going

I am exhausted.

Sitting here, at my desk, I realize that all I want (need?) to do is sleep.

To curl up under the covers and hide from the world for a while.

This world that is so busy and crazy and complicated. If someone wanted to come and keep me company, that would be okay too. Just no thinking allowed.

I have been going going going since I got back from break and haven't really taken a second to stop.

....

Just be.

This amazing campus with activities and people and classes just goes. Constantly. We don't know how to stop and breathe.

How to sit without obsessively checking our email (or maybe that's just me).

So I got up this morning and finished my Spanish homework and wrote a letter to a boy who needs it (write one!) and talked with a professor and went to class and tried to not let my nose freeze and ate lunch and went to class and talked to a professor. And there were friends in there and long treks through the snow. A hole discovered in my rainboots. But mostly, the point is, I didn't stop.

There was always another and.

And here I was thinking I was doing well not working constantly.

I guess I have a lot to learn.

Three Weeks

Currently, I am many things.

There are many me's. 

The one at the forefront is the stressed version of me.

The exhausted version.

Yet this me does not stop, because she cannot stop.

This me does not see any other option than to continue.

To make it through the next three weeks. To not lose it, completely. To be awake and mostly present. To work and write and plan and talk.

To be a student for three more weeks.

Then, I don't know which me will take over.

Probably the exhausted one will kick in after a few days. After I realize I no longer have to be "on" all the time. When it sinks in that I can relax; there's no where to go, no one to see, and there are other people who will take care of the rest.

I can't let myself go there yet, though.

I have to keep going.

I have to let the stronger me's take over, and keep me going.

Three more weeks.

home[s]

People laugh when I say "home" in reference to my dorm room. They think it's funny that I call it that, when everyone else says "dorm" or "room". But to me, that just sounds awkward.

And it's true, it has become my home.

Not just my room, but the whole place.

The campus, the people, the community that I have become a part of.

Feeling like I fit in a place, that's what makes it home to me.

That's not to say that my other home, the one I inhabited for almost 18 years, is any less of a home.

It's just....different.

In ways that I can't describe, that I wasn't really even aware of, until I got here.

Home.

This too, is my home.

This place where I fit and I know the routines and ways of existing.

I know this community as well.

It's been interesting, these few days of figuring this all out.

This fact that I now have two homes.

Two equally important places, but so completely different.

I also think that part of the difference stems from me.

I hadn't really thought I'd changed at school, not that I'd given it much thought.

I was still me.

Yet being here, I can feel the differences. The parts of me that don't quite fit with how I used to exist in this space.

I'm different.

And now it's a matter of reconciling the two different me's, within the two different homes.

on optimism

In general, I think I'd say I land somewhere between an optimist and pessimist.

Mostly because I think an optimist has to be someone who smiles constantly and is irritating in their constant happiness and positivity.

I am all for positivity, I just don't think it needs to be constant. We're all allowed to be negative and feel bad. That's part of life. Part of the balance.

However, I do choose to see the good in people.

I see the good in situations.

I really firmly believe that it will work out in the end.

One of my favorite quotes is Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end. 

I love this.

I'm finding that here, though, it's not necessarily the cool or expected thing to be an optimist.

Just like you shouldn't talk about it if you don't have much homework.

You're expected to always be swamped, and always talk about how swamped you are.

I get that.

I need that sometimes. Desperately.

I also get really sick of it.

We all need, and deserve, a break.

A place to be happy or positive or optimistic or without homework.

An environment in which I feel like I can talk about my good day, without glares or the need for apologizing.

change

Things have changed around here because I've changed.

This started even before I got to college.

I don't know how much it came through here, but I certainly felt it.

I had all these huge life changes and a busy life and amazing things and hard things.

But somehow it seemed like I didn't know how to put them into words.

Or if I even wanted to.

I didn't have the desire to share every detail here.

Well, I did, but it would have just been a laundry list of what I'd been doing. There's no point to that. No one cares. It's the stories behind the things that matter.

My theory (just because I haven't been here doesn't mean I've stopped psycho-analyzing myself) is that I started experiencing, instead of watching.

My senior year I feel like I reentered the world.

I became an active person who could participate and truly live.

I started to find my own people, ones who I saw every day.

And that led to me not being here as much.

This blog started as a way for me to express myself and feel like I was connecting and interacting with the world in some way.

I'm not saying you or this space are no longer important, I'm just saying I've changed.

And I'm still trying to figure out what that change means for this space.

again

Can I just say this again?

Because it's still true.

Except this time it's the biggest party of the year.

Trust me, I'm not just "tired."

I just don't have a better word to describe it.

And also some other stuff.

Less bloggable stuff.

Because you know, they are actual people, these people who are taking up so much of my head space.

And, you know, I would like to one day be employed.

Sigh.

Good night.

the difference between what is right, and what is easy

this is what runs through my head as I walk back.

as I leave the party before everyone else.

when I'm going back to my room, not out to the next party.

when I'm not dressing up for the 80s theme.

when I say no, I can't.

or no, I'm tired, and people don't get it.

they make fun of me for being lame.

or nerdy.

it's the feeling that I know I will appreciate this action I'm taking in the future, but right now, it sucks.

right now, I'm the only one walking back, not heading out.

the only one in my PJs, getting ready for bed.

at least it feels that way.

but I am doing what is right for me.

it's not always the fun thing, the cool thing, but it's what will allow me to keep this up.

I am making the right choice.

Campus

I think there's worth to be had in learning to love my own photos as they are--straight out of the camera, no editing. I think it's also easier. And stems from my confusion about what software/program to use, now that Picnik has abandoned us.

sustainability

Yesterday I was asking myself if this was sustainable.

This=everything.

The living this far away from home.

The being utterly responsible for my health.

The homework and expectations.

The workload.

The social aspect.

The responsibility for my life.

The everything.

Is it? Really?

Last night I wasn't sure.

Last night I knew that all I could do was stop. Continuing to stare at the page wasn't helping, neither was the pretending to work while reading blogs and Facebook and email.

Last night I made popcorn and sat in bed and watched Grey's Anatomy.

Yes I did.

And just now, when I asked myself the same question, it still didn't really have an answer. And I thought how nice it would be to have something to look back on and say "Yes! This will work! Because I survived that."

And then I thought to myself, well, I do have that. Not years or months, but I do have something. I have yesterday. And the day before. I've had good days and bad days. In-between days. But I've survived. 

That gives me hope for today, and tomorrow, and the next day. 

on the road (a week ago)

All taken on the roadtrip from home to college. Which yes, did happen over a week ago. Also all SOOC.

Disibility

I have never thought of myself as someone with a disability.

I have always referred to it as, well, "it" or "getting sick" or "my illness".

Just not a disability.

I didn't really like that word, actually.

It made it sound like this was something I was going to have for the rest of my life. Something that was going to negatively impact things I wanted to do.

I guess I just thought of it as my own version of my furry little problem.

(A thousand bonus points if you get that reference.)

But now, here, I'm a student with disability. That's just the terminology the college uses. And somehow I'm okay with that. It just is. It's one word of many that can be used to describe whatever it is I have.

It might not be my first choice, but it's what works. It's also helping me see that yes, in some respects I do have a disability. There are people I need to meet with and paperwork I need to have in place to protect my right to an education.

Without those meetings and papers, my illness could and would stop me from getting the education I am not only paying for, but deserve. So yes, I guess that does make it a disability.

one sentence paragraphs, among other things

I don't know when I started changing how I wrote.

But at some point I made the unconscious decison that I liked to write in short paragraphs. As in paragraphs that are one sentence long. That's how my brain works; I think every little thought deserves to be special and get its own paragraph. But I also like how it reads because then it makes each thought, each sentence, important.

However, this is not the college style of writing.

Nor was it the high school style of writing.

And I managed to display this lovely skill of mine on the first college homework assignment.

Awesome.

***

In other news, I'm slightly, okay, a lot, afraid of my Bio class now. After one class.

Again, awesome.

There was just so much. 

So much material, so many pictures that don't fit nicely into my notes, so many new procedures, so much responsibility, so much "figure it out yourself". I always have liked that style much more than the "let me spoon feed you" approach, but right at this moment? My mind is spinning. I'm scared and overwhelmed.

Also, did I mention the classes are three hours long?

If you weren't aware, that's a really, really long time.

***

It really is enjoyable to write with terrible grammar and syntax and whatever-it's-called and not care and be able to call it artistic expression.

I Know It, and Yet Clearly I Don't

I sit at the long table, coffee cup in one hand, pen in the other. My bag is by my tapping feet. Occasionally I lean forward to jot an important point down. I love how smoothly the ink runs out. It makes my handwriting look nicer than it actually is.

I listen to the staff and to the students. They talk about accessibility and being your own advocate and communicating with professors.

I listen and nod and silently think that I know this stuff. I know how to be assertive. I've been doing it for the past four years.

I know how to talk to professors; I should, I've grown up with one.

I know there are things to learn. There will always be things to learn.

The only piece that strikes a cord with me is when one student talks about stigma and bringing up your disability with peers.

And then another student talks about educating people about what your disability is. Making sure they understand.

This is all I can think about. The making people understand. It feels like a huge weight has just appeared and set up camp squarely on my shoulders.

Because yes, I've been doing this for a while. I know I need to be up front with people and not pretend like it's going to magically go away now that I'm at college.

It's thinking about the people who don't believe me that scares me.

I can handle educating people. Most people need it, because they have no idea what half the words I'm spewing out mean.

What I don't handle is people not believing me. Whether they think I'm making it up, or that it's all in my head, or that I don't look sick, so therefore I'm not.

No amount of explaining complex medical terms can truly educate someone as to what it is like to live with this. To live in my body.

I'm scared that if I don't address it with people, they'll think I'm just reclusive and sleep a lot.

And that if I do address it, they won't understand, even after I've done my best to explain.

That my illness (I don't personally consider it a disability, but that's something else entirely) will come between me and other people.

I've dealt with these questions before; again, none of this is really new.

But it's not like I know it all, because I did somehow assume, or at least forget, that I will have to deal with this.

I am meeting a huge number of new people, who, once I start to spend time with, will notice something is different. Then I have to have the not overly comfortable talk. And hope that they not only believe me, but see past it. Add my illness to the end of a long list of things they know about me. And then keep on adding to that list.

Here

I'm here!

And not only here as in still alive, but here as in here at college.

As in I am soon to be spending the night in my room for the third night.

As in all the upper classmen arrive tomorrow and it's a little scary.

Because I feel like I'm just starting to get the hang of things, and then tomorrow, everything's going to change. Again.

And classes haven't even started.

That's a whole new ballgame, I know.

As was registering for them.

I sit here typing this, at my desk that is next to my dresser, both of which are tucked under my bed. My desk is messy. Or at least messy in my book. I know that doesn't always translate to messy in other people's worlds.

My light is on, hurting my eyes a little bit.

The room is quiet, except for some people coming and going out in the hall. Not in a loud obnoxious way, but in a other people live here sort of way.

My alarm is set late, all things considered, for tomorrow morning.

I will try to sleep, even though I will probably sacrifice breakfast in the process.

And then I will fill the hours until 2, or whenever that one meeting that that one paper said I needed to go to.

Then I will ask directions to this new building, because as much as I feel like an experienced college student walking across campus to the dining hall, I know I'm not.

After all, I'm just a first year. And it's just my third day.

the hospital

I'm not sure how to put this into words.

I will try.

I was sick.

Sick sick sick.

Hardly left the house, except to see doctors.

Then I went to the hospital.

For the first time, I was not a patient, but a caregiver.

This in and of itself was huge.

I felt like I was doing something important. That I was contributing to a greater whole.

I became part of a team.

The people on that floor took me in and gave me a place where I belonged.

I can't really describe what it's like or why I love it so much.

Which is hard, but at the same time, it makes it feel like my special place. One that's just for me.

These people gave me an education about what it is to work in a hospital, to work and have a family, to take care of other people,

They taught me the more tangible things as well.

The medical jargon that I now speak relatively fluently.

The procedures and surgeries and hourly checks. The IVs and wheelchairs and shots and blood.

All I can tell you is that I love it and will miss it more than I can possibly imagine.

where to start?

I don't know where to start.

Last night was a late night.

Not so much with the sleep, but lots of packing. Organizing. List writing.

As was this morning.

My last fish is gone. His new home is a first grader classroom. Where I am sure there will be debates over whether he is, in fact, a he.

My room is really quiet. No filter running.

I can't bring myself to take my posters off the walls.

Not yet.

I can't bring myself to think about the fact that my friends are spreading all over the country.

That soon I'll be in a whole new state.

I can't believe how fast this is all happening.

All at once.

I want to be in that place of "I can't wait!!"

I want to be excited and ready and jumping out of my skin to leave.

I still seem to be stuck in shock.

Disbelief and sadness.

What have I gotten myself into?

Different

I used to know it. 

I used to be okay with it.

It was more than I ever thought I would be able to do and so it was perfect. 

And then something happened. 

Maybe I conveniently forgot, or maybe it was the rush of graduating high school. Maybe it was the energy surge that comes from no school.

It crept up on me, this truth I used to admit so freely.

It came up and smacked me in the face.

I’m not sure why I was so surprised. 

After all, I’ve been filling out forms and calling doctors, trying to make sure I have what I need.

But, without even thinking about it, maintaining that it would be normal.

Because why shouldn’t it be?

Now, I don’t like the idea.

It is what haunts me during the quiet moments late at night.

I don’t want to be different.

I don’t want accommodations.

In this, yes, I want to be like everyone else.

That one place where a title's supposed to go

I don't know what I'm feeling.

It's up down left right.

All over the place.

And changing constantly.

I've written a few posts and then promptly deleted them.

Because they didn't say what I really meant.

Which is funny because I don't know what I mean.

I graduated high school.

Don't ask me how I feel.

I don't know.

I had one year with these people.

These amazing, beautiful people.

Who, on the one hand, I may never see again. It was one year.

On the other hand, I feel like I really connected with some of them.

There are times where I feel left out and unknown.

Times when I'm grateful for this opportunity to have met everyone.

Times when I feel so loved and included I can't believe it's only been a year.

Times when I regret I didn't have more time.

I haven't written because I haven't known what to say.

But I miss it.

And I think while sometimes stepping back and just letting things be can be beneficial, I think in this instance, I've hurt myself.

Writing is my way to process.

Without it, I've only been spinning my wheels.

College

Barring any failing grades next semester, I can now call myself a Grinnell college student. 

-Insert giggling and shrieking and giddiness here-

And this is the essay (the one my English teacher hated), that I think played a rather large role in my acceptance.

Mr. B opened my eyes to my own potential and taught me that there’s more to learning than getting a perfect score. His words are the little voice in the back of my mind telling me that I can do it and to never give up.

I hated writing with a passion throughout elementary school. The process of the five-step paragraph seemed a special way to torture me and the cursive script slowed me to a snail’s pace. I had so much to say, but I couldn't figure out a way to get it out on the page fast enough and in a way that would satisfy the strict requirements for the number of sentences and complex sentences, transitional words, and a color-coded final product.

The first assignment Mr. B gave our fifth-grade class was to compare a fan to a pencil. He gave us a sheet of paper and time, as much or as little as we needed, and off we went. The first few times I sat at my desk, paralyzed by my fear of being anything less than perfect. I couldn’t fathom the idea of writing without strict boundaries being set for me. Mr. B acknowledged my fear and then went right on smashing down all the boundaries by letting us throw paint, go outside, listen to music, or just sit in silence to find inspiration.

Mr. B knew that I had been taught to write within the lines, and here I was, scribbling furiously on the current assignment, without any lines to guide me. While I sat hunched over my desk, Mr. B walked around the room. He was ready with a joke if I was stuck or with a smile if I wanted him to give me the right answer, but he never interrupted me while the words were flowing.

The balance he struck between letting me figure it out for myself and giving me enough help so I wouldn't feel lost and abandoned was impressive. I had room to grow; to grow as far and as fast as I could, without the loss of my support system. If anything, I learned that sometimes the best kind of support a person can receive is to know that someone is there, but to have that person step back and let you take on the world by yourself.

During the nine months of fifth grade, I learned to do more than just write words; I learned to craft them into a final product that had significance and could clearly communicate my thoughts and ideas to the world. Mr. B gave me freedom to write, to grow, and to make mistakes by obliterating the idea that everything I wrote had to be perfect. After he had given me all the tools I needed to tear down the barriers around my mind, he stepped back as I discovered the amazing new world outside of perfection.

overwhelmed

I'm feeling rather overwhelmed.

It's just sort of everything that seems to be at the same time. There may be enough hours in the day to type all the words, but my brain cannot function for very long. I can't write quality words all the live long day.

I think I just need to start. Because that's all I can do--start, and give it the best I've got.

I know this, yet I can't help but freak out and go into the whole but if I don't I'll fail and won't get into college and end up working at the corner store pumping gas, all because I couldn't come up with the right words.

I don't know where to start. Somehow, talking with my teacher gave me less confidence in myself. (Although that's really not surprising, considering that he told me he wondered how he was ever going to teach me to write.)

(Those last two sentences are my compromise on this. Maybe more will come later, maybe not.)

My compromise was to start here. It might not be something I can send to a college, or have my overly judgmental teacher grade, but it's a way for me to get the words flowing.

To remember that I can write.

And that sometimes I'm even pretty good at it.