One Step Forward, 10 Steps Back

ok, not literally one step forward, 10 back but you get the picture. or sort of.

2012 is not my year. I don't feel prepared for this year. There is no manual for parenting, no real manual for surviving graduate school, and there is no manual for what you when your adviser becomes sick and must take a leave. I wish there were manuals to help sort through the sorrow, shock, devastation, fear--the range of emotions and the level of uncertainty.

My heart hurts, my brain hurts, and I have thrown up 26 times in the past two days. I blame soy and stress. And I can't sleep.

My adviser is ill--the details not meant for the public nature of a blog. The only relevant detail is that she is taking medical leave--which a decision I have been waiting and hoping that she would make. Not because I want her to leave, but because it is what is best for her.

I don't typically blog about her--unless it is in the sense of complaining. I complain about everything. The truth is I admire, respect and owe so much to my advisor. She took a chance on me as an MA student when no one else thought I was smart. She involved me in research, she encouraged me, she pushed me, she assured me I would make it in a phd program, and she backed off to let me figure out who I am. This woman, always so strong, so fierce and so confident is now facing so much in her life. My heart hurts on the personal level for this woman who has always been here for me--through deaths, through pregnancy, through stress, through my unraveling in the past year. I am devastated that I have to find a way to complete this doctoral journey without her.

And the truth is, I don't know how to do it. I feel like the most valuable thing she has give me is the ability to stand up for myself and to articulate what I want to research and why. But, now I wait. I wait for the very important committee to talk about my pathetic proposal (because really, it was just a pathetic draft)and to decide who my new advisor is.

I am overwhelmed. I am overcome with so many emotions as I grieve on so many levels. I spent the afternoon screaming and crying and screaming again, threatening to drop out and finally just refusing to accept it. But the truth is I have to accept it. I have to find a way to move forward. I have to figure out how to pick myself up and get myself through this. And right now, the reality that I am doing that alone scares me. I hate change, I hate uncertainty, and I guess life and this doctoral program have decided that I need a new technique. I don't know what that is. My blog? Yoga? A spa? Who knows.

I am trying to give myself time to let it sink in. I have known this was coming, I just didn't expect today to be official. I am trying to figure out how I grieve--and how I move forward. None of that seems simple. But since blogging = my new therapy, i guess my limited audience will learn how.