Easy in my harness

Right now, the EMU is quiet. There are no epileptic children squawking, as there often are. It makes this place feel like a pet store full of myna birds and guinea pigs rather than a specialized care unit in one of the more prestigious hospitals on the Eastern Seaboard. When it is quiet like this, and no one is fussing with my electrodes or checking my pulse, and all I can hear are the sounds of minutes passing by I think I might mistake whatever I am feeling for something close to contented.

It is, in some ways, a relief to be literally glued to one spot for a time, at least for me-- at least for now. For all the discomforts of the wires, and the tedium, and the terrible food they bring me (or forget to bring me...), I can sort of make peace with being stuck here. I have to be here, for a predetermined length of time, for a predetermined reason, and that is that, There is no anguish on my part whatsoever over what I should be doing, and if it is the right thing to be doing at all. It is easier to stifle longing for various elsewheres when I cannot even walk across the hall. Of course I cannot be at Knox right now, I am glued here. I am glued here until Monday, and so why bother longing at all?

It is, of course, not so easy to settle into my surroundings when I am at home. There I am also trapped, in a lot of ways (some some of them literal, some of them less so), but for no good reason. When I am able-bodied and un-glued, I do not think I should be content to sit in Maryland, biding my time until somebody signs my permission slip. Just as the wild animal who knows he is injured will allow himself to be handled and caged, and the one who is well will bite and pace when he is restrained, so too do I, I suppose (Now I apologize for that metaphor, I really do, but it was apt, you see. You understand. Don't make fun).

All of this is not to say that I do not want to be at Knox right now, because of course I do.I just have momentarily sorted out "something I want" from "something I should have", and so the turmoil of being trapped has died down. It's nice. When you give up the struggle, it is quiet. The myna birds of the EMU will teach you that.

**Post originally written 3/27/2010. There is sadly very spotty internet in the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit, so it was not published at the time.

Ain't no tuition for having no ambition, and ain't no loans for sittin' at home

Listening to rap makes me write papers faster. Who knew?

At the University of Krissy, acceptance will be based on awesomeness. No essay required (but if you want to submit one--hey!).

For a while now, I should have been working on college application essays. I've just been so sick of hearing about college, and school, and test scores, and everything else that goes along with the application process, that I've ignored it. Even I can only procrastinate so long, though, and I sat down today to start an essay for my Earlham application.

Seriously! I sat down, intent on cranking out some bullshit essay (to be modified later), just so I could say that I started. Well, it's actually not that easy. I can write a six-page research paper the morning that it's due, but this had me stumped. What am I supposed to say? How can I sort through all of my life experiences and label just one as the most valuable? And honestly, is what I consider valuable what these colleges want to hear about?

I want to write about the car ride home from the hospital after recieving morphine for the first time, watching Christmas lights whiz by, drifting in and out of consciousness, feeling utterly safe and happy and childlike. I want to write about Aly's backyard in September, when everything is yellow and lovely. I want to write about Angie's house in the summertime, or even about slicing parsnips with my shiny new chef's knife. I want to write about bowling with my cousins the day after Christmas in a smoke-filled, flavored-condom-dispenser-in-the-bathroom, small-town recreational league bowling alley.

I do NOT want to write about my experience with chronic illness and what I've learned from it.

But, alas. That's probably what my essay will be about, simply because it's the most suitable topic.

At least I'm not addicted to nicotine...

Oh, community college: "Where nobody actually wants to be".

Alas, I am stuck stuck stuck for this year, and while there are worse alternatives (senior year of HS), community college is living up to its unofficial slogan. I am utterly apathetic. Like everybody else here. We're all just kind of going to class (or not), usually with some sort of goal in mind, but nobody (save the nursing students) are actively working towards it. We're just biding our time until circumstances change, and change comes slowly at community college. That's what I don't like about it here. Honestly, I was excited to skip my senior year and start college, even if it was "only" community college. I wanted to move on, but community college seems like a place where everyone is doing everything BUT moving on. They're stuck in high school, or in their minimum-wage rut, and they like it there. Spare time is spent working their lame mall jobs or spending their pay on cigarettes (did I mention that EVERYONE smokes here?). And they all seem perfectly content to stick with whatever clique they fit into in high school. Isn't that the oposite of what college is supposed to be? Doesn't everyone look forward to going somewhere they can be whoever they want, try something new?

And I think I just found my answer. Everyone wants to GO somewhere, and community college isn't going much of anywhere. It's twenty minutes away from your house, in your parents' car, in the dreary suburbs of your adolesence.

So I'm stuck here, like everybody else, only without a driver's lisence or group of friends leftover from high school, and that's just the way it is. I haven't hung out with anyone particularly interesting, despite my fascination with several individuals who shall remain nameless (you know one of them by his piercing). And, it seems, I don't really care.

Because that's what community college does to you.