Ponderings from Facebook

From what I see, if you have EVER defaulted on student loans in the past, you are pretty much ineligible to receive loans for graduate school. So, unless I get into a PhD program that is funded, I will never be able to do what I want to do. I was considering applying to Master's programs as well, thinking that further training might make me a more competitive candidate for the programs of my choice in the future, but if I cannot pay for them, then there really isn't a point to it. I love that I'm basically fucked forever, and that there is absolutely no way back from this, unless I can somehow get a job in a research lab, which--given how that has gone over the last 3 years--also seems like it's never going to happen. 

I'm dealing with all of this surprisingly well, probably because I still have some hope that the next letter I receive will be a positive one. But I do worry about what happens if it is not. Because I was unable to immediately get a job out of college--because I decided not to jump into school without having experienced life outside of academia--I have been forced into a situation where I am living with my parents at age 25, am struggling to save every penny I can, am pretty much shunned by anyone hiring in my field due to the length of time I have not been working in said field, am constantly accruing more and more debt as many of my loans remain unpaid, and am now faced with the very likely possibility that there is no future for me in any scientific field. I feel that I have done everything that I possibly could have done, and the sad part about this whole thing is that, even if I were to receive a call asking me to start a position next week--a position which would not be local--I would never be able to afford to make the move to accept it. Is it really true that there is no way out?

I definitely sound a bit more dramatic than I intend at this moment, but I find it hard to believe that I will take it well if I find out that this is the end of this journey for me. Because this is what I want to do more than anything else, I do not see another path to happiness. I will always want this. How would I live with that? This is not the world in which I expected to find myself after years of dedication, hard work, and sacrifice. It is enough to make me wonder why I bothered with any of it at all, when I am no better off than those who work part-time at a fast-food chain. I don't want to resign myself to living like this forever--always looking back, always longing for that green light at the end of the dock, always feeling bitter, always feeling useless, purposeless, and wasted. Still, I remain calm--a testament to the personal work I have been putting in since graduating from a university that promised me so much more out of life--but the feelings are still there. I know I am not alone, but that just makes it all the more depressing.

I want to thank the friends who have been there for me and have given me the much needed time to myself as I have struggled with understanding the full impact of this the past couple of days. I keep telling myself that things will be okay, and they will. But I am not interested in "just okay". I never have been, and I never will be--because I really am one obsessive son of a bitch. It makes me good at what I do. I have never given up when it counted, but this time, I might have to, and since a good percentage of my definition of myself comes from the fact that I am doggedly persistent--sometimes to a fault--I feel like I would be living life as a different person, a person somehow less than the person I am now. 

And this is where I am stuck.