A special kind of hell

Singing along to: Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova, Lies

I'm sorry I haven't updated in a very long time, but I've spent the past few days drowning in the crap-filled swimming pool that is ROOM SELECTION MMVIII. (Yes, that's really what they've been calling it. It's like the Super Bowl of housing events! Except not.)

My lottery number, revealed on Thursday afternoon, is 376, and the lowest number in my housing "group" is in the high two hundreds. In other words, we haven't a chance. Probably. I could detail the various dead ends and false hopes we've chased over the past few days, but that would take a much longer post than I feel like writing, and besides, I'm tired of rehashing it all. In my mind, it feels like a very complicated situation, but in fact it isn't, at least not once I boil it down to its essential elements, which are as follows: SO. FREAKING. SCREWED.

We are considering our off-campus options as well as our (so limited as to be almost non-existent) on campus options, and the whole situation has me so stressed that I've moved beyond "hyper, flipping-out stressed" into "dead on the inside, just can't care anymore stressed."

People keep telling me that everything will work out in the end, and I know that's true (after all, we'll be living somewhere, even if it's just a cardboard box outside the Metro, even if it's back at home). Really, I know it's true. But I just wish that we could jump ahead to the part where it's all worked out, and skip all the parts in between, like the awkward interview with someone who might consent to let us live with her (don't get me started on that situation), or the endless calculations of rent and utilities and crap we'd have to buy furniture, or the eternal string of what-ifs. (What if that girl only wants one of us to be her roommate? What if we can't get an apartment at complex A? What if we can't switch in to the other lottery? What if we can?)

I know Click was a terrible movie, but it made one good point: life really needs a fast-forward button.