Note to self

When feeling better do not take the time to google old college roommates, especially ones you know have gone out and succeeded in ways you wish you'd had a chance at and who probably forgot all about you about oh, 14 years ago since you graduated 15 years ago.  Now I'm sad.  Glad for all of them, just had my belief that not attending reunions is best for me re-affirmed.  It takes me back nearly 20 years to the day I found out that not only were my other 2 roommates closer friends than I was with them they did not want to room with me the next year. Some of it was logistics, there weren't many triples available, but mostly who wants to room with an extremely anxious, depressed, fighting treatment as hard as possible, overly stressed by her classes and work person when you could have fun?  It's hard to argue with that and they were nice enough but it was one of the first times I had to really and truly face "I'm different".  Not just the psych stuff, I wouldn't even have thought of that as a first reason (although I was not fun to be with while coping with my parents' divorce) but because our backgrounds were SO different.  Both of them were from affluent families in affluent towns.  They had planetariums at their high schools; we didn't have adequate microscopes.  They had normal regional accents; I had an Appalachian accent that they found funny.  And it can be, I just wanted to blend in a bit.  That was the year I started smushing my accent and using it only when I wanted to or I am around someone else using it in which case it pops out.  They were from major cities; I was from a town so small that we mailed something to my mother's first name, description of the road I lived on (but not it's name) and it got there on time as if it were addressed properly. 

They never rejected me for my illness although by the time it was bad we didn't see each other much. They pulled away because I wasn't from their world and never could be.  That was true with a lot of people in college but some people are able to open their world more than others. Just before we graduated I ran into one of them and they'd heard I was going to grad school and they told me of their own plans.  Both were well on their way to success in their chosen fields and through the alumni magazine I have seen them succeed.

But I need to avoid it being in my face again.  That hurt too much.  I think I'd written on here that I had decided to maintain my OT license.  It took me 20 months to decide that.  Today, about 6 days later, I got a proposed update to the Ohio OT laws that will require 250 hours working as an OT in a 5 year period to maintain licensure.  I have always been surprised this didn't exist.  Now it is going to mean that I probably won't have a license very long.  I think I'll get one renewal using the hours from my last year of working, maybe.  But after that I will either have to work 50 hours per year as a clinician or give up the license.  I won't put myself in a position of feeling I have to get those hours unless my status has changed enough that I feel I can do it without pressuring myself.  Again, in my face, and I wish it weren't.

But I can't do much about it and I need to just be glad that the Topamax is giving me some good time.  I just need to use it more wisely.