i am sitting on the floor eating this pad thai and it is kind of cold but the silence is the only thing i can actually feel right now. i just finished a twelve hour day at the lab and my back hurts in that specific way that feels like structural failure. it is 2am and the stillness of this apartment is sort of heavy but i prefer it to the noise in my head or the noise on the phone. my mother called three times today and i ignored every single one because i knew exactly what she was going to say about my age and the lack of a husband and how my cousins back home already have houses and children. i am finally enjoying the stillness of being a disappointment in private. i am thirty two and i am still a student which in my culture is only acceptable if you are becoming a surgeon or a lawyer but i am getting a phd in sociolinguistics and i think they think i am just playing around with words. i have this persistent sense of anhedonia where nothing actually registers as good or bad anymore. i just exist in this state of high functioning anxiety where i do the work and i get the grants but i feel like a hollowed out shell of a person. i guess i am supposed to feel proud but i just feel tired. i feel like i am just a collection of data points and familial expectations held together by caffeine and spite. last month i went home for my brothers wedding and the entire time was just a series of interrogations about my biological clock. my aunt sat me down and told me that my education is a burden now because no man wants a woman who knows more than him or who is too old to give him three sons. she used the word — expired — and she wasnt even trying to be mean she was just stating what she thinks is a fact. i just nodded and ate my rice because i didnt have the energy to explain that i dont even know if i want a life like hers. i sort of felt like i was watching myself from the ceiling. i think that was a dissociative episode but i just kept smiling for the photos. i think i have some kind of chronic depersonalization because i look in the mirror and i dont recognize the person with the dark circles under her eyes. i see the data sets on my screen and they make sense but my own life doesnt make any sense at all. my advisor told me i have great potential but what is potential if it just leads to more floors and more cold takeout. i am maybe experiencing a prolonged depressive episode but it doesnt feel like sadness it just feels like nothingness. total flat affect. i just stare at the wall for an hour before i can find the energy to open my laptop. yesterday i was in the library and this girl was crying because she failed a quiz and i just stared at her. i didnt feel bad for her. i actually felt jealous that she could still have a physical reaction to failure. i have become so desensitized to the pressure that i could probably fail my entire dissertation and i would just go buy a coffee and sit on a bench. i am so far removed from my own ego that i dont even care what happens to me as long as it is quiet. she was sobbing and i was just thinking about whether i had enough detergent to do a load of laundry. i am kind of worried that i have lost my capacity for empathy. my parents sacrificed everything to come here and they remind me of it every time they mention the cost of my childhood shoes or the flight to see my grandmother before she died. i am the investment that is supposed to pay off and keep them comfortable in their old age but i am just a graduate student making twenty eight thousand dollars a year. i feel like i am failing a contract i never signed. i am a bad daughter and a mediocre academic and i am just sitting here on the floor. they wanted the american dream but i think i just inherited the american exhaustion. i am just a vessel for their unfulfilled ambitions and it is getting too heavy to carry. the stillness is what i crave but it also scares me because when it is quiet i have to admit that i dont have a plan. i just keep going because stopping would be worse than the exhaustion. i am kind of just waiting for someone to tell me that i can stop now. that i have done enough. but no one is coming. the takeout is gone and i am just licking the salt off my fingers and staring at the wall. i HAVE TO FINISH THIS but i dont even remember why i started. i have all these words and all this research and none of it helps me understand why i feel like a ghost in my own life. maybe i am just broken in a way that diagnostic terminology cant fix. i read the papers and i know the words for what i am feeling but the words dont change the fact that it is 3am now and i have to be back in the lab in five hours. i am just going to sit here for ten more minutes. the silence is the only thing that belongs to me. i guess that is enough for tonight... i just wish i knew who i was supposed to be when the degree is finished and there are no more excuses left to give my mother. I AM TIRED of being a project. i am just tired.