When I was about 22 and in my very first semester of grad school, I was so tense and so emotionally lost. My relationship with the person I thought was my bff was deteriorating. Grad school was intense. The professors mocked us to our face and told us we weren't up to their standards of doctoral students. They told us that we were second rate. Classes were intensely boring. We were given lists of articles and books to obtain and read--out of print. Unrelenting stress. Punishing feedback based on unprofessional and non-academic basis (most of us were female--probably 75%) Several of us (not me) were already a parent. All of us were working simultaneously at making a living. A penis was seen as a necessary prerequisite. Even by the female professors. Several of the professors were world famous. They were the worst. The ones who weren't famous emulated those above them and toadied to them. Pettifoggers.
It wasn't what I thought graduate school would be. There was no camaraderie--not between the professors and the students. Not between the students and the students. All of us had several part-time jobs. There was no time for hobnobbing between or after classes.
As Amos Oz said, children being abused by their parents don't make common cause. They turn against each other as well.
I never felt so alone in my lonely and marginalized in my life.
My parents were against my going to graduate school. They didn't get it. They understood engineering. They understood accounting. They understood law. They understood med school. Psych grad school? For what purpose. How was I to make a living?
So I had no financial support from them. It mattered not. I had to put myself through undergrad school--they didn't even have the money for a state school at the time. So I was not a virgin to the loan process.
My parents didn't understand academia. Neither did I. I had no source of solace.
And so one day in November, I awoke and couldn't speak. My jaws couldn't come unhinged. Like the Tin Man, I needed oil. I couldn't eat. I was in unrelenting pain.
I got a referral to a dentist--I didn't have one. He gave me a muscle relaxant because I couldn't even open wide enough to stick the mirror in. Once the relaxant went in, it was clear--nothing was wrong. The stress had locked up my muscles. He gave me a prescription for muscle relaxants and sent me on my way.
The muscle relaxants knocked me out--sort of sending out using a mace to knock out a fly. I journeyed to Somerville, where my parents still lived and spent the weekend napping. And eating bakery cookies once my jaws worked.
I mention this because it all came back to me--the final days of Sylvia. All locked up. Moaning. Not able to eat. No one thought of what the stress of her inabilities was doing to her. She couldn't communicate. She couldn't control a muscle.
No one thought of looking in her mouth--I bet they'd see gingivitis, loose teeth, and maybe worse.
No one thinks of actually helping when you're a helpless and frail elderly. They just want to put you out of their misery.
Don't ever be helpless. And worse--never live when you're out of your money.
Like Mr. Micawber said: "Income: Ten pounds, 8 shilling. Expenses: Ten pounds 7 shillings. Outcome: Happiness. Income Ten pounds 8 shillings. Expenses: Ten pounds, 9 shillings. Outcome: Misery."
Creditors thought little of beating a debtor to death. Or putting them in debtors prison, where the only thing in supply was paper and ink, so they could write to their friends to get them out. You had to pay for food. You had to pay to visit your friends. Debtors prisons were a for profit enterprise.
Now we think nothing of beating an elderly person to death. Or sending them to a homeless shelter when they outlive their income. Or mercy killings via fentanyl and morphine.
We all live in a Dickensian world.