after I suggested that I could store my junk in her garage. She bought over 200 DVDs in one shopping trip at a Barnes & Noble, spent $5000 on a home theater because she thought my TV was too old. She got worried after one argument, showed up at my job in full flapper gear, and proposed to me over the intercom. She then went out and bought a $10,000 engagement ring from Tiffany for me to give to her, bought the matching wedding band, and bought my wedding band.
Her house ended up looking like a hoarder's home. The home theater set up was delivered and dumped in the living room, and never opened. She would buy entire racks of dresses, take them home, and dump them on the boxes piling up. She began living at my place, and began trashing it as well. She'd wake up, get bored waiting for me to finish my studying, hop on her iPhone, and then triumphantly tell me she had just bought a wrought-iron spiral staircase for her single story house, and a massive jewel-inlaid door from a Turkish vendor, and that she was going to have her basement tiled with the hand-painted Italian tiles that she found for $10 a tile.
Still, I loved her. I became her caretaker as well as her lover. Cleaned her house, kept her on her medication. All on top of the two jobs and school thing. This meant I was never home, never around, unless I was there in some sort of guardianship role. Then she became resentful of the time I did have to spend away... and in the span of a week, the mania reached its logical conclusion, and on the last day of my semester-- the first day of a months-long break from school where I was going to get to be with her daily and try to get her back on track mentally-- she exploded, went on a week-long drug and alcohol bender, slept with a few of her friends, and broke things off by text message.
I gave it all back. I gave her back everything. I don't know what she would do with a bunch of suits tailored for a skinny guy, but she got them back. She got the watches, she got the DVDs, she got everything back. She had to hire a van to move it all out of my place. I'd never asked for any of it. I'd never wanted her to buy me anything-- in fact, I begged her to not buy me things-- and I wanted her to know that I hadn't used her. I was with her for her, not for her money.
We still talk. She immediately got back on her medication and stuff after we broke up, and she's gotten a lot more stable. She's also started to work successfully on a lot of the issues that she had before getting with me, issues that she had sworn during our relationship weren't problems. She's getting healthy, but we can't really try to fix things and get back together. Too much damage done.
She told me that the wedding dress was delivered the other day. Yay.
_RisforRad