I killed the cockroach tonight. It was standing on my washing machine, sniffing the side of a jar of apple cider, looking both innocent and prehistoric. I tried to move slowly towards the rolling pin the dishdrainer, but it sensed my movement and started to run. Lucky for me, it ran under a cookie sheet. I pounced on top of the sheet and applied pressure. A lot of pressure. I believe there was also some rocking back and forth, as well as just a little exclamation of murderous pleasure. When I was sure that I had used adequate force, I peeked under. Crushed cockroach.
My last class of the semester met tonight. I’m just a little bit gobsmacked that my first semester of grad school is done with. By this time next year, I’ll be all done with this program. I feel really good about the work I’ve done, and the friends I’ve made. I’ve received grades for two of my three courses, and I’ve done pretty darn well, which is a nice feeling. It’s a little added confirmation that I’m doing the right thing, that this itch to write that I have isn’t just some fleeting interest, soon to be replaced by cross-stitch or calligraphy.
I am grateful that the semester is over. I’ve felt in the last couple of days that I’ve hit a big, solid, substantial and distracting wall. I’ve explores means of going over, around or under it, anything to avoid actually dealing with it. I don’t really understand what’s causing it, only that it’s there and it’s unpleasant. Tonight I told my mom the wall, and the chaos it is wrecking in my normally well-aligned life.
She simply said, “You don’t have to understand it, you just have to know that it is gone. Once you know that, it will be.”
Her words made the bubble of emotions that have been living somewhere under my breastbone rise up and fill my throat. I felt myself start to cry. I always find it amazing that the things you know for yourself can be so much more powerful when someone else says them to you. So I’m just going to know that the wall is gone and let myself relax into vacation and home.