This post IS my version of healing, so help and advice are not necessary, though I wouldn't be ungrateful of any of either.
I just finished taking a test. It was the second test of the semester. I expected to do well since I know all of the material for the course. I screwed up big time. Not on the whole test, just on one problem; perhaps even just one part of one problem, depending on how kind the grader is. Unfortunately, one problem wrong on this test means 67% on the test. I know the material. I've cleared a hundred acres worth of unknown territory in terms of this material. I've searched it for any weak or dangerous points and I thought it was clear. The test required me to walk from one point in this territory to another point, and it just so happened that there was a landmine somewhere in between.
Anyways, the past few months have been very positive for me. I got a 100% on the first test. This may have been a first for me in my 4 years of college. For once I was not lacking in knowledge; I could not have done better. Last summer I had resolved to focus on school work in more productive ways and to really know the material, and my hard work paid off in the first test. For once I felt intelligent enough to learn anything. There was nothing that I couldn't do. I excelled in other parts of my life such as research. I was learning things that I never thought I could learn in the allotted amount of time. I was working on things bigger than I ever thought I would work on. After this second test, I found myself sitting in the office at my desk, unable to concentrate on anything. The grad student I work under is quizzing me about photon echo, but I just can't answer him. I'm looking at the literature that I have been reviewing for the past few days, and I don't understand it. This is stuff that I knew a few days ago. I know I knew it. I was chatting with professors about it. Now it doesn't make sense to me. And the 1 part of the 1 problem on the test...I know that as well. I don't know what happened. I feel so lost, and so dumb.
I know that I can not focus on research merely because I am deeply grieving over the loss of the second 100 that my hopes were so high for, but I feel as though I've lost more than that. My sense of ability, my positive future, the feeling that if I work hard from here on out, I can reinvent myself as the type of person I always wanted to be... I feel as though my identity as a successful student and researcher is being torn away from me now like a cloak that was hiding the failure that I really am and was all along. It all feels like a bad trip; Everything I know and love falling away from me, and there's nothing I can do about it.
...
I feel better now. I just wanted to get all of that off my chest. It's amazing how much we can learn and excel if we and others believe that we can. It's amazing how much a number on a sheet of paper can affect our entire outlook on life. That single test probably would have raised my GPA by only 0.01%, so it's really inconsequential. There's nothing I can do now except try to do better on the next test.
Every day I am thankful that I was introduced to psychedelic drugs.