The evil voice that intrudes on my happiness

Okay, the part where I FREAK OUT has taken effect.

"Nope. I'm not going to write my dissertation" I said. "I'm not going to finish my PhD. You know, the thing with the classes, the teaching, and the exams and all that have contributed to my state of misery* over the past 5 years? Yeah, that's the thing I'm not going to finish".

And then there's this voice in my head, this evil voice that asks "Who says you're not going to continue putting yourself through this hell? Who gave you permission to decide to stop? What other rules are you going to break now? How will you support yourself without this as a career? Do you think you'll be able to do anything? And if there's something else you want to do with your life, don't get too excited because if you really want it hard enough it probably won't work out. The pressure of succeeding will be too great".

Seeing it written down really makes clear how harsh and unfair that voice is. I still think I can do this. I know I can change my career path and explore something that interests me, like speech pathology. But I'm still scared. I feel very strange, like I'm in some kind of state of limbo. It's kind of like "Chutes and Ladders", which I played with Alison yesterday. You're almost to the top, almost at the end, and then you land on that BIG chute that takes you all the way back to the beginning, but not the very beginning. You're neither at the beginning nor at the end. Is it human nature to want to create beginnings and ends for everything? I don't really know what the end is, but for some reason that's where I want to be. And that's where Alison wanted to be, too. She didn't handle losing to me (twice) well at all.

*The word "misery" may be a slight exaggeration, but only a very slight one.