Douchedom Revisited

I used to firmly believe that anyone who wore sunglasses inside was, if not hiding bloodshot eyes after a debaucherous night (and maybe then too), a pretentious douche. But then, yesterday evening, I became one of those someones, for the rather un-douchey reason that I didn't want my entire line 9 métro car to see me crying. And I think, by the way, that that was a colossal failure, because, as I look at my sunglasses right now, they're not actually mirrored, plus I had tears rolling out from beneath the frames and down my cheeks.

The shorter version of a longer story is that I ended up dropping the Contemporary French Novel class that was going to allow me (along with two other classes I'm not dropping) to finish this [second] MA this summer. CFN wasn't the class I signed up for--that one was cancelled--but it was the only one that fit my schedule. And, although I feel like a loser for saying this, I couldn't deal with the reading. It was depressing, some of it existential-type stuff that I have a hard time swallowing when I'm not going through emotional turmoil, and sitting through class (2 1/2 hours at a time), I had a hard time not crying on more than one occasion. Okay, maybe it's because I was reading things on my phone, in an attempt to make it through class, that made me emotional, but regardless...I was getting nowhere fast with the reading, and the whole situation was just too much. Why should a woman who can't stay pregnant have to read a book called La nausée? Why should anyone have to read Sartre, ever?

So I'm not going to finish the degree this summer. It's not a big deal--I have time--but I feel like a quitter, as though I should be able to just power through the class and compartmentalize and get through it. I kept wondering today whether I should show up for class as regularly scheduled and just suck it up; it was easier once 4:40 came and went and the decision was made. But doesn't there have to come a time when I look out for myself as I would tell a friend to do for herself? Is it possible that there is strength in acknowledging my weakness?