Whoa

Huh. Who knew? It is an muggy nasty day following a hurricane that knocked down my aunts’ entire house, while another hurricane (bad Ike! Go the hell away!) comes zooming towards us, and I just did something insane and impractical that made no sense and left me in an unpleasant place, monetarily speaking, and I am so happy that I keep bursting into song and squeaking with joy. And not flood and Judgment Day and mine disaster songs, either – funny songs, Gilbert & Sullivan songs, the cheerful fast-paced church songs.

Which is consolations. Which means I did the exactly right thing.

Yeah, so today, I dropped out of school. I dropped out. Of school. I’m a drop-out now. An unemployed, uninsured dropout, that’s me. Part of my brain is screaming WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU LUNATIC GIRL YOU WILL NOW DIE OF SOME UNSPECIFIED DISEASE AND BECOME A BURDEN ON THE TAXPAYERS, because this is so not me. I’m good at school; school is my thing. I get straight As and research things thoroughly and use library resources. I’m the girl who does things because they make practical sense.

That, I think, is the reason I quit school. At least, those were the terms in which I framed my internal debate in order to make dropping out into a less insane decision. I thought this thought: I’ve spent my entire life choosing to do the sensible, practical thing, rather than the thing that I think will make me the most happy (which isn’t to say I don’t do things that make me happy, because I do of course). And that’s worked out fine – I saved money, I went to England, I got good jobs that developed useful skills – so that’s what I’ve always done. But now the system is breaking down, because I have spent the few weeks of this semester consumed with dread and unhappiness, so I decided to do a new thing. I decided to do something that was not practical, just because it’s what I want, and see where that goes.

Though this is all rationalization after the fact. The real truth is that listening to music when you are trying to settle your mind can be a terrible, terrible idea (Mumsy, look. Here is an example of what I mean about taking music as omens). When you are trying to settle your mind about something, you are all too apt to hear a song and think THAT SONG IS SPEAKING TO MY SOUL when actually it’s – you know – it’s just a song. Not signs and portents. Just a regular old song. It’s dangerous because any song could come on! The song that says “You have to be able to get a job with earning potential and it is insane to abandon your health insurance without any prospect of health insurance from elsewhere” could come on, or – and this is what actually happened – the song could come on that says “trust your instincts, close your eyes, and leap”. I was in the car on the way to work, listening to my mp3 player, and Idina Menzel sang most stirringly about the trusting and the closing and the leaping, and I was like YES. THIS IS MY PATH.

Of course, Idina Menzel’s character in Wicked ended up having to fake her own death in order to escape from the oppressive regime of misery. But whatever. SHE IS SPEAKING TO MY SOUL.