Message in a bottle

What do we do when the lights are too bright and the sirens are too loud?

We close our eyes and plug our ears.

I've stopped writing over the last 6 months because I think I've been the guy struggling so hard down that last mile of a marathon he doesn't realize his running shorts split 100 yards ago, and... well... let's just say he'll bring a whole new definition to "flopping across the finish line."

Yeah, suck that image in...

I love my job. College can be such a transformative time for someone primed for learning. It truly is the crossroads in many of our lives. And I feel like I'm the guy whose job it is to hand out maps and put up the "dead end" signs. It's so fulfilling and I'm damn good at it.

It has its ups and downs, just like any job. I have to be the creepy old guy living on campus... on purpose. But I do get really really cheap rent. Most of the people I know are 18. But then again I never have to look far for someone to play a wicked game of Wii.

Worst thing about living on campus? Having to hear from every asshole douche I meet "heh-heh... I bet you tag all those 18 year-old girls... heh-heh." "No, [ya schmuck], I aim for older chicks. They're more desperate and less clingy."

But the best part of my job is feeling that what I'm doing is important. If it was always easy, they wouldn't have to pay me. -Which they technically do.

But the last 6 months...

The Wednesday before the storm, our campus closed at 5pm and evacuated up to College Station for Hurricaine Ike. They needed a staff member to move up there so I, being the young, single, unattached one, volunteered. I was happy to. I would have been insulted if they would have let anyone else. It was really cool to go up to College Station with its sprawling campus and enormous staff, navigate the beaurocracy and hand out my dusty business cards and arrange meal plans for our students evacuated up there.

But after we made the full move and the storm hit, things changed. We had to move 1200+ students into an already saturated college town bursting at the seams from its own 48,000 students. We had to do things that had only been talked about in theory, much less ever attempted anywhere in the history of the world.

Dealing with limited resources varying in quality to a greater number of people with limited guidance is something to see. It's heartbreaking. I watched normally rational, giving and generous people turn into starving Hyenas fighting over a fresh carcass, gorging themselves while others go hungry. Heartbreaking.

While in College Station, I was daily: lied to, mislead, chewed out, yelled at, demeaned, forced to see every weakness exposed, corrected constantly (thank-God), shut off from family and friends and all with little thanks. It was pretty emotionally bruising.

On top of it all, friends and new family left and right had lost their homes, nearly all their posessions, and dealing with loss. And I was shut off. We were all working 12-14 hour days, 5-6 days a week because if we didn't, someone might go without a meal plan or a warm bed or internet access required for homework.

And I was cut off from them. I shut off my emotions. I couldn't let myself feel hurt because I didn't lose anything. Not really. How dare I complain about loss or stress when my home is fine and I didn't lose a thing when Mikey and Addrienne got 4 feet of water, lost the deck they had just christened two months earlier and had the roof of their kick-ass shop cave in? How dare I complain about stress when Will lost thousands -literally- THOUSANDS of comic books when his storage unit was flooded?

No. I sucked it up.

But anyone who has ever tried to hold it in when you have to pee knows that if you let it out even a little, the dam will break. So I held it in.

I plugged my ears and I shut my eyes.

We were all going on adrenaline, keeping our smiles on, living for anything that can cheer us up. Rejoicing at every small victory. But you can only go on adrenline for so long. Eventually you have to pay the piper.

And that, gentle readers, is where I'm at. I've found my leaping out of bed to go to work in the mornings has turned to hitting the "snooze" for an hour and a half. Things that would have never have gotten to me before all of a sudden require "state of the union" -type adresses.

I'm quicker to anger that's slower and slower to recede. I get frustrated at the smallest things and I find it easier and easier to justify to myself that skipping work is okay. Its getting harder and harder to invest in anyone new. And that's what I've always done best.

And, perhaps scariest of all, its been harder and harder for me to get deep with myself and contemplate my thoughts, motiviations and feelings. My self-awareness has been slipping because its been neglected; a muscle atrophied.

So I'm turning a leaf. I'm pushing on. I'm letting go.

Can anyone spare a dime? Because I definitely can use some change.

Things have got to change.