October 30, 2013

A Plate Full of Food

When I left off in the last post I was a glowing ball of optimism having made it through my first year of college.  Fall quarter tore me down faster than my cat could finish a plate of canned cat food but I built myself back up into more of the person I want to be.  I know I will never live up to my own standards, though, so the best I can do is be the best me I can be.  I'll start by trying to edit out these tacky sentences... maybe not.

To rewind the tape a little bit, Spring quarter went as well as any 18 credit quarter can.  Serendipity got me into two of the classes and helped me decide what I (maybe) want to do with my life.  When I registered for spring quarter I was already looking ahead to summer quarter, specifically, a class on J.R.R. Tolkien's imaginary languages.  Not wanting to miss an opportunity to geek out and get three credits for doing so, I based my spring schedule around fulfilling the unnecessary prerequisites for the Tolkien class.  I say unnecessary because I could have just asked for an instructor override, but taking the prereq class sounded like a good idea, you know, just to make sure.  Poor research on my part led me to believe that the Tolkien class was a linguistics class with a linguistics class prereq.  I later learned -- thankfully before registration -- that it was being offered through the Eurasian Studies department and therefore had one of two Eurasian Studies classes as a prereq.  So, naturally, as any person wanting to take a class on Tolkien's imaginary languages should, I signed up for "Intro to Russian Civilization."  The linguistics class I originally thought was the prereq still fit into my schedule, though, so I signed up for that as well. Then I got to thinking... Linguistics is cool.  Majoring just in Computer Science doesn't sound stressful enough. What if I double majored?  That's not enough, though! Oh no!  I've always wanted to take some formal classes on Creative Writing so I'm not just some blubbering idiot talking to himself on the internet! Triple major? Heck yeah!  Computer Science, Linguistics, and Creative Writing!  It'll be great!  I can be the modern Tolkien! ...

No.

I've contented myself with a double major in Computer Science and Linguistics.  The linguistics and computer science classes I took were full of interesting material but the professors' inability to teach made things slightly less interesting -- unless you count that one time my linguistics prof left his lecture-microphone on when he went to the bathroom.  Glorious moments of awkward hilarity aside, the Russian Civ class and my honors class -- a study of the Dominican Republic -- were the highlights of spring quarter.  It was nice for a change not to be studying the Greeks or the Romans and actually learn something about a culture that I haven't known since the fifth grade.

As great as spring quarter was, it ended with a plate full of food and a piteous moan.  The week before finals I got a text from home letting me know my cat wasn't eating or drinking.  It's just a little blockage in her system.  It'll pass through by the time finals are over.  At least that's what I kept telling myself so I could make it through my finals without rushing home once a day to make sure nothing had happened.  After finals were over, after staring in amazement at all the crap that had accumulated in my 183 square foot dorm room, after hauling it all down six flights of stairs and after somehow managing to make it all fit in the same car that brought a considerably less amount of crap nine and a half months ago, I sat anxiously in the passenger seat of the car not knowing what to expect when I got home.

I still hadn't gotten over the pangs of sudden emptiness that hit me every time I thought about my grandfather no longer being alive.  I didn't want to lose the cat that had been such a large -- and I mean morbidly obese, large -- part my life for the past fourteen years; the cat whose every purr sounded like the soft hum of a motor boat on the other side of the lake,  rushing to shore before the rain started to come down; the cat that in those early years (before she became old and cranky) would lick my ear -- inside and out -- until I squirmed away from her; the cat that I named "Frisky" but turned out to be not so frisky unless it was to make her escape and thunder her way back to one of her favorite hiding spots; the cat that had been with me through sickness and health, three moves and a divorce, the good days and the bad.  And now -- at the end of a long school year -- I was faced with the prospect of losing her.

When I got home she was definitely thinner but beyond that she seemed almost herself, that is, arthritic and reclusive.  Between unpacking and organizing my crap then repacking some of it for a trip to Seattle for my brother's college graduation I had very little time to find out what was actually going on with Frisky.  I went to bed each night not knowing.  In the morning, even before I cleared the sleep from my eyes, I'd go into the next room and check under the bed where she liked to lie.  She drank very little and ate even less but hung in there, leaving me with a choice.  Though choices are never as simple as we make them out to be, my choice boiled down to either believing she was in enough discomfort to justify putting her to sleep or leaving her with a bowl of water and a bowl of food and hope that when I got home in two days the house didn't smell bad.  I chose the latter, clinging to the hope that she'd get better.

I left not knowing if when I got back my cat would still be alive.  She was; my grandfather wasn't.  My Grandpa Benson had been unwell for many months and his condition had worsened in the weeks leading up to my brother's graduation so we knew it was only a matter of time before the long, hard-fought battle with cancer and Alzheimer's ended.  Perhaps it was because we knew it was close to the end or perhaps because I lost my other grandfather not seven months prior, but in that crowded, noisy restaurant where it's hard for my mom to hear her cell phone go off, I knew from the moment I saw my sister's eyes -- unblinking, fixed -- on our mother, that something had happened.  My sister's white-knuckled index finger bending upward two times, beckoning towards fresh air, was merely confirmation.

I don't know if it was because I had already been through it once and became a stronger person or because I didn't have the stress of school looming over me or a combination of both and then some, but I never once cried for my maternal grandfather the way I cried for my paternal grandfather; I tell myself it wasn't for lack of love -- I loved them both equally as much -- but it certainly wasn't for lack of tears.  After getting home and finding Frisky still alive but the bowl of food as full as when I left, I was yet again faced with a decision.  I'd be leaving again in two days, this time for a five day trip to Minnesota so that I could spend time with my grandmother before I had to be back at school for summer classes.  Still clinging to the hope that Frisky could get better, I took her to the vet.  She hated car rides, trips to the vet, and anywhere unfamiliar to her, yet I wanted to put her through all three for a hope as thin as she'd become.

The vet said he couldn't be absolutely sure of anything without a $100 x-ray but said there was likely a blockage -- possibly a tumor -- that had obstructed Frisky's digestive system.  Not wanting to spend $100 to know for sure, $150 on an operation if it was just a blockage and my last hope if it was a tumor, I left the veterinary clinic with a terrified cat and a nagging conscience.  So later that same day I put Frisky through two more car rides to get her a $73 shot of steroids they said might clear the blockage.

That night, she drank quite a bit and even ate a little food.  As I sat on the bed petting her, listening to her purr as loudly as she ever had, I was hopeful she would make a full recovery.

The next morning -- the morning of the day before I left for Minnesota -- I didn't go in and check on her first thing, as I'd done all the previous week.  Instead, I ate a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats and even brushed my teeth afterwards.  When I finally went to check on her I found her lying crumpled up on her side, out from under the bed -- away from her favorite spot.  She was still breathing but nothing in all the world could have prepared me for what happened next...

By 1:20 that afternoon, she was gone.

A lot happened between when I found her and 1:20.  After a great deal of muffled sobs so my suite mate wouldn't hear, I finally got it all typed out but then transferred it to a separate Word document.  I may share the details one day, but not today.  It still hurts too much.

After wrapping her diminished, limp form in a fresh towel, it was time to take her for one last car ride to the Veterinary Clinic I know she would have hated.

Was it the multiple stressful car rides to the Veterinary clinic? Was it the shot of steroids?  Could it have been prevented if I hadn't done what I did?  These are the questions that filled my mind on the car ride home and several hours afterward.  The only answer that'll keep me sane is, "things happened the way they were supposed to happen."  All her adult life I jokingly complained about how it sounded like a herd of elephants every time she galloped down the hallway.  Well, she finally went on that diet I'd been talking about for the last ten years and I think it was all that reserve fat that kept her alive as long as she was.  Had she been any thinner to start with, she very well could have passed away while I was still at school or while I was away for my brother's graduation.  She didn't.  Whether it was what I did in an attempt to save her that killed her, I don't know for sure, but what would I have done if she hadn't died?  Could I have left her alone for five days while I was away in Minnesota?  No.  And I don't know if I would have felt better or worse if I had taken her to the vet to be put to sleep but it doesn't really matter because everything happened the way it was supposed to happen.

The only guilt I feel is that I cried so much (and still do, apparently) for Frisky -- a cat -- when I haven't shed much more than a few tears for my grandfather -- the man that taught me to hunt and where to find the best fishing, the host of the best Fourth of July weekend I've ever had and probably will ever have, the farmer that taught me there's so much more to life than a lucrative harvest and new toys or clothes.  Life is playing with the old, faded toys your mom played with when she was a kid; it's hard work and dirt on your torn jeans; it's doing what you love with a dog (or cat) at your side; it's making popcorn balls on New Year's Eve; it's a plate full of homegrown corn on the cob and tomatoes sprinkled with sugar; it's family; it's flying the airplane you built through silver, opaque, occasionally turbulent clouds until you could touch the sun but then coming back down for a landing because that's where all the memories are.





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Once again, I wrote far more than I thought I would.  I promise next week's post will be happier.  I just have to slog through some of this emotion-y stuff before I can start writing about topics that are a bit more fun.  Unfortunately I don't have a sonnet for this post but expect one with next week's blog, in which I (hope to) finally catch up to the present goings on in my life.

As always, thanks for reading! And have a safe and happy Halloween!
-NLD

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Unpublished material, ©2013 Neal Digre

October 23, 2013

A Long Time Coming

This post has been a long time coming.  Though I have posted here and there it never amounted to more than a few sentences.  I wanted my first post in a long while to be a good and proper post and not some feeble, four-lined "I promise to post something soon," devised in the company of a lazy 18-year-old's excuses.  I'm 19 now - almost 20.  And I'd like to think these past one and a half years have made all the difference in the world.

One and a half years ago -- when I was too busy studying for tests to write (ha) -- I told myself that once AP tests were over I'd get back to writing.  My AP tests came and went, yet I did not resume my writing.  My high school graduation fell upon me but I didn't capitalize on any of that stuff called emotions and write a single line of poetry; I didn't write during the brief respite before I started packing my life into boxes for the move out to Washington -- even when long forgotten memories made an appearance in the form of ties I wore to dances or doodles drawn in the corner of my biology notes.  Not long after, most everything I'd known in the first 18 years of my life became nothing more than a fading horizon in my rear view mirror.

I, oh yes, I was a soon-to-be college freshman and nothing in the world could scare me... Until the night before move-in happened.  To my utter and complete amazement, life, the real world, and my own inhibitions hit me like a sack of alarm clocks fired from a high powered water cannon.  Drenched in my own excitement, anxiety, optimism and misgivings I somehow made it through my first few weeks of college as most college students somehow do: hyped up on caffeine while drowning themselves in new people, new clubs, new classes, Halo 4, Angry-German music, and exploring the new freedoms of living away from their parents -- all just to keep their mind off how someone as stupid as them could possibly think they belong in this academic world of people far more intelligent than them.

As time went on I found a group of friends and started to fall into a comfortable routine of class, schoolwork, YouTube, Doctor Who, sleep, repeat and, on rare occasions, venturing beyond the confines of my dorm room to try those crepes or Russian dumplings I'd heard so much about.  Classes too became easier and less stressful with each passing week.

While many of my fellow freshman found enjoyment in getting drunk in a crowded apartment where nobody knows you and no one would remember you anyway, I became a moderately content, introverted student, finding happiness in reading, YouTube, and even a little writing. Still, at the back of my mind discomfort lingered; I somehow thought I was incompetent and too stupid for college.  I pushed it down, though, and simply set to work on my next six hour Calculus assignment or five page paper.

I attempted NaNoWriMo and managed to balance 39,204 words with classes and homework before I was dealt one of the shittiest hands in the history of a college freshman.  I was feeling confident I'd win NaNoWriMo, having just broken 39,000 words the weekend of Thanksgiving. The day I got back to school, though, I got a call from my dad saying my grandfather had just passed away.  Being so far away it didn't seem real at first.  I felt sad, yes, but the grief didn't really hit me.  All my other insecurities did: the pent up feelings of incompetence, a three hour Calculus exam, finals in two weeks.  All this in addition to the first major loss in my life made that week after Thanksgiving a struggle.  I coped, though.  I made plans to get back to Minnesota for the funeral, I studied the best I could for my Calculus exam and tried to focus on one thing I needed to get done at a time.  Very slowly, though, it sunk in that I just lost my grandfather -- a grandfather who always found his greatest joy and pride in his grandchildren and made us his highest priority at the many Christmas and Easter gatherings, school concerts and plays, weekend visits and family reunions, never forgetting to bring his many quirks I found so endearing and an endless stream of stories.  I began to feel down but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle.  That is, until the five page honors paper I hadn't started yet was due in 24 hours.  At ten o'clock the night before it was due I began to experience minor panic attacks and by midnight I couldn't even look at the Word document let alone think about writing three more pages without shaking uncontrollably and feeling like my head and throat were collapsing in on themselves like some old building that had just been dynamited.  I called home and between many tears my mother helped me calm down and decide that the best thing to do was try to forget about school for the moment, email my honors professor and ask for an extension on the paper.  Even so, I didn't get much sleep that night.  But I lived through it.

With many tears, hugs, stories, and laughs I made it through my grandfather's funeral and -- with more tears, an emergency nine o'clock pm ride to Mom's house, a lot of encouragement, hot chocolate and hard work -- made it through my finals, specifically, the two three-page papers for my honors class.

Though Winter Break provided respite from my worries, it did not dissipate all the apprehensions left over from Fall quarter.  In the days leading up to re-move-in, I again suffered from small panic attacks and couldn't stop worrying about homework I didn't even have yet, in particular, the first paper I'd have to write for my next honors class.  The first few days were hard -- much harder than the first few days of Fall quarter.  But through the process of finding ways to cope with the stress I found a new group of friends -- a group of people that accepted me into their friend circle and made me feel like I fit in when most everyone else had already found their niche by the fourth week of the previous quarter.  While a friend group I felt comfortable with was helpful, it wasn't enough; I decided to get some counseling.  I came out of my first session with the desire to not only control the stress in my life to prevent another breakdown but to understand the stress that inevitably will invade my mind and body no matter how much I prepare for it.  The only way to do that was to understand myself.

The honors class that at first was so stressful soon became an aid to philosophical thought, introspective thinking and my favorite class of Winter quarter.  In addition to trying to understand my mind I took up climbing and swimming laps in an attempt to understand my body.  With the development of good habits and a fresh view of the world, school, and myself I made Winter and Spring quarters some of the most fun and rewarding moments of my school career thus far.  It wasn't always easy but I worked hard and took life one thing at a time, all the while developing an appreciation of self.  I do what brings me happiness, and if that includes other people so much the better, but if what I want to do on a Friday night is plop my butt down with a good book and cup of tea, well, by golly that's what I'll do.  Even those activities that are frustrating and taxing -- like de-bugging a program or rock climbing -- provide their own brand of happiness; the euphoria when I finally get a program to work or finally ascended that route I'd been working on for a week is worth it.  

I've learned to not be afraid of what lies a mile ahead of me and instead focus on what is at my feet; it is only by one step at a time that we as human beings may traverse great distances.

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When I started writing this post I intended to cover everything from the end of my senior year of high school to the present.  As I kept writing and writing and writing, though, I realized it was becoming far too long for a single post -- and I haven't even gotten to the sonnet! -- so I decided to break it up into two posts.

This is obviously a transition post for me.  I'd like to transition from this being just a blog of poetry and more a blog of my life, thoughts, and experiences, which is more of what I intended when I originally created the blog but I fell into focusing just on the poetry.  My journals will probably not be this extensive in the future but I'm definitely going to try to do more of it than I previously did, even if I don't have a sonnet to accompany it.  It is my hope that by doing so I will get into the habit of writing a little bit each day.

I appreciate you having read this far and I only ask that you bear with me a little while longer so as to allow me to introduce the sonnet.  It is the sonnet I wrote in the first few weeks of my freshman year -- the first sonnet I'd finished since before graduation.  As a part of the "getting to know your floor mates" process, we were all asked to put something up on the bulletin board that describes who we are using the acronym SIVS (no it's not a disease).  It stands for Skills, Interests, Values, Strengths and this is what I wrote:



SIVS

Like pleasant murmurs heard from humblest rill,
Regard such discourse that which I observe;
Peripheral voice in silence speaking still
With skill and care, for that what's said preserve.
Expanding knowledge -- this is my pursuit;
Of land, of lore and more, of me, of thee,
I'll learn such forms from those far more astute.
Reveal perspectives few would deign to see.
Conflagrant suns emit creative light
Upheld by values deep engrained.  Should dark
Pernicious clouds obscure this inward sight
A runnel new shall wash away the blight.  Hark!
Amidst all these, a multitude of strengths --
Conviction.  Aye, for this I'd go great lengths.

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Leave some feedback and let me know why!  I'm always seeking to improve.
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Unpublished material, ©2013 Neal Digre