Dreams of my dad...

The music brought me to tears. Beethoven's despair, anger and self-resentment, yet also expression of heroism and admiration of greatness and magnomity.. The Eroica Symphony has for a long time been a favourite... it accompanied me through those uncertain days of the first months of university in London... and this mornng, it accompanied me through the first fragile moments of my waking.

The worst parts of the exam period is over. For the past few weeks I've been dreading these three days of intense exam-after-another. French written test, then space law, the latter of which I've not really studied much for. But I think I did well in both.

But the underlying despair is not really the fear of not being able to do... but the hopes and expectations that I sense others have in me, and the great fear that I am disappointing them. Ever since the 'loss' in the moot court, this feeling seems to have multiplied, and I am left with a sense of loss and disappointment in my own abilities, similar emotions that had lingered for months since I arrived in Canada. Feelings, and now for the last few days, also dreams of my dad...

In the dream I am questioned by two people I know from school. What my motivation was for getting the fellowship and money I had received to study for (almost) free. At first I was admenant, defending myself, saying and listing all these things that I 've done as a part of my "service to the community"... but one person kept on insinuating, kept on implying how useless, how unmotivated, how worthless I was, and that I was not deserving at all of the fellowship....

Then I broke down under pressure, and cried. Through tears, in a wavering, sobbing voice, my torments poured out. Do you know what it feels like to loose someone? To loose someone and then to have dreams of him? To loose someone and then having to start a complete new life again? I know I have been underperforming, I know I have not really been my best lately, and how I want to be back to my 'normal' old self again, back to that boy who could, who excelled, who was not afraid to just work, just write and who seemed to impress people without even wanting to.... But I feel like I'm losing it, losing that magical touch, that inspiration, that charm and wonder that resisded in me before. And left behind, the empty shell of someone emotionally distraught, fatigued, lacking in depth, in meaning, perhaps even angered, but definitely going from day to day only through the grace of life's own momentum..

Dreams of my dad.... who had already passed for over a year now. Where is it all coming from? Why am I having them still? I don't want to revert to my emotional weaknesses and traumatised psyche all the time to explain my personal failings and inability to perform up to speed... But I feel sometimes so exhausted, overwhelmed already from the feelings and thoughts running through me, through my conscious, and undoubtedly the myriad of stormy emotions that run through my subconscious...