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How Are You? The Vulnerable Truth

25 Friday Oct 2013

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Dear Friend,

I admire vulnerability. I have noticed throughout my limited years of experience, that honesty is one of the most refreshing sounds a person can hear. People often wear masks as they walk around and see people in everyday life, these masks are seen in the  everyday greetings we say to one another “How are you?” Good, You?” “Good” … It has become a reflex rather than a response to almost everyone in the world. It’s a response I give only to immediately wonder to myself, why did I say that? So today, I’m going to try and answer the question “How are you?”  (aka. me complaining about life and hopefully figuring something out by the end of it)

I’d like to start by acknowledging that this is hard for me to do… I frequently hear about other people’s frustrations and/or struggles, but very rarely talk about my own to anyone other than myself (I’m an introvert, talking to myself is practically mandatory) and I don’t like to admit to needing help. But it needs to be done, partly because it really isn’t fair to you to share your own lives and struggles with me, but not hear my own, but also because this is weighing on me and I’m seeking your help. However in trying to rationalize how I even came to be in this mess it is possible that I am being overly biased towards myself in some areas and believe myself to be doing more than I actually am… this is not purposeful, but I doubt it can be avoided.

(Note: the beginning of this ended up being a bunch of school related frustrations and rantings and was mostly for my own benefit… not that all of this isn’t for my own benefit… but if you’d like, you can skip to the last two paragraphs which are better at summarizing what I’m trying to say.)

I have no idea how I’m doing in any of my classes, but I suspect that I am on the verge of/if not already failing several of them. I feel as though I have fallen headlong into a pit and trying to stay afloat is taking all of my energy. It’s overwhelming. I want to LEARN, but feel as though the time it takes for me to take in and process information is forcing me to attempt to bullshit my way through this semester in a desire to accomplish the tasks and assignments that have been laid before me… but I don’t “do” bullshit. I don’t half-ass things because it will cut down on time, I do things the right way the first time. If I’m trying to answer a question I use the knowledge I have, to answer it to the best of my ability. If I’m trying to complete an assignment, I try to understand the purpose behind the assignment and then work to complete the assignment in the way in which I will most gain whatever it appears that the assignment is an effort to give me. I think this is why teachers have always liked me. It’s not because I’m a good student and get good grades, because I’m not and I don’t… in fact I’ve, on occasion, decided the fact that the education system is a bunch of crap designed for people who can and are willing to bullshit mundane tasks in order to “prove” that they’ve learned something they haven’t taken the time to learn/understand/appreciate and I could never get my gpa up to 3.0 nevermind a  4.0… it’s because I want to learn and I go to class and pay attention, not including Intro to Politics last Year, which I passed with flying colors because it was the most useless class I have ever taken (literally, ask ANYONE else who took that class with me). Anyways I’m getting way off topic… I want to LEARN, I AM learning, but I’m on the brink of burn out. (Burn Out is a social work term referring to when a social worker uses poor self-care skills or undergoes high levels of stress that impacts their ability to be effective or even continue being a social worker.) The weird thing is, I don’t know how it happened. Last semester was tough, I slept a maximum of 7 hours (per night), but usually 4-5, for over 2 months to keep up with school work. I knew I wasn’t taking care of myself, but I told myself that it was just one semester and I’d recover over the summer. It was only when my body began to respond negatively that I started showing a bit more restraint. I thought I had scheduled this semester to be easier… but it is so much worse.

I feel like a failure. I do not fit into this educational system, but I’m trying. I have had not one, but two profs ask me if I’m doing alright, and yet if you asked them right now how I was doing, they would probably both say that they’ve been worried about me, but think I’ll be alright… the thing is, I don’t know if I’ll be alright. To some extent, I am afraid that I’ve ruined myself. I pushed myself so hard last semester that when, after a mere three weeks, I started to realize that this semester would be  just as busy as last semester, my body responded to the crisis situation that it recognized in the distance. My body knew how I would respond to heavy loads of writing assignments and responded before these assignments even began to pile up, in fact I think I had everything turned in that I had been assigned (so far). It was like I woke up one morning and was on high alert. That next week, I lost my car key (only the one key… not the rest on the same key chain, which should have been impossible to accomplish right?), locked myself out of my apartment, “Lost” my wallet (not really, I was just so stressed that I couldn’t find it, even when I searched the place where I found it a day later), and homework assignments began to move towards the back of my mind… I had moved to survival mode.

In my Social Work Practice II course we did a crisis unit in which we learned that crisis is extremely time limited… I understood this to mean that to some extent our bodies are incapable of sustaining the crisis response long-term so they stop feeling the response even if the stressors remain. (Note: this is how I interpreted what we learned regarding crisis being short-term, but I assume that there are other ways of understanding and explaining it, not that one way is necessarily “correct” but in this case, use this description) I have found this true over the last several weeks I spent that single week feeling completely overwhelmed, and then I felt normal even though my life was in fact more stressful rather than less… and have since then had only smaller bits of feeling overwhelmed. What I suspect, and fear, is that this is like hypothermia. The body shivers in an attempt to keep itself warm until the shivering wears out the body and it is too tired to shiver so it stops… My body has been sending me the “extreme stress” signals it sent me near the end of last semester, despite my treating my body better than last semester (in more than one way) but I can feel myself being worn down. Not from myself this time, but by the stress itself. In other words, the fact that my body is trying to tell me I’m stressed is what initially caused my stress, and to some degree keeping me from successfully using my coping mechanisms. To continue the hypothermia analogy, it would be as though I was standing inside the closed entrance to a warm house preparing to go outside, and my body began shivering before I even opened the door simply because it knew that I was about to be cold. Then, when I actually go outside, my body has already been shivering so it has less energy to fight the cold, now that the cold actually exists and it succumbs to the cold sooner after leaving the house than it would have otherwise.  To sum this really weird explanation up, I think my body’s attempt to keep a bad situation from happening has only increased the severity of this semesters impact on me.

But it’s not just about school. I’ve been very removed this semester, TOO removed. I might be an introvert, but I need people to stay sane and have spent almost no time with the people I care about this semester. My sister (aka. crazy best friend/cohort) is in South Africa doing cool things for the year (she left the week school began) and I have had my first real contact with her since she left only this week. I have seen my outrageously hilarious, beautiful, and delightful roommates/neighboring suite-mates from last year a grand total of 2 times since the beginning of the semester, and other friends (equally delightful) even less (Not including a select few locals who I have had the pleasure of walking to my car with on several occasions) because I just don’t have the energy to set aside time, not to mention that a bunch of them are overseas. I feel ALONE. However, I work 15 hours a week and wouldn’t give it up for the best grades in the world (everything else the same) because it’s the only real social time I get this semester… and I LOVE the people I work with. In fact, work is the only time when I can answer “How are you?” with “Good” and it’s honest, because when I’m there… I actually AM doing well. But I don’t want to be working in the dining room at Chick-fil-a for the rest of my life, I want to be more than that. And that’s where you come in…

I’m falling apart over here, but I don’t know what it will take for me to keep all of my pieces together… I’m gonna need some help. I’m going to need hugs (lots of them) and for people to force me to make time for them (because as unhelpful as that might sound for a struggling student, I NEED more people). I need people to say, “Let’s get coffee” (just to talk about relationships and other lighthearted things) or “Come on over, study with me…” not to even talk, just to be a presence. And I’m going to need a lot of patience. (That last one is mostly from my profs who have to deal with my inability to not only understand what a good lit review is but how to put an example (of my own making) on paper (seriously… I am struggling with these so badly).) But mostly I just need some reassurance that even if I can’t find a good balance in this semester, I’ll be able to come back next fall, pick up the pieces, and keep on going. I’m hoping that those hugs I mentioned hold the secret.

Lots of Love and Bunches of Hope, Mandi Jo

P.S. If you do come give me a hug, you can probably expect some tears… that’s just who I am.

Spring Break…

15 Friday Mar 2013

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Dear Friend,

As you know, I was in a bit of a panic before break, I had piles of things to do, and a multitude of things to think about. Spring Break became not only a literal removal of myself from the chaos, but a mental one as well. You see I purposefully did not bring any homework along with me, I left my computer locked away in my dorm room, and I took off on my trip with a bunch of people with a plan to focus on working with MDS, and nothing else.  (In case you don’t know, MDS stands for Mennonite Disaster Service and does relief work throughout the United States and Canada.) Originally, our group was planning on leaving Friday night at midnight, and driving through Saturday and into Sunday, towards Joplin Missouri for tornado clean-up. However, on Thursday, we learned the MDS had shut down the MDS sites in Missouri due to snow, warm days in the weather forecast, and the ensuing mud bath that would inevitably come along with that. So we were sent to Far Rockaway New York to work on Hurricane Sandy work instead. This change was quickly welcomed by us, especially since it meant a LOT less time in the car, and we were excited to be so close to New York City (Far Rockaway is on the eastern most island in the group of islands that make-up and surround NYC.

First of all, this was much better as far as my sleep schedule goes. I had given up several hours of sleep that week to finish homework, and leaving at midnight that Friday would not have, by any means, been very healthy for me. In fact, we didn’t leave until Sunday morning, which allowed for me to go to EMHS’ Soup and Arts Fest, which is this wonderful experience where you look at all of the students artwork (grades k-12), eat from the delicious soup buffet (all donated from various H-burg restaurants), listen to various music groups, and finish it off with a scrumptious piece of Mrs. Bender’s peanut butter pie (There are other dessert options, baklava, red velvet cake balls, key lime pie squares, etc. but none of them compare to the peanut butter pie) Then, after Soup and Arts Fest, my family headed out to Broadway’s Plan B to attend the concert of the best Tuvan Throat Singing group in the world, Alash. We love them, but I will admit, that while I love hearing them live, the cd I have just do them justice so I don’t really like it, that being said, you should stop by and take a listen sometime…

Anywhoo, so on Sunday morning we packed up into vans and headed off on our short (ok, 6 hour) drive up to the city. When we got there we had a quick orientation and pizza dinner before heading off to bed and settling into the week’s routine. Every morning we woke up at 6am (please note: I am a night owl… I hate mornings) and met up in the dining hall/food pantry/office by 6:30 to pack our lunch for the day and then, as soon as everyone was done with that, we would eat a breakfast of fruit (my favorite), toast, and other yummy delights. After breakfast, we would be led in a time of singing and devotions before heading out to our work sites (by 8am). My work site was in a basement apartment, about 50 ft from the boardwalk lining the Atlantic coast… it was beautiful. Throughout the week my group did some drywall finishing, sanding, priming, and painting (in fact, we finished all of that!!!) some of the “old folk” in our group also put in doors, trimmed windows, and put in kitchen cabinets! We would often take a break at 10:30ish, and then again at 2:30ish for snack and a moment of respite (arms feel much heavier when they’ve been above your head for several hours…). When it was warm enough Jon, Carissa and I would sit on the boardwalk to eat our lunch. The first time we did this, the seagulls attempted to lay siege and eat all of our food, but weren’t too bad later on in the week. On about Wednesday, construction workers began to tear up what was remaining of the boardwalk so that it could be redone (most of it was torn away in the storm)… so we would go around them to be on the beach. After our days work was completed, we would head back to camp (we’d always be back by 5pm). The crew leaders would have a meeting with the project director from 5-5:30 and supper was served at 6pm. After supper (always quite delicious) someone from each crew shared about their group’s activities for the day. After dinner we would play games and just hang out until we headed of to bed (often around 10pm).

Some irregularities in the week: On Wednesday, Jon and I went shopping at Lowe’s with the Project director, Harold, before meeting up with the rest of our crew, I then drove around with Rody (pronounced with an “oo” sound, the spelling confused me too), our crew leader, to retrieve a table saw, a shop vac, and nails for the nail gun. All in all, I didn’t get to help out at the house at all that morning. Then, on Thursday several things happened. First, we had a house owner eat dinner with us and then share his story. It was amazing to hear him tell us about how quickly the water rose, and yet how quickly it disappeared (leaving destruction in it’s wake)… A bit later in the evening, we held a variety show including almost everyone in camp. A bunch of the girls sang “cups”, my crew group whistled “Come Thou Fount”  while I sang, The boy’s cabin sang T-Swift’s “You Belong With Me”, Our house owner guest told us the story of how he met his late wife, we were indulged in a beautiful song about MDS from Harold, Sandra, and Lena Mae, we also heard animal noises from MDS director Kevin, watched the “Not-So-Newlywed Game” created by Bethany and Savanna, and ended as we had to watch as Andrew wiped Peanut Butter over all sorts of people in a mock-infomercial that ended in someone licking peanut butter out of another person’s armpit (names not mentioned, because that’s just too gross to go too public). Friday was much less disgusting, and ended with our home owner taking pictures with us and giving us all hugs, I didn’t have the opportunity to spend much time talking to her, but I could see just how grateful she was to have us there, and I’m grateful for the opportunity I had to do what I could to help. That night, we took off immediately after dinner to head on into the city. I didn’t realize it at first, but I was one of only 2-3 people who had actually been in NYC before, and this is out of the 11 of us who went! It runs out that this was beneficial for me because, despite having a buddy system going on, the group left me at M&M World. You see I wanted to get a bag of brown peanut M&M’s (because I prefer the brown ones) so I filled up my bag from the large bulk dispensers along the wall, and Jia saw that I had a bag of M&M’s and assumed that I had already paid for them, actually I was just passing the group on my way to pay for them, and as I waited in line… the group took off. They didn’t realize I wasn’t with them, but I knew they had left the second I turned around after paying for my brown peanut goodness, so I called/texted to check in and at first they didn’t respond… I decided to call once more, but wasn’t too worried because I knew 2 things (A) If I absolutely had to, I could get myself back on my own, this was the benefit of having been the NYC before, and just the pure fact that I’m really good at public transportation, directions, figuring out where I am, etc (B) I also knew that eventually, if I stayed there long enough, the group would figure out that I was missing, realize they hadn’t seen me since the M&M store and either come back, or call. So I made one more call and it was answered with “We are SO sorry…” now, I didn’t think it was all that bad, but that’s just me. Andrew, Jon, and Jia left the rest of the group to retrieve me, and then we walked to Central Park to meet up with the rest of the group… Central Park was beautiful, especially when we saw a white crane gliding over the pond. Then, Saturday morning before we headed home, we drove to the beach where a bunch of crazy people from our group ran and jumped into the water (I should point out that there was some SNOW on the ground).

There really is no way to explain how amazing the week was. I feel like I’ve known the people in the group so much longer than a week. We were like a little mini family that week, and it was so much fun. They’ve seen me at 6 in the morning, when I’m not even awake and am just sleep walking on autopilot! We’ve laid on the beach basking in the sun together, celebrated birthdays, and had a snowball fight…er fights. We played pranks on each other, told ridiculous bedtime stories, and sang distorted versions of “You Are My Sunshine” to each other. I wish it wouldn’t have ended…

To see a bit about the Far Rockaway MDS site visit: http://mds.mennonite.net/projects/farrockawayny/

Love, Mandi Jo

In The Freak Out Zone

28 Thursday Feb 2013

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Dear Friend,

We have officially reached and are beginning to drown in what I like to call the “Freak Out Zone.” It’s the last week, the last DAYS before Spring break, and all of the professors are trying to squeeze in  everything they can before we take off. Who knows, maybe the do it so that the break feels like more of a break, but seriously people, are you trying to kill us?

To sum up my week let me just give you this list of things I have/had on my To-Do list this week:

  • 29 pages to write (this is a grand total from all of the papers I have to write, and 8 of those are single spaced, so lets readjust the number to a more accurate- 37)
  • 3 books to read
  • 5 Chapters (from text books) to be read
  • 3 phone calls of unknown length and to separate people, on separate topics
  • 8 Calculus problems
  • 5 email conversations to keep up with
  • 1 apartment to visit
  • 3 people to get in contact with
  • 5,000,000,000 things to think about!
  • 1 more day to get it all done… ROH!

To be honest, I don’t know how I’m awake right now, or why I’m spending my precious time writing this, but perhaps I just need to get it off my chest that I feel OVERWHELMED!!! and there really is no explanation for the sleep thing except to say that it’s pure adrenaline at this point. Speaking of which, I need to make sure I get a decent nights sleep tonight because tomorrow night, I’m headed to Joplin! I could seriously cut back on the workload this week if I didn’t have plans for spring break, because the main issue I’m struggling with is that fact that I have rough draft due the day after we get back from break, and I have no desire/plan/ability to work on it over break, so it must be completed before.

Speaking of Joplin, I am so excited to work with MDS in Joplin with a Y-Trip group from EMU. I’m excited to work hard, do what I can to be of service, to learn from the people we will be working with, and get to know some new EMUers! In fact, the main reason I decided to go on a Y-Trip this year was because I was starting to notice that I spend all of my time with the same 6-9 people, and I love them, but I want to know other people too! I also look forward to being able to work with Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) as an actual participant. I remember when we, as a family, went to Reading, CA to work with MDS, but Lydia and I were too young to participate. As a youngster, i was more than happy to spend my days having fun in the sun, but now wish I could say that I actually DID something.

Anywhoo, I dont’ have any more moments to spare… not even as re-energizing study breaks. have a Great Break!

Love, Mandi Jo