December 16, 2003
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Chapter 5 (cont.)
That fall we moved into a tiny basement apartment near the University of Washington campus and entered our sophomore and junior years respectively. The street I walked down to reach classes passed through sorority row, a world I was never to know. From the time I first left home, I began to write long descriptive
letters to my parents, which my mother kept. It seems amazing to me now that I handwrote them almost daily. Already in October of that sophomore year, I was beginning to feel the pressure of comparing my own worth to that of my brilliant and very studious young husband. I wrote, “I can’t explain exactly what goes on in my mind when I watch him in his other world. He’s so avid about this world and so rarely comes all the way out of it or shares any of it with me. Somehow it manages to make me feel as though I’ve fallen at the wayside. It’s like I was a little old car put-putting along the road feeling proud that I was holding up as good as I was, when suddenly a big high-powered Cadillac comes roaring by and splatters dust all over me. I feel like I want to crawl off in the ditch and just sit there and let my tires go flat.” By spring, in the virtually daily letters home, I mentioned having been diagnosed with possible mononucleosis (a fairly common college-aged illness) and prescribed pills for both anxiety and depression. There is no mention of drinking, though I remember discovering that you could buy hard liquor in grocery stores in Washington, unlike Oregon. I was homesick and overwhelmed. (to be continued)
Deep Thought:If doctors ever tell you that you’ve “flipped out,” don’t believe them, and just keep on doing what you were doing, because something tells me “the Man” is behind this.
Today I am grateful for: Howard Dean
Comments (7)
Homesick and overwhelmed is a difficult place to be…
amen
Sometimes I feel like that around my husband; as if he so bright and magnificent that I sit in the shadows. The funny thing is, he says he feels that way around ME. We never fully see our own worth.
Ain’t it the truth? It seems to take years to stop the comparisons.
Agree with amouage. Everything seems to change so quickly, & yet, we can’t quite put our finger on it at the time. Sounds like you did, though, in your letters. Astute even as a youngster, weren’t you?
How neat to have such a detailed record of your first year(s) of marriage!
I’m sorry it was so hard for you – that you felt so much left in your husband’s wake.
Handwritten letters almost every day, wow. I used to write letters, but never that assiduously (and mine were considerably fluffier than yours, if that’s a representative sample).