“I Return to You Now At The Turn of the Tide”

“and their coming was like the falling of small stones that starts an avalanche in the mountains.  Even as we talk here, I hear the first rumblings.”  -Gandalf the White, in The Two Towers (the novel, not the movie.)

“To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.”  -Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Having chosen our course, without guile and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear and with manly hearts.” –Abraham Lincoln

I am climbing out.  I can see the light on the other side of the tunnel.  I’ve got a long ways to go before I get there, but the darkness and stumbling around has passed.

I still feel like I’m being chased.  I still have a lot of work to do.  I still have to concentrate on sleeping at the right times.  But I will survive this.  There are a number of old sayings that talk about when it gets the darkest, and those cliches avail little when there is no light, and you stumble in darkness.  For a brief moment, when you see your way clear through the travail, they are wisdom.  After that moment has passed, they are foolishness.  Such is life.  And my life now is proof.  Sometime yesterday, the storm passed.  I’m not sure when exactly, and I’m not sure how or why.  But I know that it did.  I’m not sure if I’d taken the last in number of blows and I’ve reached the bell to give me a break until the next round, or what.  But I’m remustering the troops, that much I can tell you for sure.

The first shot was fired sometime yesterday, quietly.  Today the artillery started.  I got a coherent plan together for how I’m going to get through this week.  And it’s how stuff is going to go.  I have my list of things for next week compiled.  It’s ready, and so am I.  I know what I have to do, and the order in which it must be done.  I’ve switched over to desperation mode–a move that was long overdue.  I kept trying to convince myself that the problem was with me, and that things were normal, ignoring the plain facts, as though somehow this was only my fault.  The plain fact is, life happened, and I’m going to pick the most important thing, and take it as it comes.  Damage control works like that.  You clean the biggest mess first, and only then do you take the time to clean the next biggest.  My focus is back. 

The second shot was unexpected.  I got my Greek midterm back.  Everyone in my class felt the same way I did after the test last week–kind of hopeless and resigned to a C.  We showed up tonight, and they weren’t graded, but the ones we got wrong were marked wrong, so we know how many wrong we had.  She told us the total number possible.  I checked my test, and with my basic math skills, I estimate something between an 85%-90%, way better than I thought.  Last week, that test was part of what threw me into the tailspin.  I’d devoted so much time to it…to feel the way I felt coming out of the test…well, it didn’t help things any.  It’s like feeling like you’ve been shot, and then looking down and realizing that the shot missed you.  It’s a rush.  The rush will wear off by tomorrow, but lemme tell ya, I feel 100% better than I felt Saturday.  And it’s about time.  Consider this a testimony to the power of keeping on.  Now, on with the work.