Well, here it is. 2013. A new year, which everyone always expects to be the best yet because we all love new beginnings. One of the best feelings in the world is the chance to start over. A clean slate lets you pretend that all that bad stuff from last year never happened, so it won't distract or discourage you. I'll admit, I'm not immune. I feel hopeful and inspired, which is a good thing because boy do I need it. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago I hit what is commonly known as "rock bottom." It is a place where everything goes wrong and you don't even need to be clinically depressed to feel like it's time to give up. And for the first time in my life, I did. I admitted defeat, even if only for the time being. It was time to face the truth, and the truth was this: I am a sickly, sickly person who does not have nearly as much control over my life as I feel comfortable having. So what if I started new meds before the start of the semester. For some reason I thought that this meant automatic progress, even if the side effects caused me to be completely neurotic for days at a time. And I didn't even have a concussion this semester! Surely that means it should have been smooth sailing. Unfortunately it wasn't, and I'm not quite sure why, especially since I had a super light workload. I had so little homework I was jealous of myself, and yet I still didn't manage to get it in on time. Though I was feeling better emotionally, there was something still getting in my way. That something probably has to do with my inability to understand how time passes, and then the ensuing panic when I realize that time has, in fact, passed. And as if that weren't enough, it turns out that my sleeping is actually, really going all wrong, and not even just in a hypochondriac way. By the end of November I was sleeping about fourteen hours a day every day. And even though I've always been a light sleeper who could be woken by things like pencils clicking and people tip-toeing around, I would be completely and entirely gone for those fourteen hours. I would have long, strange, and very vivid dreams the whole night, and then wake up in the late afternoon or evening to find that I had missed another day of my life. My alarms would have all been turned off and my phone would be on the other side of the room (maybe I threw it?) with something like seventeen missed calls. Some days I even learned that I had interacted with people during the day. One time I texted my dad "I'm awake" to get him to stop calling me, but I clearly was not even a little bit awake. Another day a friend told me that he'd come in my room to talk to me and that I had even been talking back, but I didn't have any memory of it when I woke up six hours later. As the semester drew to a close and my grades were pretty much the shittiest thing I'd ever seen (trust me, they were really damn shitty), I had to enlist my friends' help in waking up in time for my last few classes. Some of the time it worked! I dare any of you to sleep through a Gangnam Style flash mob in your room at 9:30am. And the next day I had Monty Python style monks that hit themselves in the foreheads with planks. But even the endless creativity of my friends did not always manage to do the trick, and I was eventually forced to admit: this is silly. I sleep all day and I don't know why, and that's not even the only weird medical problem that I have yet to work out. Because my wisdom teeth spontaneously decided to come in, but must faster than usual, just to mess with me. So one day I started to really want to chew on my toothbrush, which I recognized as the same teething temptation I got when my other adult teeth were coming in. I went to see a dentist and he was like, "Geez! Where did those come from all the sudden?" And they set me up to have surgery in December, except whoops! Don't forget I dislocated my jaw a few years ago and have serious, chronic TMJ pain and swelling. My wisdom teeth probably thought it would be hilarious to cause enough swelling to dislocate my jaw again, and that's how I got stuck on a midnight Amtrak train with a dislocated jaw. I wasn't even doing anything! I was just minding my own business, trying to get some shut-eye, then POP. Damn. And then they had to cancel my surgery to get my wisdom teeth out, because apparently it's a bad idea to try to force open the jaw of someone who's been a little bit crippled by TMJ disorders.
So there I was. A sleepy person whose jaw didn't fit in her face, and whose teachers didn't know quite how to deal with a girl who obviously knew the material, but who never showed up to class or turned in work on time. I was starting to feel desperate and panicky, which surprisingly wasn't a result of my anxiety disorder. It was the result of being in a legitimately bad place. I was physically and emotionally exhausted, and despite the fact that I loved all of my classes, professors, and especially the friends who helped me get through it, I decided that it was time to get the hell out of there before I destroyed myself. And that's how I ended up making the decision to take a medical leave of absence. I took an incomplete in one class, made a final push to finish another, and effectively gave up on the rest. And then I packed my things and went home before finals were even over. I cried for a few days about missing my friends, all the cool events during the spring semester, and even that sweet room I scored (because seriously guys, that was the best room and I'm taking it back Fall 2013 so don't even think about it). But after all that crying I felt so relieved that I knew I had made the right decision. As soon as the stress was off I started feeling better. I went off my meds in case they had been causing the sleep problems (no such luck), but even without them I'm feeling optimistic and motivated, despite sleeping 10-12 hours a day. I've been seeing lots of doctors (seriously, too many doctors) and getting lots of rest. I've even managed to put back on the weight I lost from sleeping through all my meals. I got down to 105lbs, which is way too little for someone who's 5'3", at least with my body shape. And I've been doing a lot of crafts to keep my hands busy. I knitted several hats a scarves each in time to give away as Christmas presents, and I'm continuing my attempt to fold a thousand paper cranes. I have 605 right now. That means I'm 60.5% of the way through my healing process, right? Maybe not, but it does feel good to have a tangible goal associated with my quest for good health. And lately I've been feeling the inspiration to start working on my book again. I haven't felt this motivated since I finished writing the first draft in 8th grade. And that was the time I wrote 100 pages in five days.
So yeah, maybe I was forced to withdraw from college temporarily. Maybe I did feel as if I had let myself down and had to put my whole life on hold. But if this feeling is anything to go by, then in the end it will be worth it. I will do all the things I've been meaning to do since I graduated from high school and I will have the time to heal from ... whatever it is plaguing me at this time. I know I have worried a lot of people, and I know I'm continuing to be a hermit, but it's really okay. I just need some time to myself and I'll be back before you know it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a book to write, a language to reinvent, and an old electric typewriter to play with. Maybe all at once. See you later, my peeps. Hopefully my posts from now on will be a record of my awesome adventures instead of a catalog of strange illnesses!
