Post-Education

Yesterday, my first day of FREEDOM, I spent a lot of time thinking about my future. Of course, I had a million people asking what I was going to do next, and while Australia looms far ahead for next winter it's this summer and fall and right now that I'm unsure of. Then, as I was getting ready for bed, I found this little essay on Thought Catalog and it made me shiver a little. Especially the part that talks about the importance of self-educating, even when done with University. All of the sudden this huge wave of fear and panic came over me, and I realized that it was a fear of "not-learning". Of not-growing, of not being educated, of falling behind, of becoming stupid, dull, of forgetting. Right after this realization I slammed my lap-top shut and forewent my nightly ritual of watching Mad Men, and instead picked up the book that has been sitting beside my bed for months (Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Paul Theroux in case anyone was wondering).

I love to read. I disappear, take on a million personalities. I don't know why I haven't been reading lately; maybe TV and movies are just easier. But enough. Now, no one else is in charge of teaching me. Now, I am no longer a passive sponge who just by the simple act of sitting in a classroom will be inundated with knowledge. Now, I will have to search for myself, teach myself, grab knowledge and experience anyway I can. I will have to actually read those BBC articles (instead of just skimming straight to the food or fashion ones), and critically think about them, and compare them with Al Jazeera opinions, and come to my own conclusions. I will have to actively search out relevant information about science and the past, and I will have to choose to read that book, rather than veg in front of the TV.

If I have learned anything from school, I guess it's that education should never be over. They've provided me with the framework for learning, the training-wheels, and now I am on my own. Wobbly, for sure, but hopefully the practices I form in the next few months will in conjecture with the habits I've gained over the last 5 years work together to ensure that my mind never weakens or becomes witless, and that a genuine love for growth and knowledge will arise.

Thin

Last night, while relaxing in the kitchen with my family and a big glass of wine and getting dinner sorted, my mother poked my thigh and said, Honey, are you sure you don't want to go to the doctor and see if you have a parasite?

Everyone stopped talking (it's sort of a conversation killer), and looked at me. I laughed, half embarrassed and half angry. Why, mother, do you think I have a parasite?
I already knew the answer but I wanted to provoke her.

I think you've lost weight, honey, and besides, didn't you say you drank out of animal troughs in Switzerland?

Yeah, but it was like once, and that was two years ago...

My sister leaned in then too and said, Yeah, I think you're more skinny than ever.
I looked down at myself. I hadn't thought much about it lately.

What do you weigh? My mother continued to pry.

I don't know. I don't own a scale. I think it's unhealthy.

Well, I want you to weigh yourself sometime this week.

Thankfully my father jumped in with, Oh, just leave her alone. She is fine.

And then I said, Yeah, it's not like I was fat and then I all the sudden became skinny. I've always been skinny. I feel fine. If I felt sick, I would go see a doctor.

But having a parasite can lead to all kinds of things, like colitis...
-Mom. Stop it. I don't have a parasite.

But ever since then, I have been conscious of my bones sticking out of my skin, and when I rub the back of my neck I feel my spine. When my friend Sean was massaging me the other day he kept commenting on how he could count my ribs through my shoulder blades, but he said he liked it. And later that night he told me he loved me, but that is an awkward story for another time. My legs and stomach feel normal, but my shoulders do feel fragile and small. Maybe it's because I've been spending all my days inside studying for finals, but I feel like I'm becoming more transparent and unattached to the ground then ever. Half of me seems lost inside another world, not a physical one, but near this one. I don't know.

Maybe it comes from too much reading, I don't know. My mother also said she didn't want to buy me the book on my Christmas list (The Bell Jar) because it was about a woman's descent into madness. Maybe she can sense that sometimes I feel too close to the edge of some precipice, and that it would just be easier if I threw myself off it. What glorious things would I see in the abyss? What beautiful, unworldly things would I see?

Sometimes when I'm feeling extra thin, and half gone, it's these things that I think I see in that other world, in my dreams, the one where there the rest of me is. It's not a parasite that's devouring me, mother and sister and Sean and you random strangers who come up to me and praise me for my slenderness (how sick is that?), it's not a worm or a disease or a mental illness. I can't change it as much as I can change my height. It's because half of me is missing. Half of me is somewhere else, not here. Sometimes I can almost believe that I can see right through my skin. If you held me up to the light, I would glow redly and warmly, and you would be able to vaguely perceive shapes moving about on the other side.