Reality Check

I have been laying in bed all day trying to figure out a way to appropriately describe how I am feeling--which I am not sure has been much of a success--without sounding like I am complaining or being negative.

Last night I was reminded just how precious and absolutely unpredictable life is, at the expense of what little sanity I have left.

In my life I have never been shown otherwise. If it is not one thing that tells me to drop all my trivial worries and miniscule problems, it is something else. If you remember the incident with my cousin last year April, it still weighs on my head. Every now and then I realise that he truly is not around anymore for no other reason than the simple fact that his mental disability was overlooked and ill-treated. Though I am grateful he is alive and healthy, it still drives me up the wall knowing he will be locked away until someone with some kind of sense realises he does not belong there.

As for what happened last night, one of my good friends--who I don't see nearly enough these days--has a younger sister who passed out and suffered a seizure. She was just going about her day as we all do, and the next thing she new she was in a hospital bed.

They did an MRI this morning to figure out the cause and found a benign tumour in her head that needs to come out or it will continue to induce seizures. I can't imagine someone younger than me lying in a hospital bed knowing that in a few hours Doctors are going to cut my head open. It makes me weak just thinking about it.

Can you imagine?

One day you wake up and everything is fine, and the next day you don't. You could be as strong as an ox and as healthy as ever one minute, and the next you lose feeling in your legs, get brain damage, go blind, or discover you have cancer.

These things happen to the best of us, the worst of us, and those in between. Most times it hits us by such surprise that we don't know whether to cry, scream or go back to sleep and hope it was all just a dream. It is because of this why I have never been the type of person to hold a grudge or bad feelings toward anyone who was once a part of my life. Not only is it a perfect waste of happiness, it is also a waste of time. Nothing hurts more than to find out someone you share memories with is no longer alive and you did not get the opportunity to tell them you are sorry. By then the problem you had seems so insignificant and you feel nothing short of completely regretful and absolutely ridiculous for making it ruin your relationship in the first place.

I learned years ago not to wait until it is too late. Granted, we never know when it will be, so that just means you shouldn't take too much time to realise that pride has no place in matters of the heart.

My biggest problem now is that I am all the way over here.

In times like these I have no problem getting rid of all rationality and booking the next flight out so I can be right there in the hospital. I'd be completely willing to skip all three of my classes tomorrow and spend the little money I have to do that. With a mother like mine, though, that all seems ludicrous. As usual, it is always about money and budgets and thinking with your brain. But "money" and rationality don't belong in times of an emergency. That is how I know I need to be successful and well-paid, so that when necessary I can book that flight before it is too late and I spend my life regretting it.

If I had one dollar left I would spend that one dollar to go and be there for my friend and her family. Money comes and goes. Always.

I just want to be there for them. Literally. Because that is what my heart and mind are telling me to do. My teachers will understand; and if my grades suffer, so be it. What difference does it make if I stay here and can't concentrate anyway?

On a regular day in this city I lose my mind. Now, when something bigger is happening than petty drama and nonsense, I just feel like a walking zombie who is going to pass out at any minute. I almost had a heart attack during spinning today and I'm not sure if that is due to the fact that I couldn't focus, or that I am so terribly out of shape. (I'm thinking it is both.) But from right here in my lonely room, I feel completely useless.

Sometimes words are just not enough.