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Tired

I'm the faculty sponsor of my school's International Club, and we have been working on our big fundraiser for the last month. Homecoming carnations.

This pretty much just means that I haven't had lunch in two weeks. Instead I oversee teenagers in my classroom making notecards, attaching ribbon to notecards, sorting notecards, and collecting money.

We spend 2 1/2 hours this afternoon attaching notecards to the flowers and sorting them for tomorrow afternoon's delivery. Folks, it's almost done.

And I cannot wait.

I drove home tonight in the dark, and drove right past my street. I didn't realize what I did until I was at the light a few miles down the road. That's when it dawned on me that everything about the afternoon was a complete blur.

I have an incredible ability to tune out the world. All on my own. I've been like this since I was a kid, and it comes in handy sometimes. Like this afternoon. Sometimes it's a hindrance. Like the past few weeks. Often it's downright scary. Like when I'm driving. My therapist spent a LOT of time discussing this tendency to shut out everything.

The problem with shutting out the world is that it eventually catches up. I currently have an overwhelming urge to rent a hotel room and sleep until I can no longer keep my eyes shut. Then I want to sit alone and let the waves of repressed emotion and ideas and pain and joy and fear flood my spirit.

Just the thought of that perks me up.

Comments

Christy said…
I know just what you're talking about. I'm currently ignoring the world too. And I'm longing for a weekend by myself to process things and dump it all out by writing. I call it squeezing out the pus. I know that's gross, but it makes sense to me. It never goes away, but once I get some of it out, it feels loads better for a while.

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