In Absentia

This is an apology to all my pstyles loves who I didn't get to canoodle with on Thursday.

I'm battling a bout of insomnia this week, mostly because I'm waiting on some answers that I'm really anxious to get. I apologize for my vagueries but this is one's too personal and I'm not ready to share.

Long story short, I'm not at my best. But that shouldn't matter, and is precisely the situation meant to be handled by discipline. If you can keep a routine going through the tough times that's when it is truly routine. There are tough times all the time. I feel that I can be a very un-disciplined person, and lose all control over my good habits when life interrupts. So I really wish I had come to class on Thursday. Je regret. It might have helped me feel better, as it certainly did on Tuesday.

I feel like a zombie. I'm messing up stuff at work, spilling/dropping things constantly, forgetting my own phone number...hopefully tonight I'll be able to sleep. Maybe my brain is exhausted enough to shut down for a night. I'm going home for the weekend, which is a relief. I get to see my five-year-old nephew, the best medecine.

This was a dramatic post, and I feel guilty even writing it. I feel insecure, that people will think: "uh-huh, just like Hilary, having some dramatic problem again!" Is this even close to the mark? I don't know. I know I have a very distorted sense of how people see me a lot of the time - I've been told I'm very hard on myself. But I do feel like I'm always getting sick during tech week, having a family emergency, a personal crisis, yada yada yada. Perhaps I don't manage my stress well. I like to think of myself as reliable, that I can be depended on. A few weeks ago someone told me that I "seem to get sick a lot," with a sort of smirky look. That crushes me. In high school I stayed home a lot when I got overwhelmed...played way too much hookey. In college I've been super sensitive to people thinking of me that way, because high school memories were not such good ones (and I have a lingering sense of guilt about how I handled myself)- but at Lehigh I've gotten very, very sick multiple times, from the flu to unexplained sudden stomach pain to shingles. SHINGLES! OLD people get shingles. Or people under abnormal stress. I had to fill a prescription for Valtrex, because shingles is a type of herpes virus. Do you have any idea how humbling an experience it is to fill a prescription for herpes medication?

Since my mom was hit by a car Freshman year, to my grandmother being hospitalized last spring, to my "grandfather" (grandmother's "companion") having a stroke this fall, falling on my face in the parking garage, having a lump removed from my breast, my dad getting married and selling the house we lived in together - just the two of us, for many years - Drama, in more senses than one, has certainly shaped my experiences of "the college years." As it must for almost everyone. Isn't this usually the time when people fall apart, come of age, wonder what the fuck they're doing with their lives? The quarter-life crisis, people! Am I alone in feeling like a hot mess most of the time? Everyone else always seems so...cool. Not as in an "awesome dude" sense, but in a laid-back, "I don't feel guilty for taking time for myself right now", in control sort of way. That probably sounds absurd to everyone else who struggles just as much as I do. Maybe I'm just less talented at hiding it, or at least not letting things overwhelm me. I don't want to be a person to whom things happen. And I really, really don't want to be the person other people see as weak.

There you go. All raw and exposed. So much for playing it close to the chest.

Seriously...I'll have to take a message because my functioning mind is not in today.