That's what I realized this weekend. I spent last weekend practically wallowing in all of my sins and personal faults (that lead to more sins, more often than not) to the extent that I actually WANTED to go home. I don't usually have a particular desire to visit my parents, not that I don't love my family, I am just incredibly happy at school and have a fantastic time living life with my friends. We laugh, we cry, we eat, we do homework, we sleep....mmm'kay, listing is over. But the last weekend of January was just so icky that I felt like I would never snap out of it, like I was in this pit and nothing could drag me out. So I prayed and cried and prayed and stared at the wall and prayed and called my mom. I tried to explain without crying (which, thankfully, is much easier over the phone) but she was worried enough to say, "You should come home this weekend" in that grave, I-am-your-mother-and-you-will-obey-me tone.
So I did. It was quite pleasant because I got to take the train(s). Two hours split between the El and Union Station doesn't sound to most like a pleasant way to spend the afternoon, but I always find public transportation to be a most fantastic place for "me time." Public transportation is designed in such a way as to make everyone participating in it suffiently awkward to the point where no one speaks to anyone else and occasionally I enjoy taking advantage of the uncomfortable silence. I know, it's not very Christ-like loving of me, but let's not dwell on that for the moment. I just got over the crappiest weekend that I've had at school for cryin' out loud!
Actually, I was feeling much better before I left for my parents' house on Friday, but that's not really all that important to the story. So there I was, at home, doing wonderful things like sledding--watching my father go down the hill on that tiny purple sled from when I was five was just about the greatest thing EVER--shopping, and just lazin' around watching movies, and I got to thinking about why I started on that nasty self-disdain kick.
To make a long story short, I was feeling immensly stressed because I looked ahead to the rest of my semester and saw a whirling mass of obligations and responsibilities that I wasn't sure I could or even had the desire to handle (I was so tempted to write "handel"). Then I began to wonder if I was happy with the way things are going for me, and that led to "Am I happy with myself?" which when one is in such a mood is always a terrible question to ask. If you are ever feeling horrible about your life, by all means do not ask yourself if you're happy with yourself. If it does not send you into a nasty bout of self-loathing, I commend you for either your ignorance or your nonchalance. But I digress...
I discovered something through all of this that is actually not as profound as I've led you to believe--I'm actually not that busy this semester. Yeah. I mean, sure, I'm taking ten classes (again) and I have my degree approval jury, a recital, four term papers, a composition, my job, etc., but I really don't have much to do. It sounds crazy to you but that's because did not experience my last semester. Oh......my.......gosh. Now that was crazy. And I thought this would be worse, but my workload truly is lighter because my Dialogue class (that crazy writing thing I was talking about) is a piece of cake and my music classes really don't require that much homework. So all I need to worry about is keeping my performance-related business together and I'll be fine. *sigh*
The point is, I got all worked up over nothing as usual, and I'm all better now. I really should just RELAX. If you remember to pray for me, pray for peace. As always...
Peace
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