The moments have started to multiply.
You know.
Those moments when you take a sharp breath inward to remind yourself that there are things to do, things to do, always things to do, and so there is no time to dwell on the rising lump in your throat, or the quivering of your bottom lip, or the shaking in your knees, or the trembling in your hands, or the burning in your heart, or the fatigue in your eyes.
I anticipated this, though, I admit that I thought it would come earlier or much, much later.
Somebody told me that it would be lonely, but not everyone in this sphere of the world is sitting on top of a literal hill, in a tower, looking out over a strange alien environment. I didn't think it would be this kind of isolation -- I've built a shell around myself, and I feel as though the world is hurtling by me with each gust of wind, and another person is married, someone else is happy, another has died, someone has moved, someone is gone, everything is swirling and changing colors, while I sit here alone, buried in my papers and journals, analyzing something that everyone around me is telling me is insignificant and juvenile.
It is no wonder that people run away or break down.
These ivory towers, they boast of having collected the most brilliant of minds, the greatest of souls, the most rigorous of thinkers, and then they break them. Through a highly bureaucratic, institutionalized process of emotional and academic hazing, they tell you all that you must do but tell you that none of it is of consequence. No matter that you came to this place with the passion and the hope to teach the next generation of thinkers and scholars. No matter that you came to this place to attempt to join the ranks of those hoping to find a solution to injustice. No matter. They will tell you that you know nothing, but that you must somehow find the confidence and the means to produce something worth publishing. All while telling you that you are insignificant and naïve.
This is academia.
They tell you that you will meet and befriend great minds. They don't tell you that most of them will try to cut you, steal from you, and criticize you rather than work with you to solve the problems of the world.
They tell you that you will learn to become a producer of knowledge and not just a consumer, a critical thinker. They don't tell you that in order to be respected as a producer, you will first be forced to bow down to the generations of thinkers before you, regardless of whether you agree with them or not.
They tell you that it is a selfish, wonderful place where you can read and learn and think all day. They don't tell you that you will actually be a pawn in other people's projects, not your own.
It is a lonely place, this tower, this view from on top of this hill.
And so, walking home late at night, after having worked for 12 hours straight on a project that I am to attempt to get published while being told I know nothing of consequence, I sometimes catch myself slowing down at the top of the hill before I descend to my place of rest -- the orange lights all aglow on the hillside in front of me. I catch my breath and move along before I start to question where I am.
There is no time to feel. No way. Pause for too long and the fears and the insecurities and the nostalgia might just catch up with me, so I will keep moving.
It is truly a lonely place, this tower.
