Back to School, my darling.

I am hugely frustrated by my break from school. I have no way in which to feed, modify, or expand my brain. 

People, tiredly, told me I should enjoy my "vacation" after the accident. I made the mistake of confessing to doctors, nurses, family and friends that I was unhappy about having to stay at home, not being able to work. "Don't worry about that. Enjoy your vacation." 

No one, of course, offered me a week in Tuscany, a month in Tibet, or a winter in the tropics. 

My darlings, this is no vacation. This, my recovery, is an entrapment. A cage. A hearty death throttle of substandard expectation. It swells heavily in my heart. Sinks into abandoned and yet to be reworked neuron space. You do not want me to send any holiday treasures of where I have been and what I have seen from this place. This is no vacation. 

Spring semester starts January 16th, 2014. I have never been so excited to go back to school.

That must be the brain injury talking. 

With nervous luck, I'll be taking graduate level courses this coming semester. In a great effort to recover from a humiliatingly low undergraduate GPA, I will be taking masters course work- hoping to create an academic profile for my MFA applications in the fall of 2014.

In three years time I hope to have a Masters in Poetry. A MFA is a dream I stopped chasing after my graduation. My reasoning- I cannot financially afford yet another degree that cannot help me achieve some semblance of American financial security. I had already passionately followed my love of literature to a Bachelor of Arts in English. With a broken heart and a broken bank account, I worried that I'd followed the wrong love. 

I flirted with the idea of falling in love with a mastery of Public Administration. But there was no guarantee that the "right" non-profit or NGO was going to want me once a degree was awarded.

My mother and many friends harped the usefulness of a Masters in Curriculum/Education. But upon research, I predicted that I would find myself in a sea of instructors looking for work- damaged, neck snapped by the ferocious dogma of school districts criminal "education" expectations. Already, in Nola, I'd been served a heaping, steaming pile of "you're not the right fit/we can't shape you as we need" disappointment. 

And then I almost died. 

Cheating death. Cheating irreversible damage is immensely liberating. A person has to relearn so much. Of the many things one has to relearn- Value of Self. Because, honestly, if you die tomorrow are you going to die happy that you didn't try for what you loved but had at least grasped monetary security? Or would you rather happily die poor and full heart sure passion? 

What is my happiness worth? I have decided it will not be bought. My happiness cannot be housed and husbanded. It will find no satisfaction with mate or genetic multitude. Childlike tantrum intact, my happiness was meant to fuss and fit no standard. My happiness does not leisure. It does not linger in a dictated space of earned achievement. My happiness isn't waiting for a big pay check. It's not waiting for paid time off or a tropic sphere issued tan. 

Happiness, jokingly, was waiting for me to grow up, get brave and get over the idea of being "successful" as defined by a society that still (after three decades!) hasn't grasped my individual worth. 

In my life before the accident, I feel that there were many things I missed because I hadn't calculated my self-worth. My Value. Jobs I never cared for. Classes failed because I'd pre-deemed myself a failure. Men who dismissed me because they felt they could find better. 

Loves. Love lost. 

Since the accident there is no excuse for allowing others to treat me with disregard. 

With that said and done, I regard myself as one with exceptional quality. 

Quality. 

The type of creative quality that was eventually destined to grow up, get brave and discover happiness and success doing something that I love. 

Artists. We're fucking STRANGE that way