New Beginnings
I sat down and wrote my first post to this blog January 7th or so. After typing up an introduction for myself, all about who I am, and my background etc. I pressed the Publish button and my computer froze and the whole post vanished. Because of that set back I didn't write it all over again but put this blog on the back burner for the time being. After all I was just heading back to school and had to focus on getting my head back into University mode. Now three weeks later I am sitting at a Cigar Bar trying to collect my scattered thoughts.
Yesterday I had to withdraw from my spring semester. The semester that I worked so hard to line up with classes that I really wanted to take. I even applied for the brand-new Undergrad Creative Writing track at Iowa and was accepted. So why the withdrawal? Well, as my luck goes I woke up last Thursday with a lump on my neck. After a visit to the ER, doctors' appointments, and a needle biopsy the diagnosis is a thyroid cyst. I was put on vicodin, steroids, antibiotics, and a thyroid stabilizer. This is in combination with my Zoloft (my anti-depressant) which I take daily. This past week has been a numbing out of body experience.
I don't trust doctors much. Actually, unless proven otherwise I am distrusting of all members of the medical profession. I believe I have just cause; that's for another time though. I am also very very very wary of pills, medications, drugs (whatever label you want to assign the things). I always have a Matrix flashback when I am prescribed a new med: Which will you take? The blue pill or the red? And that's always me--Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole either one I choose. Regardless, the pills I have been taking have made me sick to my stomach, light-headed, groggy, feverish, the list goes on.
What I am getting at without too much gory or gratuitous recap is that I have been off and still no one has an exact answer of what to do about the cyst. So as I said, I am sitting here, blues playing in the background, my boyfriend working the smoking bar/cigar store close by, and drinking my second free cup of creamed-down coffee. It's true that my head is still reeling a little from the mud slide of recent events. I got two weeks into the semester and had to withdraw because of "health-related issues". Boy does this feel surreal and uncomfortably familiar.
This is not the first time I have had to withdraw from school because for "health reasons". It is the first time however, that these reasons have been physically related and not mentally related. This first entry is feeling a little "down" in tone. It's mostly just because my brain is in so many places and working overtime to regain some level of certainty. It's not all as black as it seems though. While unexpected this circumstance opens new paths and new choices. If my past seven years of battling and surviving depression has taught me anything it has taught me that everything happens for a reason. I am not a superstitious person by any means, but I do believe in a greater destiny. If someone had told me at sixteen that this is where I would be at close to twenty-five I would have said, "No! That's not the plan!"
It took some hard experiences and a great deal of thought and hindsight to realize that there is no plan, not really. I'm not saying it's impossible to have goals and desires just that life doesn't work as neatly as a paper outline. Plans change. True happiness is accepting that life does not always follow a straight course; that alot of the adventure is found along the sidetracks life hands us. This is a new beginning for me. Not the one I anticipated or expected but it allows me time to step back and think if a BA from the Univeristy is really what I want. Do I want to continue to jump through the hoops of Academia for a piece of paper that holds no real significance to who I am as a person?
Though I still feel a little thrown, as is only natural when life hits curveballs at your face, I am excited to see where this time off will lead me, what I will discover about myself and what I really want out of life. It seems like a simple thing to figure out but I've found that fear sometimes acts to blind us from what we really want and pursuades us that all we must want is what everyone else around us wants. It takes practice and patience to retrain your brain to see the falisy of that. I will never forget what a bartender in New York City said to me three years ago. I was sitting on a stool, finishing up on my third ameretto sour, and being to choke on dry tears. The bartender came up to me and asked what was up. I remember telling him I was scared and sad and didn't know what to do with my life. He looked me directly in the eyes and said with forceful conviction, "Just jump." And that was it; I don't know what it was about those words but they felt like a jolt. It's odd the little things that stick with you.
"That" Scene from 'The Matrix':
Morpheus: I imagine that right now you're feeling a bit like Alice. Tumbling down the rabbit hole?
Neo: You could say that.
Morpheus: I can see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he's expecting to wake up. Ironically, this is not far from the truth. Do you believe in fate, Neo?
Neo: No.
Morpheus: Why not?
Neo: 'Cause I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life.
Morpheus: I know exactly what you mean. Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know, you can't explain. But you feel it. You felt it your entire life. That there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there. Like a splinter in your mind -- driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Neo: The Matrix?
Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is?
(Neo nods his head.)
Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, or when go to church or when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. (long pause, sighs) Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back.
(In his left hand, Morpheus shows a blue pill.)
Morpheus: You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. (a red pill is shown in his other hand) You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. (Long pause; Neo begins to reach for the red pill) Remember -- all I am offering is the truth, nothing more.
(Neo takes the red pill and swallows it with a glass of water)
Yesterday I had to withdraw from my spring semester. The semester that I worked so hard to line up with classes that I really wanted to take. I even applied for the brand-new Undergrad Creative Writing track at Iowa and was accepted. So why the withdrawal? Well, as my luck goes I woke up last Thursday with a lump on my neck. After a visit to the ER, doctors' appointments, and a needle biopsy the diagnosis is a thyroid cyst. I was put on vicodin, steroids, antibiotics, and a thyroid stabilizer. This is in combination with my Zoloft (my anti-depressant) which I take daily. This past week has been a numbing out of body experience.
I don't trust doctors much. Actually, unless proven otherwise I am distrusting of all members of the medical profession. I believe I have just cause; that's for another time though. I am also very very very wary of pills, medications, drugs (whatever label you want to assign the things). I always have a Matrix flashback when I am prescribed a new med: Which will you take? The blue pill or the red? And that's always me--Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole either one I choose. Regardless, the pills I have been taking have made me sick to my stomach, light-headed, groggy, feverish, the list goes on.
What I am getting at without too much gory or gratuitous recap is that I have been off and still no one has an exact answer of what to do about the cyst. So as I said, I am sitting here, blues playing in the background, my boyfriend working the smoking bar/cigar store close by, and drinking my second free cup of creamed-down coffee. It's true that my head is still reeling a little from the mud slide of recent events. I got two weeks into the semester and had to withdraw because of "health-related issues". Boy does this feel surreal and uncomfortably familiar.
This is not the first time I have had to withdraw from school because for "health reasons". It is the first time however, that these reasons have been physically related and not mentally related. This first entry is feeling a little "down" in tone. It's mostly just because my brain is in so many places and working overtime to regain some level of certainty. It's not all as black as it seems though. While unexpected this circumstance opens new paths and new choices. If my past seven years of battling and surviving depression has taught me anything it has taught me that everything happens for a reason. I am not a superstitious person by any means, but I do believe in a greater destiny. If someone had told me at sixteen that this is where I would be at close to twenty-five I would have said, "No! That's not the plan!"
It took some hard experiences and a great deal of thought and hindsight to realize that there is no plan, not really. I'm not saying it's impossible to have goals and desires just that life doesn't work as neatly as a paper outline. Plans change. True happiness is accepting that life does not always follow a straight course; that alot of the adventure is found along the sidetracks life hands us. This is a new beginning for me. Not the one I anticipated or expected but it allows me time to step back and think if a BA from the Univeristy is really what I want. Do I want to continue to jump through the hoops of Academia for a piece of paper that holds no real significance to who I am as a person?
Though I still feel a little thrown, as is only natural when life hits curveballs at your face, I am excited to see where this time off will lead me, what I will discover about myself and what I really want out of life. It seems like a simple thing to figure out but I've found that fear sometimes acts to blind us from what we really want and pursuades us that all we must want is what everyone else around us wants. It takes practice and patience to retrain your brain to see the falisy of that. I will never forget what a bartender in New York City said to me three years ago. I was sitting on a stool, finishing up on my third ameretto sour, and being to choke on dry tears. The bartender came up to me and asked what was up. I remember telling him I was scared and sad and didn't know what to do with my life. He looked me directly in the eyes and said with forceful conviction, "Just jump." And that was it; I don't know what it was about those words but they felt like a jolt. It's odd the little things that stick with you.
"That" Scene from 'The Matrix':
Morpheus: I imagine that right now you're feeling a bit like Alice. Tumbling down the rabbit hole?
Neo: You could say that.
Morpheus: I can see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he's expecting to wake up. Ironically, this is not far from the truth. Do you believe in fate, Neo?
Neo: No.
Morpheus: Why not?
Neo: 'Cause I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life.
Morpheus: I know exactly what you mean. Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know, you can't explain. But you feel it. You felt it your entire life. That there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there. Like a splinter in your mind -- driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Neo: The Matrix?
Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is?
(Neo nods his head.)
Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, or when go to church or when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. (long pause, sighs) Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back.
(In his left hand, Morpheus shows a blue pill.)
Morpheus: You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. (a red pill is shown in his other hand) You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. (Long pause; Neo begins to reach for the red pill) Remember -- all I am offering is the truth, nothing more.
(Neo takes the red pill and swallows it with a glass of water)
