What I Thought I Wanted

Today is the Feast of the Ascension. The forty days after Pascha are finally over. It was a bit startling, though I knew it was coming, when Father Patrick prayed for the newly illumined in this morning's liturgy, and my name and those of my newly sealed friends weren't mentioned. When I say startling, I mean two things. First, I'd become accustomed to the list of the six of us in that prayer. Second, it came as a great relief that the literal forty days are past! Perhaps my wilderness trek may continue. Perhaps not. I don't know, and I'm not going to try to guess.

In a dramatic climax to the story, I was given the unexpected opportunity to take a couple days off to relax last week. I had that panic attack last Tuesday, and I had been shaking since the previous Saturday. Tuesday night, I managed a whopping three hours of sleep. We had a Chamber event Wednesday night, so I didn't get home until after nine.

I crashed. Hard. I had had in the back of my mind that I would take Thursday morning off to get school stuff taken care of. I wasn't sure what would happen from there. When I woke up that morning, I knew I was in trouble. I was feeling very weak, probably because I was almost completely unable to eat on Wednesday. Standing was exhausting. I was still shaking way too much.

After I took care of the school part of the day, I went back to bed. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it. I was terrified. I honestly thought I might die. It took an hour and a good deal of effort to calm myself.

I'm not sure if it was entirely a result of Thursday, or if Thursday only triggered a collapse that had been on its way for a month, but I slept almost the entire day Friday. That was not the plan, but every time I tried to do anything, I ended up asleep instead. Apparently, I was really tired, because I then proceeded to sleep all night, too! Saturday and Sunday were slightly better, though not much. I managed to stay awake through church. Barely.

Oddly enough, inability to maintain consciousness is not so very conducive to getting a research paper written! Go figure. This, of course, only added to the stress, which was already out of control.

Somewhere in those four days, I realized some things. As soon as I let go of the need to get the paper done, all that sleep finally turned into rest, and the overwhelming stress was lifted.

I learned a lot from that class this quarter. Not everything I learned was material presented in class, though. I really enjoyed the class. The teacher is without question one of the best I've had. One of the things I learned, though, is that the future that would follow that program is not a future I want. It sounds exciting, don't get me wrong. It's just that there are certain priorities that I try to maintain, and it is fairly clear that this road would send me in quite the opposite direction. Yes, this means I probably will never be Double 0 Spider, MacGyver, or Agent 99. However, when faced with the choice between what I want to do and who I want to be, "who" has to come out on top.

I know there are those who will read this and think I gave up. There are those who will be terribly disappointed in me. I'm a bit nervous about that. I try not to be worried about it, but these are people who are very important to me. The voice that decided to call me a quitter and failure, the other voice that has taken up the banner declaring me both stuck and useless, these are not helping matters. But the bottom line is this is the decision I had to make, and I don't question that I chose what's better for me.

One of these days I'll figure out where I am going.