Coping

I've been avoiding having to do this all week, but I think that seeing it down in writing will make it more real to me. Tomorrow I will wake up and prove that the last fifteen years of my academic life -- and I suppose my real one as well -- have not been in vain. I could cry right now from the unspoken nervousness that I've felt this week. There are knots in my stomach and my heart hurts.

I passed by a church the other day that had a quote from Serena Williams, talking to herself during the Australian Open final this year: "You can do this. You've done this before. You can do it again." Oddly enough, it's the same speech my college roommate would always give me the day of an important exam or a high-pressure event. I was always sort of surprised to find that, for the most part, she was right. I would buckle down, deal with the moment (as I'd always done before) and then continue living my life, adding yet another notch to my life-experience belt.

The thing is, I don't know if the same pep talk can apply to me this time around. I am finally entering the workforce. I am staking out my claim on this world as an almost fully-realized adult. I know that my entire life has armed me with all of the necessary skills to succeed, I swear I do, but I still can't avoid the feelings of nervousness and fear that have wracked my brain and body this last week. And although I haven't voiced these fears out loud to anyone, I know exactly what they are. It's the pressure of producing tangible results, of meeting expectations. I've talked the talk, and now it's time to walk the walk as well. I want to live up to the hype that I've created for myself. And more importantly, I want to meet the expectations of the people in my life who have invested inordinate amounts of time and money and love on me. I want to make them so incredibly proud, but I've just never done this before. And I'm so scared of that.

I know that once tomorrow is over, I will have realized that, surprise of surprises, throwing myself into the fire is something that I can do, and will be able to do time and time again in the future. One thing I've learned over the years is that to be able to deliver, as clear-headed and as collected as can be, I need to create increasing levels of anxiety leading up to that big, big moment. Which is, ironically enough, exactly what I'm doing now. It's almost as though I need to be suffocating myself with a pillow first in order to be able to breathe.

I can acknowledge that this is all rather counterintuitive...but it's just my way of coping. I guess on some level it's better to deal with the emotional mess now and get it out of my way, than to have to deal with it when I get there. Or I could just go to sleep and forget about the whole thing which, after all of this metacognitive rumination, is beginning to sound like a much more promising idea right now.