Ohh man, it’s been a real struggle lately. Have you ever truly wanted to give up on something in life? And then just did it? I mean shit. So far, I’ve been able to figure out how to make it through what life has thrown at me. Not always gracefully, in fact never gracefully, but somehow I’ve always made it. Moving back to America in 2016 to go to grad school was something I dreaded.

Can I just be honest and say that when I finished college in 2009 it was with such great relief that I thought, shit, I am going to join the military so I don’t have to go through this again right away. But seriously, I loved college and the people I met there and the things I got to do, but I live with just the most basic smartness in life and a higher dose of common sense.

After a lot of grief and average grades, I had to spend the last 3 months in grad school locked in a room to write pretty much my entire thesis. I’m the person who 2 weeks before my last semester received an email while I was lying in a hostel in Santiago Chile from my thesis advisor very politely telling me there was a very high chance that I would definitely not finish on time. And all signs pointed towards that result, but with a few sips of bourbon ever now and again and the Hamilton soundtrack on repeat because there’s nothing like “I’m not throwing away my shot” to lite a fire under your ass, am I right? I was able to get this done. So getting that thesis approval letter a week after graduation at 2pm when there was a 5pm deadline to graduate with all the requirements for the semester was quite a relief.

Unfortunately school as not over for me as much as I wanted it to be so. I started language school to learn Bahasa Indonesia 2 months later and I really suck at it. Suck immensely. It started with just the pronunciation of words but it has steadily been everything. I cannot understand audio’s well, I am always near the edge of academic probation, I just really suck at it and there just doesn’t seem to be a good way for me to study and improve. So, shittt. I mean, how am I going to finish this school and pass the proficiency test? I have about 2 months left to figure it out. I have come as close as I have ever been to showing up one day at the school and just saying okay, I tried as hard as I can and that’s about all I have so, peace, I’m out. Which would really suck because although I was born with a dislocated hip I can still ugly crawl to the top of mountains, and solo travel around this world, but my first failure is going to be language school? Fuck that.

This fiery attitude hasn’t been present that past few months. I’ve just been existing off the grid, like way far off the grid, far from social media, most of the time not going out at night and certainly not hanging out with people. I stopped going to weekly trivia and I put my head down and endured it all, and it really sucked. Then people started to notice, and my friends really began to support me. They wrote cards to me in the mail, and call me regularly to make sure that I’m okay, and I have received freshly baked Oreo cookies from the infamous Megan T. and Megan R. started calling me to hang out all the time in Monterey because we were both confronting complex challenges in life and have become like sisters over it all.

One weekend I was not particularly feeling myself and downloaded Tiny Beautiful Things the Dear Sugar column by Cheryl Strayed and those beautiful fucking brilliant words spoke to me. Through her own failures and experiences in life she is able to relate on so many different levels that she speaks to people about any and all topics. And I realized that failing out of language school can hardly compare to some other things that people have endured in their life. It certainly makes me question what I want in life and where my future is headed if I do not pass this class, but it is hardly comparable to the loss of a loved one or sending an email to Dear Sugar that just says, “WTF”.

So it is time to try to be great, even if per the usual all the signs point to the fact that I’m going to fail. If I have come this far, I can hardly sit down and let this challenge slap me in the face like a bag of dicks because that would be a very unpleasant experience. I have a tutor now, and I am slowly starting to improve and I am going to pass that proficiency test in August and then I am going to walk away from that school and never look back, or I’m going to fail that proficiency test but I gave it everything I had and I’m going to walk away knowing that I tackled the mother-fucking shit out of it. I guess it’s time to get to work..

This article appeared first on The Cassey Excursion.