Why My Eyes Were Puffy At Rehearsal (and a lot of other info you probably don't want to know)

I miss the days when I used to blog because I had something profound and important to say, something that would change people's lives and give them cause to stop and think.

Maybe it wasn't that important or profound, but lately I feel like all I do is spew my frustrations and emotions onto a laptop, knowing that maybe 5 people will read it. Quality writing, huh.

But here's the thing: when you're sitting in your office after everyone else has gone, sobbing uncontrollably because the past two days have literally been some of the worst imaginable, it feels like the only thing you can do is write it out.

So here we go.

[In case you were wondering, that's exactly what I'm doing right now. All day long the tears have been lurking behind my smile, itching for an opportunity to spill over. Looks like 5:30 pm was that moment, because now they won't stop.]

It's strange how sometimes one becomes more emotionally unstable when one has lived through a large amount of tiny upsets instead of one huge, earth-moving obstacle.
That has been my life these past two days.
It wasn't a solitary incident that tipped me over the edge;
Rather, life has consisted of momentary happenings that
rubbed me the wrong way,
chipped at my self-esteem,
 and when the final blow was struck this afternoon...my entire suit of composure crumbled.

Let me explain.

Yesterday was an okay day. It wasn't ideal, but it was okay. Nothing terrible had really happened.
 I had taken the time that morning to dress nicely, fix my hair, wear jewelry...I felt like I looked pretty good.
Well, we got to the afternoon, and someone in the department made a comment to me about my size. In retrospect, I don't think he meant it to be cruel, but it was like a smack in the face.
 For those of you who don't know, I recently passed the 20 lb. mark in weight that I've lost, and that's a wonderful achievement for me. For him to say that immediately made me question how other people are viewing me, even though I'm really proud of myself for losing that much weight and feel like I look a lot better already.

In addition to that, yesterday was frustrating because I feel like I am absolutely useless in my assistantship office, and I have no idea what's going on most of the time. As a second year graduate student, I should be a leader and confident; I feel the exact opposite of that in every possible way. I'm trying my best to take opportunities to learn and ask questions, but I still feel like I'm sprinting behind a race car, attempting to catch up but feeling like it's hopeless.

This morning I woke up and thought, "This day will be better; it has to be, right?"

Wrong.

My Theatre Appreciation class is the first thing I have on Wednesdays. Today we were watching a 55 minute long panel interview with Broadway directors. All they had to do was watch it and take notes for a response paper. I look up during the video and there is a girl, sitting directly in front of me, doing homework for another class. She has this enormous textbook on her desk and is apparently writing a paper for it.
In my class.
While the video is playing.
I look over next to her and there are about 5 girls in a row scrolling on their phones. I watched them for a good 10 minutes and they never looked up.
I wanted to be this teacher that everyone liked and thought was awesome and that they enjoyed being around...but at the end of the class period I kinda lost my cool. I told them that it was incredibly rude and disrespectful to be not only on their phones, but to be doing homework for someone else in MY class on MY time. It's so disrespectful to me as a teacher to be up there, attempting to teach them something, only to see them blatantly ignoring the information and being totally apathetic.
Why are they even in this class?
What am I even doing up there?
How am I accomplishing anything if I can't get them to listen or comprehend or care?
So that was the first incident that began to beat me down.

After lunch, I had my Scenic Design class....and today we were learning about perspective drawings. I knew this was going to be confusing, but I've done fairly well in everything else so far, so I was hopeful.
However, as class went on, I got more and more confused and had fallen way behind the rest of the class in the project we were all doing together.
(FYI, there's only 3 of us in the class, so take that how you will.)
I was getting frustrated and embarrassed and upset because I want to do well, and I compare myself to everyone around me.
(It's a flaw, I'm working on it.)
I felt so stupid, so inadequate in something that I should know more about and be skilled in if I want to teach someday.

I trudged back up to the office, sat down, and then remembered that I had totally missed my costume fitting for Tartuffe.

I had designed labels for a recruitment mail out and discovered I formatted them all wrong.

After spending 30 minutes trying to connect to the printer in the office, I proceeded to print the labels
upside down and backwards, resulting in two entire sheets of wasted labels.

At this point, I was so frustrated at everything alive, and was about to explode when my co-worker said, "Oh by the way, we have a prospective student coming for a tour in 10 minutes."
This was my first time working with something like this, so I tagged along and observed.
The father of the student proceeded to make comments throughout the tour about how his daughter was "not majoring in theatre; she's a pre-K ed major. This is just an extracurricular activity. She knows what her major is."
I was getting so angry because I KNOW parents like that. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND how parents can say, "My child loves the performing arts, but she'll never make a career of it. We'll force her to do something else."
Sir, your child is going to resent you one day when she realizes you stripped her of her dream and made her settle for something less. I understand that you want to protect your kid, but you also have to let them follow their heart and pursue their dreams.
UGH! I just wanted to scream at him.

I got back to my office and everyone left.

In order for all of this to really make sense, I have to mention something else.
And to be honest...this is something I'm a little hesitant to talk about, because I haven't shared it with a whole lot of people. But nobody reads this anyway, so what the heck, right?

I've mentioned frequently on my blog that I'm super content being single and can't imagine being in a relationship or being married and all of that. For a long time, that's been true. For the past 3 years or so, I have never met anyone who has piqued my interest or been something I've even considered thinking about. However, since being at Tech I have met someone that I really do like.
(Gosh, I feel so middle-school-esqe just saying that.)
I don't want to go into a whole lot of detail, but basically I've just been trying to get to know this person better and lay a groundwork for a close friendship with the hope that something more will develop. I've been trying to be outgoing and put myself out there (which is really really really hard for me with guys), and to be as "obvious" as I can that I'm interested without actually saying I'm interested.
As I said before, this is the first person in over 3 years that I've even looked twice at or thought, "You know, if he asked me out I would say yes."
That's kind of a huge deal for me. It may not seem that way to you, but if you knew my relationship history you would understand.
This is terrifying and overwhelming.

So, today as I was sitting in my office, everything that had built up from the past 2 days came flowing out in full force:
The guy who made a comment about my weight,
The class that was so blatantly disrespectful,
The design assignment that I couldn't seem to get together,
The office work I was doing so poorly...

It all combined to scream this one conclusion at me.

"Lex, what are you doing? You can't seem to inspire a class of students or even grasp the concepts in your own classes, yet you say you want to be a teacher? You're graduating in less than a year, and you need to have a job lined up. What skills do you possibly have for that line of work? How is ANYONE going to hire you when not only can you NOT accomplish something as simple as drawing a set design, but you can't even keep a bunch of undergrads focused on a YouTube video?! What a joke!"

And then on top of that, I was suddenly hit with the realization that this guy, this boy that I'm wanting to know better and to develop a deeper, more meaningful relationship with.....he is NEVER going to see me as anything. How could he when I'm such a mess as it is? From the way it looks after these couple of days, I'm overweight, I'm floundering in everything I do, I apparently can't make myself awesome enough or desirable enough or great enough for him to show any interest...nothing I do seems to make a difference. And all of a sudden, I felt so incredibly idiotic. Here I am, thinking that maybe this guy would eventually, somehow, look at me and see someone worth knowing and pursuing on a deeper level.

Who am I even kidding? About any of this?

I was overwhelmed with this feeling of stupidity and foolishness....

And the tears just flowed.

So there you have it. That's why I've been bawling in my office for a good 45 minutes now.

Life knocks Lex down sometimes.
And sometimes Lex just doesn't feel like getting back up.