Tag: College

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Sickies

Today I’m sick. I’ve been sick the past couple days, but today I feel especially sick, because I’ve done nothing. So far I haven’t left the house, and I don’t really intend to before I go to sleep tonight. I feel like I’ve spent all day just going to the bathroom. I think that annoys me more than anything else. My throat hurts, so I drink tea. Then I may gargle some salt water, which I may mix with baking soda to try to fight a canker sore I have. Then I’m thirsty, so I drink water. Then I sit down to read. I cough a little, my throat hurts, and so I drink some more water again. Bathroom. Refill bottle. Read. Feel tired again. I want to sleep but my brain doesn’t turn off. Tea again. Eat something, which hurts. Drink water. Brush teeth. Gargle salt and baking soda. Drink water. Bathroom.

I’ve spent time pondering useless questions in amongst all this. Is it better to gargle before or after I brush my teeth? Should I just stop drinking so much water? Am I just drinking it because it’s there, or do I actually need it? How much tea should I be drinking? I’ll have to drink more water to make up for the tea I’m drinking, since it dehydrates me. I don’t want to be drinking tea all the time. Should I try to sleep, or will that just make me sleep less tonight? Why have I woken up twice really early in the morning and had a hard time going back to sleep again? Should I feel like a sissy for not doing anything yesterday and today, or is this what I should be doing if i want to get better? Why is anything that’s not warm feel so cold? Why is there no perfect way to sit on a bed and lean on a pillow against the wall? What a drag.

I miss having family around. If only I had someone to hug. But then I would make them sick. Never mind then. I’m happy being alone, I guess. I would hug someone who was sick, if I wasn’t, but that’s because I have an underlying pride complex in which I think I’m immune to sickness. I know that I can get sick, but I rarely do, so I don’t really take precautions around sick people. I guess that’s partly why being sick annoys me so much. This isn’t supposed to happen to me. I’m supposed to watch other people feel sick, be glad I’m not, and feel sorry for them! I’m the person who brushed his teeth with tap water in Pakistan because I figured a little dose of germs on a regular basis could probably be helpful. Sometimes I would have a little drink too, if I was thirsty before going to bed and couldn’t be bothered walking down to the water cooler at the end of the hall. Over Christmas I jumped eight feet down onto a concrete floor in my bare feet, thinking…(I’m not really sure what I was thinking, or if I was thinking at all) that I would just bounce? It took weeks for me to be able to put pressure on my foot normally. When I got back to Canada I played frisbee with my room-mate in the snow for fifteen minutes, wearing snow pants and a t-shirt because it felt pretty warm. I mean, it’s just snow. When we finished, I came inside to lie in my bed, curled up a ball, and moan in pain, clutching my arms to my body as I felt the warm blood pulsing through the veins in my numb forearms and fingers — a dull, burning pain tracing through my skin. It hurt so much that I was feeling pain in my stomach too, as if I’d been punched in the gut. And that’s just from Christmas until now. I’m an idiot. I assume my body will just take anything because, so far, I guess it has.

I’m pretty sure the sickies I am feeling now are all stress and tiredness induced. It seems a lot like my yearly sickies that I would get in high school, just after exam time and as soon as break had started. But this time I feel like I have no real reason to be sick, since I haven’t been overwhelmingly stressed or tired. Yes, I’ve had some late nights, but I was getting plenty of sleep, feeding myself well and balancing my homework. It just feels like a completely uncalled for sickness. But I guess it really doesn’t matter what caused it — only that now I’m reduced to floating between my bed and the couch in the living room, cloaked in my grey shawl. And of course, to the bathroom. Again and again, and again.

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Stress

I recently had some troubles with my car. One of the tires had developed a bulge, (which I didn’t realise at the time) and the whole car would wobble a little and tend to one side. It stressed me out. I had only recently got back from Pakistan and I was jet-lagged and tired. On top of this, I had just begun classes, which is always overwhelming, as students get bombarded with outlines of our assignments for the semester. On days like these I find myself going back to my room after class, lying on the bed and staring up at the ceiling wondering, how am I ever going to get through this?

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Of course, it’s not actually as huge a mountain as it seems — it’s just a bit of an information overload. I think that’s often why God tends to keep us hanging in life, never revealing too much of the future. He knows we wouldn’t be able to handle the whole picture. Instead He gives us enough of a glimpse ahead to know where to put our foot next, but other than that, we’re left in the dark. I don’t always mind the dark, because I know if I could see everything ahead of me, I’d probably go lie down on my bed and stare at the ceiling forever. In fact, I might decide it’s just not worth getting out of bed at all.

Life can often be overwhelming, even in the little things. As I went through my first week, trying to muster up the energy to make a simply call, find a mechanic, and get my car looked at, I felt a little anxious. It was just a lot for me to handle, along with everything else that was going on. Tiny things in my day seemed like massive hurdles, as if anything on top of what I already had to go through would be the final straw for me. Sometimes I felt like a pressure cooker, ready to blow. Parents experience this stress a lot. I can remember times when I was little when, after one tiny issue, one of my parents would reach their limit. All the stresses that had been building up over time would burst. Suddenly a torrent of emotions would come gushing out, with a long list of all the tensions that had all been piling up within. I feel like it happens more often for moms. But I can sympathise. I don’t even have kids and I have days when I feel like I’m at the end of my rope. The smallest most unrelated event can often be the pin for the grenade that’s been slowly forming itself inside.

Thankfully it doesn’t always have to explode. I did finally get my car looked at. And two days later I had new tires on, and my heart was a thousand times lighter. I had been worrying that it would be something bigger in the suspension or steering, but thankfully it wasn’t. Tires are easy to replace. Not cheap, but easy. My long list of things that were going wrong in my life were suddenly all forgotten — because most of it really came down to the car. It’s interesting how that happens. Layer upon layer of stresses add themselves onto each other, all piled on one central problem. And once that single stress is removed, suddenly you realise the simple cause for all this turmoil, making everything else feel unbearable.

I may feel like a real idiot at times, but I’m glad things worked out the way they did. I’m glad I needed to learn to just go and get things dealt with. I wish I would have done it earlier. Now I know. Hopefully next time I have a problem, I’ll just deal with it before it gets to the point where it becomes overwhelming. I’m glad I’m learning, even though sometimes I would give anything to just have my problems solve themselves in my sleep. But God knows that I wouldn’t learn anything that way. He knows that I have growing to do, and though He doesn’t often make it painless, He is always faithful to walk with me through it. On top of this, I’m glad I have friends and family that are there for me too. Sometimes I just need people who are willing to talk to me and listen to me, while I unload the things that feel I can’t carry, only for me to pick them back up again after and get them dealt with. I’m so thankful for the listeners in my life.

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Another Ending

The dust has finally settled. After the past couple weeks of wrapping-up school work and winding down for the year, I can finally sit back and ask myself what in the world happened. I’m not really sure why, but somehow amidst all the flurry of assignments over the past few days, I seem to have dropped into total disrepair. Afternoons and evenings would go by and I would be reminded at night that I had eaten hardly anything since breakfast. How does someone forget they need to eat? It seems like a mildly important aspect of life, so I’m not sure how I forgot it. I doubt if this is a problem for the majority of students in college, but apparently for my room mate and I, it is.

However, I have decided to eat again, forcing meals down myself today at specific meal times, in an effort to bring some normality back to my life. I didn’t realise how accustomed I had become to a mildly empty stomach, until I felt sick forcing myself to eat. I’m not really surprised that, as a result of all this, I’ve found myself quite tired and a bit of an emotional wreck. As I contemplate moving out of my flat, I have been sorting through my things in the process of packing, and have been finding myself wrapped up in old pictures, notes and papers. Forgotten memories find there ways into my hands and soon I am engulfed in a world I used to know, sitting in the centre of my small college room as it makes its way into boxes and suitcases. Each new move and change seems to echo all the others — years of good-byes to people and places. Another ending to a year, a job, or a home.

Unresolved grief. Is that the term for when you feel like crying at the most unusual moments throughout the day? Or when you just want to reach out and touch something familiar — to somehow embrace the memories in your mind. Or when that knot in your throat seems to make its way up until you’re not sure if it will just stay stuck there, and you wonder what words it will say when it finally bubbles up. Perhaps it will have nothing to say.

I know that much of this will change. With a couple regular meals, a few good nights of sleep, and some time with family and a three year old cousin who loves me to death, I’ll soon be a bit more mellowed out. However, grief is probably something I will always carry with me. Scar tissue from farewells and places that felt like home. And yet it’s not so much the grief of leaving home that hurts, but rather, not having a place to call home. Maybe it’s because I wonder if I’ll ever have a home. Maybe its the fear that someday I will have one, and like the dog who finally catches the car, doesn’t know what to do with it, and finds himself wondering why he was so eager to get it in the first place.

Thankfully I join a rich history of grievers — people without a real place to call home. People who, by faith, welcomed each sunrise with joy and expectation.

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. Hebrews 11:13

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Mornings, Evenings or in Betweens?

I always thought I was very much a morning person. In the summer, waking up early for my 6:30 start suited me fine. I managed to get up every morning with time to read my Bible and still have the morning ahead of me. At school I still try to get up early, even if I don’t have class until later in the morning, as I enjoy the quiet of the morning and I feel I can concentrate better. And yet these days concentration and motivation are ghosts, apparitions here a moment and then gone. With only a couple weeks left of school, doing my little bit of work is like pulling teeth.

Yet somehow I do better in the evenings – with the sky black outside, the clock having long since seen ten, then eleven. My eyes are tired and strained, my bed looks like heaven and each thought of waking up in the morning fills me with dread. Go to bed now. Yet everything is clearer. I read through long scholarly articles for class and suddenly I understand what the authors are saying. Ideas flow from thought to thought and I have the patience to plow slowly through a page, and the drive to move on to the next. Why does this happen after eleven-o-clock at night? Why does my body taunt my mind with this turbo-charged diligence?

When I was younger my brain seemed to switch on at night. Just as my mum would tuck me in to bed, my heart would decide it wanted to pour out all my thoughts, fears hopes and curious questions. Philosophy and existential discourse have no respect for bed times, perhaps more so in the mind of a young child. Reluctantly my mum would sit, listen to me start, and then stop me to tell me to wait until morning – to talk then. Of course, my thoughts, dreams and fears would vanish with the stars, fading into the brightening morning sky, not to be found by day. Now I play the double role myself – both the dreaming boy and the tired mother – the buzzing mind and the weary body.

Mornings or evenings? Some days I feel like I am trying for the best of both worlds, waking early for the industry of the morning and then working late into the dark of night as well. Perhaps its time for me to give up the idea of being a morning person. But I love my mornings. I love my evenings too. Naps. I should perfect the art. This childhood nightmare and adulthood euphoria might just hold the key to my body’s strange ideas about when it wants to think.

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God is Dead

A while ago I was talking to a philosophy professor here at my college. I had been discussing ‘rights’, what they really mean and their origins with a friend, and he decided we should take our discussion to the philosophy professor’s office and see what he thought. We had a good talk, which turned fairly quickly to the existence of God and the validity of the Bible, where all philosophical questions seem to end up. We were briefly discussing the debate between creationist scientists and atheist scientists — as that’s really where the clashes arise. The professor pointed out to us that while creationist scientists are extremely invested in their research, evolutionists are not. What he meant was that creationist scientists are essentially looking for facts to prove an position they have already decided upon – that God exists, while atheist scientist have nothing to prove. However, nothing could be farther from the truth.

In 1883, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche penned the famous words: “God is dead.” I remember reading a poster at my Bible school last year that had Nietzsche’s quote written with the date, 1883, only below it was written “‘Nietzche is dead.’ -God, 1900.” I found this quite amusing, and certainly a good reminder of the mortality of man. In many ways, arguments in the scientific world often revolve around this statement – either by way of acceptance of it, or rejection.

Science is, and has almost always been, far from objective. Honest reachers will attest to the fact that although people try very hard to be objective, research always carries biases and presuppositions in it. This is the nature of study. For the scientist who already believes in God, all science should match up to the facts that they already believe and should point towards the God they already believe in. And for the atheist scientist it is very much the same, all studies should ultimately support the idea that there is no God, and any evidence that points to a possible God can not remain within their existing beliefs.

An atheist scientist must only find evidence that points to a world without God. Any other evidence would suggest that there is a God and, as a result, they would then be subject to the fact that there is an all-knowing, all-powerful God who demands something of them. Both parties in the scientific debate have a horse in the race. Both are invested, and both stand on presupposed ideas. Because if God is not dead, then there are a lot of people who will have to stand before Him at the end of time and explain why they lived as if He was.

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