dropped long ago

This really is the hardest thing I've ever done. I have a magnet on my fridge that has a little stick figure turning the corner and the caption "clyde was about to come face to face with the ball he had dropped long ago." This dissertation right now feels like that ball, like I've dropped a bucket of marbles on the floor and they're rolling around, fitting themselves into corners I'll never locate, sticking themselves into grooves in the wood I'll never fit my fingers into.

I didn't expect the sense of emotional overwroughtness that comes with the kind of paralysis I'm feeling right now. Writing and writing and feeling like I've completely lost the plot, and being so completely on edge that I can barely fight my way through the panic. No idea what I'm trying to say, and a level above that, no idea why I'm doing this at ALL in the first place. WTF has this process been about, where is it taking me?

And through it all, awareness that this level of emotionalism is totally out of proportion with the "real" stuff people are dealing with in their lives, that this is just me with a very first world problem, and that the caterwauling, squalling and sense of panic about it are completely unseemly. I feel simultaneously like a clichéd drama queen and some kind of sea creature with no muscle, no bone, nothing but a raw and exposed nervous system.

It's really just a chapter, among several chapters, in a long paper that a dozen people at the most will read. The ultimate demonstration of student prowess, of capability worthy of admission to some realm I'm not actually that interested in. I wanted it to mean more, and finding this void here is... overwhelming. And so lonely.