A year ago...

This time a year ago, things were tough. I had submitted my essays on May 1st and what followed was doubt, disbelief and pain. I remember that the theory of affect and the line 'things fall apart' kept running through my head like a song; I thought about them constantly. 

There was this emptiness. Just so much emptiness. 

I know that I was privileged compared to other graduates; I had a destination. I knew where I was going. But I kept thinking about everything that could go wrong. I spent a lot of time wallowing and I didn't tell anyone. To this day, I don't think I have ever told anyone how truly painful those few months were from May-September. It is only third year. It isn't the be all and end all of life but it feels like it. It feels like the world is splitting apart and you are right at the heart of it. Knowing that I was going to start my PGCE course was hard because there was an immense build up in my head. I was absolutely terrified. Just so completely and utterly terrified.

Sitting here, a year later, I feel the same. Slightly different, but the same. If I am kind to myself, if I could find a way to be a cheerleader for myself, I would say that I a proud. I am almost at the end of my second placement. 25th May and I am done. I have my assignment but other than that my last lesson will be Wednesday P3. I cannot wait. 

I have managed to get through the year and even though I am still anxious and worried, I have come so far and I need to cheerlead for myself because no one else is going to do it for me. 

That's what sucks. I hate that I do myself the injustice of not telling anyone how I feel. I bottle it up and instead of releasing the hurt, I contain it until late at night when no one will be able to see or hear my stifled sobbing. It's pathetic really.

Note to self: if you had a bucket list the top of the list would read "find a best friend - someone who you can hug and cry to".

Note to self 2: this time last year you discovered your left for The West Wing. See, when things fall apart, sometimes there are crevices of joy.

Note to self 3: you won't see the year 10s again after 9:30 Wednesday morning. You can survive them.

Note to self 4: you are enough. Internalise this. You are enough. You will find what you are looking for. But I hope, more than that, you realise that you never actually needed it.

x

T

Affect: The 'Now'

In Semester 1 of my final year of university- from September 2014 to January 2015- I took a module in 21st American Fiction. As part of the module we studied Don Delilo's novel The Body Artist. Alongside the novel, we studied the theory of affect.

Eric Shouse describes affect as 'prepersonal intensity'. This is what we experience before feelings and emotions. Our lecturer described it as the experience you have when you walk into a room and you just have this inkling that there is tension in the room. Or when you just know that someone has been talking about you. Or when you just have this instinct that you like someone. It is an involuntary intensity. It is not something that you have made sense of. It is instinctive. Feelings and emotions occur when we make sense of affect. Feelings, as opposed to affect, are based on prior experiences. To be sad is to have experienced sadness in the past, and to recognise in the present moment what being sad means. Affect occurs in the space before this. It is not codified or understood. It is outside of time or culture or society. It is abstract. It is non-conscious.

It may seem like a strange topic to write a blogpost about and I doubt I've explained it adequately, but during the summer, I thought about affect a lot.

As a university student, summer is not just a regular holiday. It is an extended holiday. When uni ended in May, even though I had experienced the long months of holiday, it was a strange feeling. I was faced with this stretch of time where there was nothing really after it. Graduating is a surreal experience. It is the culmination of 3 years' work and the beginning of the end. I know that sounds pessimistic but that's what it felt like to me.

I sound ungrateful. Unlike many of my peers, I had decided to do a PGCE. I had a place at a university. I knew what I was doing in September.

You would think that this would give me perspective. That it would focus me. Surely, there would be no reason to panic?

I think it freaked me out.

Up until that point, school, college, university were abstract places. You went to learn. There was a freedom in that. But to follow a career path. That's the adult world. The real world. The scary world.

So summer for me, became a space where I was swinging between a life which offered me dozens of paths without the pressure to choose one and a life which involved a career. I love teaching and I am glad that I chose it. But during the summer, the prospect of starting the course terrified me.

I entered, like Lauren from The Body Artist, into a state of affect. The more worried and anxious I got, the more I entered into this state of pre-personal experience. The post I wrote about the Rothko murals for instance, is an example of how I became so attuned to moments. Staring not only at the murals but into them was like entering into this state of affect, the 'now'. You become submerged in the present. It's liberating but at the same time, it can be lonely. I'd really suggest reading The Body Artist. It really brings highlights how affect works and it explores grief in a wonderfully tentative, sensitive and poignant way.

I see affect as being in a long, blank space. You encounter moments. But they are small.

Minute.

Mostly mundane.

Small moments.

For me, during the summer, I became acutely aware of the most minutest of things. Spiders crawling across my wall in the early hours of the morning. Babies and young kids out in public, talking and giggling. Snippets of conversation from TV shows. Everything seemed to be going at lightning speed, and yet it slowed down. Time seemed to be emptying out and I got closer and closer to affect.

I spent a lot of time in this limbo. This period of affect. Of intensity. It was not easy.

I read Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem again and enjoyed it so much more, now that I was in a moment of involuntary experience.

Anyway, I realise that this all sounds utterly bizarre and strange but it's something that I have been meaning to write about for some time now.

If you have ever felt in limbo, or experienced a time where you were thinking a lot and reflecting constantly, I think it would make sense.

T

x