Darkness. Ghostly shadows flutter across the damp walls of my cell. Triple lock. Bolt lock: relentless academics; chain lock: restriction; key lock: life. I only dream of what occurs outside of my little gray cell: day-time naps with no alarm clocks, weekend date without having to check my calendar first, reading a novel without class books screaming in the background, hanging out with friends without having to be discreet, fresh grass between my naked toes; freedom.
This confusion between dream and reality is mostly responsible for my bipolar mood swings. Though it's not swinging evenly so much anymore on a pendulum, my mood has been, forever it seems, halted on the reality side only. Such luxuries as stated only exist in dreams, that is, when I finally can dream. Because although I sleep at night, I'm never resting enough to actually dream. By the time I lie in bed, reach over and set my alarm for, at best six hours from then, and look up at the bars supporting my roommates bed, I'm too exhausted to appreciate the momentary escape from the day. Physically drained from having been at work non-stop for months--not to mention my recovery from two days of bed rest was disrupted by the following days two wrestling workouts. Mental toughness has been decaying for weeks now; I can't seem to be able to turn the page to start fresh. My body's supply of whatever chemical, I can't remember, that it is supposed to naturally produce to cope with stress, has run dry. Stress has collided with my Will and seems to have won the scrum. Especially if we're keeping score with smiles.
Am I feeling sorry for myself? Have I buried myself in self-pity? Maybe.
What is swagger? I mope.
Fundamentally, I'm told I have three pillars that make up my life right now: academics, athletics, and military.
..I had a Physics assignment due last Tuesday that I still haven't done. (today is Sunday)
..I haven't wrestled in two weeks, and this past week I was in the room once out of six workouts because I was sick and injured.
..My biggest grade in military was this past summer detail. I got an F for single-cause-failure from my drinking episode.
My attempt to support the weight is to add my own forth pillar: personal. But even that pillar is slanting.
..without counting the sarcastic laughs to cope with the depressing lifestyle I've lived the past few months, with the score climbing Stress-77 to Smiles-3. I rarely laugh. Hope to fill the emptiness with a female companion is absurd. I'll spare myself and my faithful readers from the pages upon pages I could produce on my forever journey for love, and just say I miss the feeling, and beg for her to find me. I'm still waiting..
Oh yea..when I tried to celebrate my twenty-first birthday last week, by merely watching a movie with some friends, I got caught breaking Room Restriction.
I'm not supposed to let them beat me down. I'm supposed pep up and keep my swag without breaking stride all the way through this punishment stage, which consists of sixty days Room Restriction, ninety days No-Privileges, weekly mentorship meetings, a twelve-hour alcohol abuse class(filled a Saturday), 35-40 pages of developmental writing on how this is a turning point in my life, and one-hundred hours served to weekend duty (where productivity has drastically dropped since we've started, due to the death of motivation). Not to mention, I live every day in the land of Professional Ethics Education. Constanly feeling as though I'm variable X in an X, Y Case study of morals and ethics. I'm under constant guard, because if I let up for even a nano-second The Man capitalizes on my momentary mental lapse and I get whipped back in line. The shackles around my ankles have rubbed my skin raw. No worries though, there's no pain..I am numb.
When will I rest? Not sleep. Sleep is not restful. Sleep is a tease. A few short hours of solitude yes, but not beneficial. The time I'm away from my hellish daily activities during the night only makes me weaker when I wake. I wake to thoughts of a better day overwhelmed with painful reminders from the previous days' chaos. What's the point? I'd rather never sleep, so that the numbness never wears. More Novocaine. Please. And a much stronger dose.
Effin Tripod :)
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Major Dilemma
Right side of my brain says Kinesiology. Left side says Literature.
I can't imagine there are many people are stuck in a rut over deciding between two such polar opposite fields of study. But I tend to fit these rare scenarios well: a fierce competitor on the wrestling mat, a twenty-first century old-school romantic, a loving brother, son, and Godfather, and a party animal to boot.
With my multi-personality, I long to satiate my thirst of many flavors. And with such little free-time here at West Point, each of my hobbies enters a battle-royal for just a little attention. A math drop dongs the bell to get the fight underway--practice piano or harmonica? Take a nap? Or indulge myself in the vampire love story of the millennium, Twilight? Or write a blog, in my journal, or finish one of my ten unfinished poems? Or Heaven forbid I would take the free time to do some school work. Now this would be a minor dilemma; for the blog-sake, a hobby-dilemma. My primary concern--one that lingers in the room and interrupts my seldom alone time for thinking with its overshadowing affects--is my Major dilemma. That is, which major I should select for my undergraduate study.
I've grown up in the world of sports, though with a unique twist in the backdrop of the usual competition-realm. Both my parents were athletic trainers; my mom works for an orthopedic, and my dad is the program director for athletic training at Mount Union College. This is where I began my amateur practice of sports medicine. At my first grade show and tell, I had my dad come in as a prop. And together we demonstrated how to tape an ankle. Beyond taping ankles I yearned for the knowledge of other common injuries. Throughout my athletic career I always asked the "why" story behind every incident regarding the human body. A friend would complain about shin-splints biting at his leg with every step, and I would go straight to my family source of anatomy/physiology and ask which muscles and tendons were effected by it, and how to prevent it. The average high school athlete doesn't know that the lateral-tibialis is the muscle by the tibia bone that is constantly strained with shin splints, nor that a good stretch would be manual resistance planter flex and dorsi flex rotations; and of course to "ice it." Attending West Point, my childhood ambitions to continue the family athletic trainer gene, and hopefully move up to the professional sports level, were temporarily ceased because West Point doesn't offer an athletic training major. But I was soon saved. I learned that they started a Kinesiology major.
Though the selection process for this major was narrow, due to only having eighteen slots per class, and averaging fifty applicants, I was lucky enough to make the cut. The story of my exercise science background was interesting enough for the department to overlook my lacking grades in Chemistry, Math, and Physics, and select me for the major. I shouldn't be so lucky. And now, after all that turmoil, I'm considering turning down this lucky dream come true. And betray my life's drive for athletic enhancement, for something in the complete opposite end of the academic world. Literature.
I've always enjoyed writing, but throughout high school it was a rare occasion when Mike Gorman read and enjoyed a book. That is, until a few years ago. I could give credit to many people--teachers, coaches, parents, friends; but I think I have to give the most credit to J.K. Rowlings. For, Harry Potter's seven year, multi-thousand page adventure lured me into the world of literature. Since then, I can't remember a time when I didn't have a book to escape to whenever I had the time or the urge to. I've fell in love with linguistics, and novels, and understanding different levels of writing. Experiencing an author's style and hearing his voice in my head has become just as real as being introduced to a friend of a friend. In casual conversation, I find myself referring to characters in a book as if they were real people. I feel the different shades of a protagonist's character living through me. I will even talk in the dialect of my new friend's voice that I heard the night before, in a whisper, under my reading light. When I'm reading one of Shakespeare's plays, I even rearrange my word order to fit the style of Shakespeare. Literature is alive in me.
"Welcome back!" Square One exclaimed, anticipating the return. Now what?
So here I sit, with only one week remaining to officially declare my major, and I'm nowhere closer to having my mind made up than I was when the year started. Torn by two loves. Impossible to do both, at least for now. I've went round and round through the ins and outs of both situations. But I feel like my displacement in progress is zero. Like a hot-wheel car zipping around hair-pin turns, looping vertical circles, and changing tracks at the same intersection over and over again, my thoughts changing velocity too fast to keep track--a G, maybe two-G's force around on my skull, in its attempt to hold it all together without going insane. Maybe I should go Psychology..
I can't imagine there are many people are stuck in a rut over deciding between two such polar opposite fields of study. But I tend to fit these rare scenarios well: a fierce competitor on the wrestling mat, a twenty-first century old-school romantic, a loving brother, son, and Godfather, and a party animal to boot.
With my multi-personality, I long to satiate my thirst of many flavors. And with such little free-time here at West Point, each of my hobbies enters a battle-royal for just a little attention. A math drop dongs the bell to get the fight underway--practice piano or harmonica? Take a nap? Or indulge myself in the vampire love story of the millennium, Twilight? Or write a blog, in my journal, or finish one of my ten unfinished poems? Or Heaven forbid I would take the free time to do some school work. Now this would be a minor dilemma; for the blog-sake, a hobby-dilemma. My primary concern--one that lingers in the room and interrupts my seldom alone time for thinking with its overshadowing affects--is my Major dilemma. That is, which major I should select for my undergraduate study.
I've grown up in the world of sports, though with a unique twist in the backdrop of the usual competition-realm. Both my parents were athletic trainers; my mom works for an orthopedic, and my dad is the program director for athletic training at Mount Union College. This is where I began my amateur practice of sports medicine. At my first grade show and tell, I had my dad come in as a prop. And together we demonstrated how to tape an ankle. Beyond taping ankles I yearned for the knowledge of other common injuries. Throughout my athletic career I always asked the "why" story behind every incident regarding the human body. A friend would complain about shin-splints biting at his leg with every step, and I would go straight to my family source of anatomy/physiology and ask which muscles and tendons were effected by it, and how to prevent it. The average high school athlete doesn't know that the lateral-tibialis is the muscle by the tibia bone that is constantly strained with shin splints, nor that a good stretch would be manual resistance planter flex and dorsi flex rotations; and of course to "ice it." Attending West Point, my childhood ambitions to continue the family athletic trainer gene, and hopefully move up to the professional sports level, were temporarily ceased because West Point doesn't offer an athletic training major. But I was soon saved. I learned that they started a Kinesiology major.
Though the selection process for this major was narrow, due to only having eighteen slots per class, and averaging fifty applicants, I was lucky enough to make the cut. The story of my exercise science background was interesting enough for the department to overlook my lacking grades in Chemistry, Math, and Physics, and select me for the major. I shouldn't be so lucky. And now, after all that turmoil, I'm considering turning down this lucky dream come true. And betray my life's drive for athletic enhancement, for something in the complete opposite end of the academic world. Literature.
I've always enjoyed writing, but throughout high school it was a rare occasion when Mike Gorman read and enjoyed a book. That is, until a few years ago. I could give credit to many people--teachers, coaches, parents, friends; but I think I have to give the most credit to J.K. Rowlings. For, Harry Potter's seven year, multi-thousand page adventure lured me into the world of literature. Since then, I can't remember a time when I didn't have a book to escape to whenever I had the time or the urge to. I've fell in love with linguistics, and novels, and understanding different levels of writing. Experiencing an author's style and hearing his voice in my head has become just as real as being introduced to a friend of a friend. In casual conversation, I find myself referring to characters in a book as if they were real people. I feel the different shades of a protagonist's character living through me. I will even talk in the dialect of my new friend's voice that I heard the night before, in a whisper, under my reading light. When I'm reading one of Shakespeare's plays, I even rearrange my word order to fit the style of Shakespeare. Literature is alive in me.
"Welcome back!" Square One exclaimed, anticipating the return. Now what?
So here I sit, with only one week remaining to officially declare my major, and I'm nowhere closer to having my mind made up than I was when the year started. Torn by two loves. Impossible to do both, at least for now. I've went round and round through the ins and outs of both situations. But I feel like my displacement in progress is zero. Like a hot-wheel car zipping around hair-pin turns, looping vertical circles, and changing tracks at the same intersection over and over again, my thoughts changing velocity too fast to keep track--a G, maybe two-G's force around on my skull, in its attempt to hold it all together without going insane. Maybe I should go Psychology..
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