The meltdown

Call it a flash in the pan or a major malfunction, a stress buildup or a psychotic break...whatever it is, it happened to me today. The culmination of three months of stress and anxiety and overload simmering in a pressure cooker called "Kelly's body" finally flew out today and the result was, very nearly, a broken patio glass door.

Registration for summer classes is upon me, so after sitting in biology for awhile and talking to a counselor about classes I need and want and can have, I logged on and tried to work my magic. Long story short, there was no magic to be worked, and I found out I need to take a class called "survey to chemistry" which is a lower level class than my high school class and, it goes without saying, a lower level than my college chemistry class. I balked at that a bit, but not as much as the impending realization that the addition of even one more class will cause me to stay in teaching for another year and push off my plans. This freaked me right out, on a cellular level.

Then, I couldn't find my wallet. This was where I dumped the contents of my purse onto my dining room table and, not finding the wallet there, decided it would be a good idea to fling my purse at the patio door. Fortunately, my frontal lobe was engaged and quickly calculated the cost-benefit analysis of this action and told my hand to knock it the fuck off. I found the wallet ten feet away.

There is a third component to my stresses that I'm keeping totally to myself. Erica knows, and my mom, but that's it. It's nothing bad, don't worry. In fact, it will either be neutral or totally kick ass--no chance of badness. But, it's still causing potential stress because anything "unknown" right now is causing me total angst.

So, it's happened. Everyone has been saying, and I've been agreeing, that at some point I would have a complete and total freakout. I'm glad that it happened over spring break in the privacy of my own home, and that it's done now so I can go about my business.

Dead vs. dying and the balance.

I had no idea when I began this process of learning about death and dying that the "dying" would be so painful. I was worried about dead bodies, about smells and fluids, and about making the bodies look nice for families. I now realize that I'm nowhere near that stage yet. Before the dead arrive, they have to die. The process of dying is where the core of my fear is.
I used to think that I feared "death." Now I know that it's dying that I'm afraid of and the more I learn about "dying" the more I find my fears are completely rational and founded in reality. Dying is, nine times out of ten, icky. Even if a person dies "comfortably in his home," it's still icky for someone.

Last night in class we talked about Jamie Butcher and the horrible decision his parents, Pattie and Jim, had to make to remove his feeding tube after caring for him for seventeen years. Yes, seventeen years. He was seventeen when he was injured in a car accident and they decided to pull his feeding tube when he was thirty-four. I cannot imagine my parents having to make that decision...I can't imagine having to make that decision myself for someone that I love. But, everyone always thinks that they'll never need to make that kind of a decision---lots of people find out that they're wrong.

I absolutely need to find ways to begin to desensitize myself. I cry in every class, and that needs to stop. I internalize everything--when I looked at Pattie Butcher I saw my mom. I can't allow that to happen or I'll never make it into the business. I'll break. The writer in me wants to fall into these feelings and swim in them, cover myself in them and write them out into beautiful scenes and verses. I need to find the balance.