With decisions coming out soon and my hope for acceptance dwindling, I have felt like shit. I won’t go into it but I have just felt very sad and lost for a long time- a deep unhappiness that I almost thought I could fix with admission into a T20, right around sophomore year, when I got serious about college and ended up on threads like these.
I thought getting straight A’s, 5’s on my AP’s, 99th percentile SAT, and national awards would alleviate my sadness.
Not gonna delve too deep, but I got them - somehow. Some people have told me I may very well get into a T20.
But I never told them how bland my “accomplishments” made me feel. I often wondered why I felt more tense and freakish after each one, never really excited and more so dragged my others’ high expectations.
It was never about my goals, the trophies, the finish line at the end of the race, where some inexplicable happiness would ignite itself.
It was about moving to the next goal, to skip to whatever could distract me from the growing void of emptiness inside me.
I was looking for the white teeth of grins I never saw, never made- of companionship and the friends I never had - of happiness, joy, and lasting fulfillment. The peaceful contentment of the ideal human condition.
I never found it. I will not find it on this sub, nor on any thread, grade, compliment, college acceptance.
Will I ever find my inexplicable happiness? I do not know. It is perhaps a more daunting realization.
But I am at least aware of it. Where at once I felt a heavy burden I have found a light and portable clarity, neither too feeling or numbing. Just what I know is true. And that may be enough for now, to know that joy is out there, somewhere, waiting for me to seize it.
Earlier today I was listening to some old French music, because that’s just what I do.
I was playing “De Temps en Temps” by Josephine Baker, an African American dancer and singer raised in poverty without any formal education, but who fled a racially hostile America and settled in France, where she found a lover and enjoyed a tremendous career in Europe throughout the early to mid 20th century.
She pranced on stages with nothing but bananas around her groin - but she filled venues and lived well, later becoming a French citizen and even a spy for the French resistance during WW2. A prominent figure in the civil rights movement, despite her estrangement from America, she also refused to perform for segregated audiences and even adopted 10 child
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https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/ixmi5r/americanborn_singer_and_dancer_josephine_baker/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Hey! I'm looking for the sheet to the song "Feeling Like a Million" as performed by Josephine Baker for a student of mine. Any leads would be appreciated.
Thanks!
