As Insanity Plateaus

Just a quick update, tonight. Life keeps on going, as it is wont to do. I have settled into what seems to be a good routine. I am finally used to my class/clinic schedule (half-way through the semester), and getting a decent amount of sleep. I love clinic so much, which is encouraging as that is what I plan to be doing for the majority of the rest of my life. I wish I could talk more about clinic, but HIPPA forbids it, so I shall refrain.

I also love my job. It has been a long time since I have been able to say that, and it feels wonderful to be able to do so. For I while I said I loved Albertson's, but that was more of a reaction against ICT than affection for the job itself, and I was really fairly miserable there. But Barnes and Noble! I still get giddy when I think about it. Sometimes I will be there, at night, straightening books on the shelf, and just start giggling, uncontrollable happiness welling up inside of me. It has been a long time since I really enjoyed what I am doing, and it feels nice to have that again.

Acclimating to my schedule also means I now have a tiny bit more free time than I have in the past few weeks. I get to go see Where the Wild Things Are with Glennda tomorrow, and I am incredibly excited about it. It was a defining book of my childhood, and I have only heard good things about it so far. Also, spending time with Glennda is the best part of being in Spokane, so tomorrow evening is doubly lovely for that reason.

I am looking ahead more and more, trying to figure out where my life is headed, where I am going to end up, even just for my hospital internship. I will be applying at hospitals in the Seattle area and the LA area. I think I would be happy in either place - I just do not want to be stuck here. It is still a while out, but planning is a good thing.

I had a good talk with a dear friend last week about healing. It is a difficult thing. I think I will write more on that, later.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily.

On My List of Things That frighten Me.

Yes, that is frighten with a little 'f.' The list is not of things that Frighten me, or of things which I Fear, in the style of A.A. Milne, where Important words are capitalized, especially Nouns. Perhaps the list is more Things that Make Me Nervous. Anyway. On this list is Chiropractors. I think I may have been raised to be Nervous about Chiropractors, or even to be frightened of them.

I like my job (this is not as horrid a non-sequitur as it may seem). It is not something that I want to be doing for the rest of my life, but it is steady and active and my shifts go by quickly. And, of course, it gives me money. However, the past two weeks were hellish. I flew back from LA on Monday, June twenty-ninth, and worked the next nine days without a break. And really, my visit to California was not much of a break, because I was seeing people and down late and up early and quite busy overall. So, I worked over the holiday weekend, and most of my shifts were nine or ten hours. My longest, most horrid day/shift was Thursday, July second - that one was twelve hours long; I was called in two hours early for my scheduled eight (and one-half, if you include my lunch break) hour shift, and did not finish closing until an hour and a half after my shift was supposed to end: ten-thirty to ten-thirty. Horrible.

So, sometime in there I strained something in my back. And then not having a break aggravated it. And it was hurting quite badly by the end of my shift on Wednesday, and on Thursday I could barely move at all. I had planned to get a lot done on my day off - mostly cleaning my room and doing laundry - but I ended up spending most of the day curled up in an armchair. In a moment of temporary insanity, perhaps, I called my best friend and asked for the name and number of her chiropractor. I did not know if he was covered in my insurance, but the one thing in the situation that I wanted less than to go to a chiropractor was to go to a chiropractor chosen indiscriminately off of a list from my insurance company's website. (As it turns out, he is a provider for my insurance, so that is going to work out nicely.)

So on Friday I faced my Nerves, and went to see the Chiropractor. The doctor, while working on adjusting me, informed me that he had never seen anyone my size (height, weight) so tight and tense. I am unsure as to whether or not I should be proud of this accomplishment. He was especially impressed/horrified by the knot in my left shoulder which I have had since I can remember - probably at least since junior high. Afterward, I was able to move and straighten up some, so that was a significant improvement, though I was still in pain. I went in again this morning, very, very, very sore from yesterday, for another adjustment, and this evening I am feeling well. That is, I am feeling no worse than I generally would at the end of a work-day. But the doctor says that we are going to get me Well, or All Better, which is fairly Exciting, although the whole thing still makes me fairly Nervous.

I do like having movement, though. And the cracking is simultaneously absolutely terrifying and extremely satisfying.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

Yesterday

I got horribly homesick yesterday, right after church. There was the annual parish meeting, and I stayed for about half of it. And during Fr. Michael's talk, he mentioned that this weekend, at the baptism in Wenatchee, he met a couple from St. Barnabas in Costa Mesa, and then proceeded to hold that church up as a good example for us, mentioning that they generally receive about thirty new members every year at Pascha. And I broke down (quietly). Because, for one thing, two of my dear friends, Sara and Jimmy, were fewer than two-hundred miles away from me and I could have been there and I missed the chance. (edit: as it turns out, this Sara and James were not the Sara and James that I know. odd.) And for the other thing, it just made me homesick. I know about half of the people who were baptized last year at St. Barnabas. I probably know about half of the group that will be baptized there this year. These are my friends - my dear friends - and I miss them. It was awfully hard for me. It is especially difficult at church, even though they have all become a wonderful family for me, because people can not seem to comprehend that I didn't want to leave California, that I want to go back. Comments like, "great job making it out alive!" make me want to cry. But I do not want to cry, not there, for that.

I also worry, because part of me is terrified of getting too attached. I do not like being torn between places. I am scared to make friends here, because I hate leaving friends. I know that that is not right, that it is not healthy, but that is my gut reaction. I miss my friends and my life so much, I just want to go back - even with all the horror that has been happening in the area with the fires as of late.

Then, last night, my best friend came over. I can not praise Glennda enough. She has truly been the best friend someone could ask for, especially in supporting me through all of my conflicts and confusion over the past year. She is being especially patient with me right now. I apologized profusely last night, through my tears. She is so glad to have me back here, and all I do when we are together is vent about how homesick I am. Poor dear. She is so good to me. I do not deserve her, but I am glad I have her. She just smiled, and reminded me how many times I sat and listened as she poured out her own heart in mourning.

Then after I pulled myself together I started trying to convince her to move to LA with me. As always. I will not understand how someone would move to Russia in a heartbeat, but would not even visit California when her best friend lived there. Not that I do not understand the wanting to move to Russia part, just the not even wanting to ever set foot in California part. But, as I explained to her, it would be much easier for me to move her down to LA than for me to move my whole life from down there to up here. She mentioned how then she would be in essentially the same position that I am in now, except worse, because no family there. Which is true, but I pressed on: "You'd get along great with my friends. I have excellent taste in friends." At which point we both collapsed laughing, and I wrote down what I had said in order to post it later. It is a conversation we have had many times, too many to count. She will not move to California, and I will continue to try to convince her to do so. I am so glad for the times that I have with her.

Then we kept talking as I sorted through some boxes of old things, from high school and before. I found my collection of her letters, from summers she spent in Oregon and I at camp, and read them aloud to her. Then I found some pages ripped out of an old journal, from my sophomore year, and read some of the entries to her. Highlights: "Glennda is my best friend in the whole world. I can tell her almost anything." Then, from a later one, "Confession - I am totally and completely in love with [name]. No one knows. Not even Glennda." We laughed so hard over that. Apparently that was where the 'almost anything' came up. She was confused: "Really? I didn't know?" I am pretty sure she did not, until after I was over it. Or if she did, she never said anything, because she is just an awesome friend like that. It was good to laugh with her, and remember.

My day ended much better than it began. But I am still sad. Sometimes I dislike the complicated emotions that come from being human. Why can't I just only be sad about being away, or only be happy to spend time with my best friend? Well, that is likely enough for now. I have survived three weeks.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily