Everyday Mutual Aid

by Lucy S.

I've felt fine today and yesterday, so I feel kind of stupid now for writing about my health problems in the last post.  I started taking hawthorn berries and motherwort, two herbs that some people swear by for instantly calming the racing heartbeat and some of the other symptoms of panic attacks.

One of the places I read about this was on Earth Clinic, a site I found some years ago and like because they aren't selling any products. I'm always heartened by some people's willingness to take the time to share things that might help other people, just because they want to contribute that bit of knowledge and experience to the rest of us. One time, my friend Amir said the toilet in his apartment stopped working and he couldn't get hold of the manager, so he went to buy a plunger but didn't know how to use it. He said he found a video on youtube with someone carefully demonstrating how to use a plunger. We talked about how we found it kind of touching that someone cared enough to put that out there.

That makes me think about when I was in a political science class on the struggle for democracy and citizenship. Our professor made the point that although capitalism elicits people's selfishness, we still see that propensity for mutual aid in people even in this kind of economic system, as evidenced by (at the time) people across the U.S. offering to take some of those displaced by Hurricane Katrina into their homes.


I have a student struggling to write an essay about the problem with a society that makes it seem as if we're born to want more and more money, born to pursue profit. She's grappling with something that is beyond her knowledge and ability in some ways, but she's trying. I talked with her for an hour and a half on Friday after class. We sat in the library (me trying to feel better from my attack that hit during class), and we talked about her paper topic and a lot of stuff.

She's losing her eyesight, so I've been trying to learn more about her writing process and how to help her make the transition to writing without being able to see the paragraphs on the page. If she makes the words huge, she can see them, but only a few at a time. I told her that I've been thinking about this and had talked with the writing center director to get more ideas. I said that I'm such a visual learner in the sense of seeing the words on the page and writing based on that. She said she is, too, and that this is a real challenge.

I can't say it was work talking with her. I so enjoyed our conversation. She's one of my favorite students. She speaks up in class without seeming to worry about what other students think. Fearless, she seems.

She was telling me that she struggles thinking about how to think about suffering when there is even worse suffering. I talked about my thoughts on that, the problems with making suffering too comparative, although we can't help sometimes making certain comparisons. But if we make it too comparative, I said, the logic can keep us from trying to alleviate injustice and suffering before it slides down further to get even worse. And also, human feelings can't all be quantified and weighted against each other. She said this made sense to her. I like her impulse, though, in the way she applies it -- this serious concern with profound suffering and a desire to make people who have so much pay attention to something more than their own situation.

She says she can't stand to have people expressing pity for her, saying, "Awww.... you poor thing...." Things like that. Last semester she told me that in high school, she and her best friend used to tether themselves together so they could run track, and people would come up to the friend (right in front of Rachael, my student) and say, "Oh... That's so awesome of you to help your little blind friend!"  And Rachael would tell her best friend, "No  it's not!  Don't get a big head over that as if you're so noble!" And similar stuff. I laughed when she told me that.  We laugh about a lot of things.

This too is teaching, I guess, or maybe it's just being a human being and talking to the people around us wherever we happen to be. I sure appreciated just sitting there talking and laughing on Friday after feeling so awful in class.

Almost Midterm

by Lucy S.

I don't know what all I'm struggling with right now. Physical symptoms scare me at times. Inundated as I am, as most of us are, with so much information on potential health disasters, I think at times: "What if it's a stroke coming on? What if it's a brain tumor? A heart attack?" What the hell is this problem that's been gradually worsening over the past four years?  Are they just anxiety attacks?  I keep hoping that's all they are. It hit me today on my way to class, lifted a bit on the walk from the parking ramp to the building, and then intensified while I was in class. I wasn't particularly nervous. If anything, it's more a feeling of sinking down, a weird sense of doom. I was terrified I'd stop making sense or not be able to carry on a conversation to keep the class moving. Or even worse: end up lying on the floor.

At times I feel sorry for myself and whine and plead and wail inside my mind at the universe. Why, after getting through undergrad and grad school, and now being able to teach - why is my body failing me? I always thought I could just count on this body, at least for a lot longer. How can I do the things I want to do if this happens?

At its worst, this thing has made me fall - hit the wall on the way down and then the floor, out cold. Other times, I've lain down on the ground or floor quickly enough to stave off any fall, but ended up stuck down there for hours. Cold attacks come with it sometimes. I shake violently then.

Oh, but I hate it all. I just want it gone. I have so much that I want to DO. So much that I care about.

And who is to say that my body IS failing me? Maybe this is minor. A woman I respect so much, another adjunct, who has been teaching for thirty years where I teach - who is teaching two classes on prison literature this semester, trying to care for her husband who just had surgery... she is in her late 60s or so, and SHE is doing all this.


I'm teaching, of course. I think - hope - that the class is going well, although I get scared at times that I'm not doing well enough.  I'm also working on getting a union for adjuncts at my institution. I've been emailing people, meeting with people individually, meeting with the national organizer... I struggle at times trying to know how to do all this in a way that's true to what I believe in.

I'm so worn down this week, and sometimes on other weeks. When I have to respond to student drafts, that takes me so much longer than it should. I think about the draft, think about readings I might refer them to. I take an hour or more responding to each draft, which is fine, but it sometimes adds up to too many hours in a short time because i have to get them back to the students so quickly.

I feel like I can't write. I feel dull, sort of scrubbed down, no sheen. I am only writing now to at least try to force myself to write SOMEthing on my blog.

I can't wait for spring break - week after next.

Thinking again about a passage by Audre Lorde from Burst of Light:

I had to examine in my dreams as well as in my immune function tests the devastating effects of overextension.  Overextending myself is not stretching myself.  I had to accept how difficult it is to monitor the difference.  Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

Trying to understand how to know when I'm caring for myself and when I'm indulging myself. Crawling toward midterm, feeling like I have no good reason to be feeling this way.