The Fictive Life

I haven’t written in about a year. My life has been swallowed up by an academic haze and I have yet to be spit out. I spend most of my time in a tiny concrete cell at the university library with two slits for windows and I mark the passage of time and the seasons with the ebb and flow of the studying students outside my door, my walks to and from school and the changing attire of my officemate. Yet time has no meaning in the four walls that confine me, since I spend my time reading books on the past and theories about things that in reality don’t concern me.

Doing a PhD isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. The constant stress people had forewarned me about isn’t as easy to shrug off as I had thought. It has become my most constant companion and the anxiety eats at my insides, even when I sleep. It’s not a rational anxiety since, in reality, I am well off. It’s the kind that feeds off the uncertainty associated with research: Will I get scooped? Will I have enough funding? Will my supervisor tear my research to shreds? Will I finish on time? Will I publish? And, most importantly, will this PhD, which I don’t even need, stand in the way of future endeavours? Fear of the future seems to be lodged in this PhD of the past and there is no escaping it. At least so it seems.

Yet is this acceptable? No. I am young, beautiful and able-bodied now and should not let this slip away to be discarded in a small, concrete room that resembles a monastic cell. I didn’t make a vow of chastity, obedience and loyalty to the university after all. I must regain my energy. I must regain a grip on the present.

“I hope you’re having fun, ML-style,” a friend recently wrote. At the time I definitely wasn’t and it made me wonder briefly what she meant by that, which ML she was referring to, since there have been many in my time. And while that specific exuberant ML cannot be reclaimed, I should work towards her again, since she was fun, curious, happy and balanced. And that’s definitely worth more than any prestigious publication or a doctor title after all. Research can and should be fun, but it should not be an alter on which to sacrifice oneself.