Somehow, I just managed to survive.
My story is by no means unique, or different. Absolutely not. In fact, I think I might be better off than most.
Either way, it felt to me like I did not really survive, until I submitted the last examination paper (that I marked).
Now, standing on the hill of about a thousand papers, I can claim victory!
But at what cost? I am not the same person as before I endeavoured to climb this mountain. No, it changed me. Drastically. I think it will also be the last time in my life that I will endeavour to do this. I am still relatively young and fit, and my body could take the stress and the hammering, but sitting and writing this, it feels like I escaped a battle of mind, soul, body, and everything else.
It feels like I survived, but now my body bears the scars, and my mind feels fractured, broken into a million little pieces.
But these broken and fractured pieces now have the opportunity, like rhizomes, to grow into new plants. Some will not survive, better off not to be born as the one philosopher would put it.
But some others will grow into brilliant new plants, ideas floating into the ether to make new connections ad infinitum.
How beautiful is the metaphor not? Broken and fractured splinters can themselves grow into new and fruitful plants?
We can learn so much by just listening, by just opening our minds to the strange world we live in.
It is good to be alive, as one might put it. Broken and hurt, but breathing.
For now, I am in the healing process, thinking back to what just unfolded.
I hope that something very productive will come from all of this.
(P.S. What happened in the last couple of months was interesting to say the least. I marked about a 1000 papers, I completed my PhD, I defended it, I taught a module that I also needed to create from scratch, I wrote a couple of academic articles, of which a couple got accepted, I wrote a couple of book chapters, also of which a couple got accepted, and I turned my PhD dissertation into a book monograph/manuscript. I think I am a bit tired now.)