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.