This post will be a little more vulnerable for me. I will talk about my emotions during a breakup. As a graduate student in a PhD Program, a lot happens in our personal lives and we often have to forego them because of the pace of the work that is demanded of us as well as maybe obtaining a dream. One thing that I didn’t get to reflect on at the time but I can now is my past relationship.
We were together for 4 years, it ended up abruptly but looking back it I knew it was coming. I was an emotional wreck during this time and a lot that I buried in my work or within myself. A lot of those emotions I had a hard time conveying to people, family, friends and it did affect my work. Here’s some things that I did and maybe my story can help relate to others.
We broke up on a Friday and the next day was the Tattoo Convention Center Downtown. That morning, I was in shock, I also got an e-mail that I had a publication (my first one in graduate school). It was bittersweet and the person I wanted to share with just ended. I went to the tattoo center and found a man named the BeeInker who tattooed a Mongolian word next to my molecule tattoo. We sat for 3 hours and I told him about my breakup.
So here you can see what’s tattooed to my arm. You can probably guess what the word is. At this point, when the next week hit and I had to do work, meet with advisor, coach someone new, my mornings were actually met with a lot of tears. A lot of times I just kind of buried my pain there, stop any tear flow and focus on just getting whatever task done. Maybe distract myself.
I did this for weeks and I slowly just descended into my own emotional madness. I buried a lot of my own emotional pain and as a result I would randomly start crying tears. I would be walking through the grocery store and tears would fall, maybe I would be coding or working, walking or listening to music. I tried anything to distract myself and went out more to bars/clubs. Partying a little more and making an asshole out of myself in the city.
During this time my qualifying exam was coming up. I needed to really shape up. I gained a lot of weight during my breakup, around 30lbs, and I was eating right. I felt ugly and slow. My own brain couldn’t really think clearly. When I first got wind of when the proposal was due, I kind of took a mockery of it and I wasn’t taking it seriously. It wasn’t a spite against academia but it just felt like I didn’t care and I lost confidence in myself and my own ideas. When the proposal exam came, I was able to muster up everything I had worked on for 2 years and submit to receive a provisional pass during the qualifying.
In 2 more months, if I didn’t have something by the end I would been let by the end of the year I would have been let go from the university. Who I was had to change and I had to pick myself up. My confidence that I maybe leaned on in my own relationship now needed to come from within myself.
