Sunday, March 23, 2014

Two months and 23 days

I am here. It is today two months and 23 days since I moved here and it is nothing like what I could have expected.

I feared living here, but I thought that it would be great work-wise. I don't know how many times I already thought of quitting and go back to I don't even know to what, since there is nothing I could go back to.
I am sleepless. I work non-stop for zero reward. I have never met students on average so uninterested and so ignorant. But it is the lack of interest that strikes me more and upsets me and makes me feel frustrated. I spend sleepless nights preparing the classes, not being able to do anything else in my life beside working to prepare the classes and for what?
I have to do it, I am paid for it, but it is so frustrating.
And I have none to talk to here. No friends, no acquaintances with whom sometimes to take a break from all this craziness and do and talk about something else. I have been working hard in my life before. I had a crazy PhD time. But I had the olandesino and I had friends that made life worth, that gave me a reason, something to look forward.
Since two months and 23 days I am on a survival mode. Counting the days until the end of this semester, hoping that during the summer I will be able to recharge and not think about my non-life here, hoping that I will be able to spend time with my friends and family. I feel so disconnected and lonely here and I keep asking myself what really is the point of doing all this.
I moved here to be closer to my husband. But we still don't live in the same place, who knows when and how we will, since any attempt to find a job for him here has been unsuccessful so far, and when we see each other, which fortunately happens more frequently than before, I am always so down, so nervous, so busy preparing the classes and working, that I am not even able to fully enjoy the time together.

I miss my previous life, when I had a life.

I felt lonely in Portugal, but nothing compared to how I feel here. I didn't have close friends there, but I had people to do things with. I had people whom I could call if I wanted to. I had the ocean and plenty of time just for myself. And money to save.

Life is too short to be wasted and I really cannot see a point in wasting mine working so hard to receive zero appreciation and feel constantly stressed, unhappy, and nervous. I had to finish this semester and then start to seriously think about maybe moving again if things will not change within the next months. What is the point of being here if I have to be so lonely and work all the time to not have a life and have such a low salary that I constantly worry about how I would get to the end of the month if my husband wouldn't help me with the expenses.

It is not the place, it is not the people. It is all together. On average very bad students, too much work, extreme loneliness, not having time for myself, feeling isolate, feeling far from family and friends and not having enough time to dedicate to them even if it was just to talk to them on the phone.

I have something like two more months to go and I can't wait to get to the end of this semester and hopefully get a life worth living back.
There are really too many beautiful things in this work to spend all my time working....and working for what?