Exhaustion

The events of this last week have been just so overwhelming in many ways, I write this to you as a way of processing it all.

Sunday at WellBeing, the AIDS ministry I work with at my church, I just became very heavy-hearted. Normally we don't ever talk about peoples' diagnoses, so I just kinda forget that the reason why everyone is there is because they have AIDS. But I made the mistake of stopping and thinking of this reality... he has AIDS, he has AIDS, and yes, even he has AIDS. I became so sad. All of these men whom I have gotten to know and have grown to love have this horribly unfair disease... I don't know how to hand this reality and process my emotions.

Monday brought a beautiful chapel honoring veterans for Veteran's Day. It wasn't just one person saying "This is what you need to know, this is what you need to feel." What they did was they brought men and women up on stage, in their various uniforms, and they all briefly shared their experiences and also what they thought was important for us to know and how we could pray for our servicemen and -women. That was really good, because I knew the people up there and I could connect with them. One thing that was hard to take, though, is what my friend Jason shared. He said that a silent and unknown killer of servicemen and -women is suicide. We civilians don't often hear about it, but it is a common occurrence. This got me worried about my brother Ian who is serving in the United States Marine Corps Reserve. No, I'm not afraid that he'll commit suicide, but I just began wondering if he ever gets discouraged, and I wanted to make sure he had someone to talk to. I just had this overwhelming feeling that he was having a bad day. So I texted him and told him I love him and to hang in there. He was a little confused and so we had short conversation about the Veterans' Day chapel, and he assured me that he would never leave us because he has too much to live for. He told me he was off to see the Seahawks play for the Monday Night Football game, so I kinda just assumed that meant he was going to the Crabtrees' house to watch it on the big screen, but I wondered why he was leaving for an evening game so early....

Later that night, he called me, but I was in the bathroom, so I missed the call. I called him back, figuring he just wanted to talk to me about earlier, to make sure I was okay and to assure me that he loved me. I called him, but he sounded like he was caught off-guard, so he said he'd call me back in a few. So as those few minutes passed, I wondered why he called. I figured it had to be important, otherwise he wouldn't say "Let me call you back." I was hoping it wasn't going to be a serious "You know I'll always love you, sis" kind of calls, because I was tired, and I really didn't feel like being serious. But what I did want was for him to tell me that him and Kaitlin were getting married. Call me selfish, but I'm just so tired of it all: meeting a new girlfriend, trying to figure out whether or not it's worth trying to be her friend, and either A. be her friend, or B. spend all my effort disliking her, and then after all that emotion effort from either A or B, they break up, and I have to spend even more emotional energy processing that and trying to recover. I'm just so tired of brothers and their girlfriends. And besides all that, I freaking love Kaitlin, and I really wanted to just hear him say that they're getting married. Because I freaking love her, and she's so incredibly good... and seeing her go would pretty much be the hardest thing ever, on at least two levels. So anyways, while I was waiting for Ian to call me back, I was just pacing and praying that the call would be to tell me they were engaged, and not to be all serious. So Ian calls me back and I crawl into my bed as I answer it. He asks me what I'm doing and I tell him that I was just about to go to bed, but that I can spend a few minutes talking to my brother. He asked me if I was sitting down, which was a dumb question I thought because I had just told him I was about to go to bed. So after he confirmed my sitting position, he said, "Okay, you ready?" I was so excited, and was thinking this is it! this is it! this is the news I want so bad! O God please let this be the news! He continued, saying "Kaitlin and I are engaged."

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCCHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's pretty much all I could do! I was so massively happy, I had no words. My word were not enough. All I could do was scream! And scream I did... for at least four or five minutes. Ian, on the other end of the phone, was telling me to quiet down because I'd wake up my whole floor, which of course I didn't care about, because it was still a few minutes before quiet hours, so I was technically good, even if I wasn't too polite. Ian put Kaitlin on, and she was giggling and just said "Hi Caroline!" And I said "Hi sister-in-law!" Confession: I've been calling her that since September, so now I'm glad it's official. Anyways, it was basically one big scream fest, and I didn't really say too many words, but I somehow realized that he had gone to the actual game that night at the stadium, so I asked him "You didn't propose at the Seahawks game, did you?!" And he told me that he did it after. Oh.

So Monday night I went through all the dorm telling everybody that my brother's getting married. It was bomb.

Tuesday... nothing much, I don't think.

Wednesday morning, Liz informs me that the fleas that have been biting me at work have made their way into our dorm room, because she now has flea bites. Let me explain. As a custodian, part of my job is to clean vacant housing units so they can be ready to be turned over to the next tenant. The unit I had been cleaning since Friday of last week was a house on Pacific Street, in a row of houses the school owns. It was completely empty, but there were fleas... and they liked to bite, the little bastards. At first I wasn't too worried, but then I got to thinking, and I realized I didn't want to be responsible for infesting the dorm with fleas, so I called my boss to let him know. The solution that my roommate and I reached: wash every single piece of clothing, bedding, and any textile that the fleas could be in.

The irony in this is that last weekend I had the brilliant idea to purge my wardrobe, because I was convinced I had too much clothing. Ha! I got rid of maybe two small boxes, and do you know how much I had left over? NINE LOADS! Nine loads of laundry. And that's in the large-capacity washer and dryer at my work. Another not so cool element, in order to get the laundry done sans quarters, I had to do it all at work... awkward, yes, but also inconvenient, as I had to continuously make trips across the back parking lot to the warehouse, sometimes carrying laundry and sometimes not, but every trip was in crummy weather.

So I didn't sleep in my room on Wednesday, I slept in my R.A. Summer's room. But, I managed to sleep past my alarm and not wake up until noon, missing chapel, a class, and an important meeting. And then Thursday night I made it a specific point to clean out my room and get back into it... that was a process. Had to take out everything that was on the floor, vacuum, then put everything back. It actually felt really good, and it really just makes me look forward to having my own room next semester. Then today, Friday, I slept late, too late to go to my Bibliology/Theology Proper class, but that's fine because I hate that class anyway. After classes and more laundry and such, I was able to go to Fall Banquet. And now I'm back. And I think that I am much to tired to finish this blog and fill in all the details I would like to, so I guess I'll pick this up again tomorrow.