Time Capsule #5: The End

This post is fifth in a series of six posts that I held back temporarily, so as to prevent them from impacting a graduate school admissions decision. I've been told the decision would arrive this week. Perhaps today...

January 1, 2008 1 pm

It's over. How could it not be over? I discovered this morning that I am bleeding. Red red blood. A steady drip.

My period is just ten days late. I don't expect to go through anything close to labor this time, thank goodness, though I'm keeping a hot water bottle close at hand.

I'm thankful that this didn't drag out for a month, two months, four. I'm grateful that J~ will be coming home early from work today, to be with me. I have mixed feelings about telling my family – I'd been hoping for the opportunity to share unequivocal good news, but now it seems like stale, old, rotten bad news. Sharing it now seems like casually dropping a bomb. Nothing can be done or said to fix the situation. When I imagine speaking to them, I feel awkwardly mute, as if I have a plastic egg in my mouth. I could lay the information at their feet some other way, but what do I expect them to do with it? Do I really want to hear, yet again, "Oh, Amy, I'm so sorry"? Wouldn't that break my heart all the more?

I'm glad I haven't made any rash moves with my graduate school applications, though the two conflicted inner-selves I sent off to work it out over a plate of imaginary waffles are still sitting at that imaginary table. The waffles are long gone, the sticky plates pushed aside. They seem to be making progress – their identical heads bent together as they scribble out lists of pros and cons, make charts of my long- and short-term goals, mindmap my dreams. They offer this report:

Latest thinking — I may not apply to any more schools. The application to my favorite program is done. If I don't get accepted there, I may be brave and give myself another year of focused work on my freelance career, on being a writer and artist in my own right, before I consider investing time and energy into any graduate program that feels like a back-up plan.

One thing's for certain: I get the day off from major decisions of any kind today.