Today I was offered a summer job in an area I've never had any interest in working.
Let me start again.
Last year, nearly exactly a year ago, I began rowing.
I still don't really know why. Since then, I've won three medals in two easy races and one that I worked hard for. My erg scores are dropping; today I did one for the first time since a minor but irritating injury and was a few points of a second off my BP.
However. I have no desire to face another competitive season. Australia is hot. I remember sitting out on mirror-like water, sweat dripping down off the points of my elbows, oars already slipping beneath my fingers. Forty degrees before 10 am. Two races later they cancelled for the day. (There are also several social issues, coaching issues, my general desire to get out of this fucking house out of this fucking skin I want a different name and different parents and a different life.)
Today, my coach asked if I'd like to coach school girls. I used to teach. I used to teach kids how to ride horses, and I loved it.
And now I am 22 and scared of everything. No one ever told me 22 was going to be like this. I feel a little let down by everyone else in my life. Why didn't anyone say, you're going to be 22 and lying on the floor listening to New Politics splitting the last of your bank account between comic books and a bottle of wine. I don't know if it would have helped. I just thought it would be a little less me and my friends struggling to stand up against the weight of the world.
"I need to go back to therapy" is something I tell myself no less than twenty times a day.
If I take the job I'm stuck here... Somehow I have gotten it into my head that the most suitable response to defining my own personal issues with gender is to escape from everyone I know. I want to leave.
(Your head is a mess, Alexander. You need to go back to fucking therapy. (It's so much more difficult than that. Money. My parents. The right therapist. In this fucking city? You gotta be kidding me. (I just don't want someone to tell me I'm broken. I get enough of that from myself.)))
I don't want the job. I was offered the job while I lay on the floor still sweating from the first erg I've done in a month, ankle over ice and scarcely able to hear over the sound of the gym's music (my iPod today). I said I would think about it, but I don't want it. I don't want anything to do with the outdoors in the Australian summer. (I want to book a ticket for New Zealand leaving the day after my final exam.)
Look. Sorry. This is a whining shitstorm. I ditch you and then I come back and expect... I dunno. A hug and someone to tell me what to do. I know what to do. I need to finish this year. Graduate, fine-a-fucking-ly. Get a job. A real bonafide 9-5 proper paying job like a real goddamn adult.
Move out. Change my name. Take a holiday. Learn how to have uncomfortable conversations.
I'd ask for a hug, but I'm not really a fan of physical proximities anymore.