Despertar

oh, it's ironic

Confession time: As many times as I skipped Tax, my Tax-skipping penchant paled in comparison to my utter failure to show up for one single Professional Responsibility class. I am not exaggerating when I say that I literally did not attend Professional Responsibility once. Not once. It started, at the beginning of the semester, as a series of excuses--I skipped the first three classes because you can always get away with skipping the first few classes, during the add/drop period; I skipped the next three classes because I was too depressed to move; and then I bailed on the rest of the semester because the prospect of showing up just seemed too awkward.

And yet, I'm taking the exam today. Under completely aboveground, legal, honor code non-violating pretenses. And I'll probably pul a B.

When I do something like this, scrape by through a combination of luck and grabass after consistently blowing it for weeks/months, I hate myself more than anything. More than anything. This morning, in the bathroom, running through my grooming routine, my self-hatred was so enormous, I couldn't stand it. I threw a brush at the mirror. Nothing broke.

My biggest fear was that I'd walk into the test and one of my should-be classmates would immediately call me out for showing up in the eleventh hour. Would do that thing nerdy law students do, pile shit on top of shit and try to make me feel like an even bigger pile of shit by condescendingly chuckling about how long they studied and how I must be so smart if I could get away with so fully blowing it off. Knowing full well I'll pull a B for my trouble while they check their final products again and again and ultimately earn As.

And then I walked in, and picked a seat in the remotest corner of the room, and no one said anything. And that was a relief. It was. I'm not going to be dramatic and pretend it sucks, being invisible. Being invisible is the best thing possible when the alternative is feeling conspicuously terrible.

But my nerves are totally shot. My legs have been shaky for three days. Walking is difficult, even.

*

Maybe two-week rounds are better, after all, for Follow the Leader. As much as I hated to do it, as much as I empathize with the judges who would have to read them, I ended up cranking out several half-assed entries in a row, toward the end. Till about the two-week mark, I was keeping pace.

It was a good round, though. Quite good, besides the normal thing of everyone not finishing, which is fine, there are always non-finishers, and it's fine. The round was almost perfect. Bad-for-my-ego perfect. In my state of apathy, I'm probably the worst possible judge, right now. Not having to read the journals I didn't want to read was the greatest relief of all of it.

Depending whether the people interested let me get away with waiting a little longer, I'd like to get back on the horse, but not immediately. If people want to play again right away, I might have to solicit outside judges again.

*

I had a dream, last night, that I was giving Justin the worst blow job ever. Probably because of my two-line exchange with Aaron following her dream entry, in my dream, two of my front teeth were missing, and the rest were calcium-deficient, with those jagged, bumpy edges. In the dream, I was trying to avoid my jaw locking in the open position, so my mouth was tight, and the jagged edges of my remaining teeth were scraping against the tip of his penis. He kept saying "Ow, ow, ow," over and over, and then he was crying, so I stopped, and in the most unrealistic turn of events ever, he put his arm around me so we could watch a movie, instead.

When I woke up, I had that feeling of having been stirred awake after only fifteen or twenty minutes of sleep, my head like an anvil. When I checked the clock, it had actually been four hours.

After this test, I can sleep.