There Is A Light

I am so happy to see the sunshine and warmer temperatures this week. I feel renewed and refreshed. Or at least I did on monday. Two different times this week I have woken up early to exercise.

I don't know what happened, but something in me changed on sunday night. For the last six months I have really struggled with feeling guilty because I am not happy. It was a vicious cycle of not being happy, feeling guilty, feeling even less happy, and then feeling even more guilty.

There's this assumption I had that since I was newly married I should be happy all the time and that I should not only be happy, but that I should be the happiest I have ever been. This hasn't been the worst times of my life by any stretch, but it has been one of the most stressful.

I underestimated how much grad school was going to strain my life. College was relatively stress free. I went to class full-time and worked an average of thirty hours a week. I thought that grad school would be like college (which incidentally, I keep misspelling) only with tougher homework.

Not only did I underestimate the strain of grad school, I underestimated how full my life was. I am married. I commute an hour and a half (really two hours because I park and take the bus) one way just to get to classes. It's no wonder I feel stressed and anxious all the time.

All this time I had not made the connection that grad school was the thing that was causing all of my anxiety and general feelings of unhappiness. At the same time I didn't think being married made me unhappy, I just felt guilty about not being happy. FINALLY, this week I connected the dots....I am unhappy because I am stressed to the max. My marriage is probably the one thing (other than God) that keeps me sane and keeps me from losing it altogether.

This past week has still been filled with anxiety, but the difference is I don't feel guilty about it. I'm trying to manage it better, but I don't feel guilty. I am embracing the fact that twenty hours grad classes is overwhelming and it's ok to feel overwhelmed. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. At the end of the year I will have be completely done with my masters (hopefully to never return to school again) and in less than three months I will be done with classes.