Thursday, September 29, 2005
A letter I just wrote to my two mentors on the Uganda grant:
I had kind of a tough night tonight - I sat down with [a thesis I'm using] and was actually reading it, but then was overcome by fear. It's really crazy -- every time I sit down with this stuff (even before I was working on the grant) I become paralyzed with not just the enormity of the AIDS crisis, but the fear that I will waste my life and not be able to do anything about it. And then I notice that I'm freaking out, and become freaked out about THAT and am further convinced that I will always be useless because I will always freak out like this. It's counterproductive, of course. I don't know if it's spiritual warfare or severe neurosis or what.
But as I was freaking out, my roommate pointed out that often God wants us to keep trying EVEN IF we are freaking out and we think we'll fail.
When she said this, I got angry at God (well I had been angry at God before truthfully), and then quickly I realized that I was actually angry at this dark cloud of fear and lies and whatever part of me was struggling AGAINST God in this. So, whatever I do toward the grant will be against this part and towards God. At this stage, whether or not I get the grant is not my concern, because working on it is what God would like me to do.
I know that this is what you have both been telling me. It's been really hard to hear, because most of the time I feel so depressed and insane about the whole thing, but every once in a while I get a moment of semi-clarity about it (like this). I could really use your prayers this week, and I thank you so much for all the prayers up until now.
Thank you both again for everything and for being patient with me. I just wanted to e-mail to tell you this because... because.
~Roselyn
p.s. not that it matters, but I'm still pretty convinced that I don't have the spiritual, psychological, intellectual etc etc capacity for this.
I had kind of a tough night tonight - I sat down with [a thesis I'm using] and was actually reading it, but then was overcome by fear. It's really crazy -- every time I sit down with this stuff (even before I was working on the grant) I become paralyzed with not just the enormity of the AIDS crisis, but the fear that I will waste my life and not be able to do anything about it. And then I notice that I'm freaking out, and become freaked out about THAT and am further convinced that I will always be useless because I will always freak out like this. It's counterproductive, of course. I don't know if it's spiritual warfare or severe neurosis or what.
But as I was freaking out, my roommate pointed out that often God wants us to keep trying EVEN IF we are freaking out and we think we'll fail.
When she said this, I got angry at God (well I had been angry at God before truthfully), and then quickly I realized that I was actually angry at this dark cloud of fear and lies and whatever part of me was struggling AGAINST God in this. So, whatever I do toward the grant will be against this part and towards God. At this stage, whether or not I get the grant is not my concern, because working on it is what God would like me to do.
I know that this is what you have both been telling me. It's been really hard to hear, because most of the time I feel so depressed and insane about the whole thing, but every once in a while I get a moment of semi-clarity about it (like this). I could really use your prayers this week, and I thank you so much for all the prayers up until now.
Thank you both again for everything and for being patient with me. I just wanted to e-mail to tell you this because... because.
~Roselyn
p.s. not that it matters, but I'm still pretty convinced that I don't have the spiritual, psychological, intellectual etc etc capacity for this.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Today was: a day, an illustrative day. I got up early, as I've been doing, and then wasted about two hours trying to decide whether to do something productive with those two hours (go to the lab, swim at SPAC, write my stepmom's birthday card) or whether to just waste them. Despair, if I can use that word for a pretty stupid situation. When the point became moot I just showered and went off to work at TFI. Thank God for easy work, scheduled work that I just need to do for a few hours and then I'm DONE with at the end. Finished the card and eventually mailed it: I should celebrate and not take this small task for granted.
Then the coffee, then meeting with my second reader to talk about my honors proposal. Went well. I am competent, surprisingly so, at this, so I may stick to research just because I feel validated in it. BAD REASON HORRIBLE REASON, may being aware of this impulse save me from it. Then, met with my advisor and helped her with some proofing, but in the meantime we got distracted and came up with another experiment for me to add to my thesis, and now I'm going to start collecting data next week. Woohoo! Looking back my day feels like a cliche: hotshot scientist-in-training.
Then, I left. Went home, had dinner, was sad, decided to go visit my old roommates as promised, walked out the door and saw the shuttle go by and it was STILL raining so I walked to Jewel to get an umbrella and toilet paper and I never made it further to my old roommates'. Sorry guys. When I came out of the Jewel there was a possibly-homeless guy smelling strongly of alcohol and we talked for a while. He was very shocked by the hurricane and by the handling of it, and by the fact that I had heard of his home country (Bulgaria). He was upset and he wore a black t-shirt with a skull on it. His name was Mike. I was touched, I guess, by what he said, realizing that it was true; I was touched by his being touched by the bodies and by the whole catastrophe. I also had my hands full of toilet paper and I wanted to leave.
So I walked home and was very sad, and felt as if I wanted to transfer my life to someone else. I felt frusturated by my general passivity with regards to the hurricane - I guess I did a Little Bit but cannot quite be comfortable with the idea that you can feel satisfied and notguilty if you do Your Little Bit. Because I actually have a great many Bits that I keep all for myself, and there is a nauseatingly huge amount of tragedy that goes on in the world anyway, which is why these American Tragedies like September 11 or Katrina hit me with about the same force as campaign finance. Maybe it's better to have a generally optimistic view of the world, an idea that the world is an OK place, at least America is, and then when the news picks up these stories you can be Shocked and you storm into action and do good. What seems to happen with me is, I hear these stories and I'm so unsurprised -- more like, I'm permanently in shock about the screwedness of the world and the horribleness of needless death, and so I become a hard, useless fetalball. I have friends who feel like this and I am always trying to talk them out of it, point to the beauty of the world and the goodness of God and the ultimate rightness of things. Oh God, help me believe in the ultimate rightness of things. Help me not be overwhelmed by evil, but overcome evil with good.
There are many people like me - well not like me, terrifyingly unlike me, strange in personality and dialect and belief, but they are also in on the divine conspiracy: to overcome evil with good. God, help us find each other. Help me shed my fear and despair.
Then the coffee, then meeting with my second reader to talk about my honors proposal. Went well. I am competent, surprisingly so, at this, so I may stick to research just because I feel validated in it. BAD REASON HORRIBLE REASON, may being aware of this impulse save me from it. Then, met with my advisor and helped her with some proofing, but in the meantime we got distracted and came up with another experiment for me to add to my thesis, and now I'm going to start collecting data next week. Woohoo! Looking back my day feels like a cliche: hotshot scientist-in-training.
Then, I left. Went home, had dinner, was sad, decided to go visit my old roommates as promised, walked out the door and saw the shuttle go by and it was STILL raining so I walked to Jewel to get an umbrella and toilet paper and I never made it further to my old roommates'. Sorry guys. When I came out of the Jewel there was a possibly-homeless guy smelling strongly of alcohol and we talked for a while. He was very shocked by the hurricane and by the handling of it, and by the fact that I had heard of his home country (Bulgaria). He was upset and he wore a black t-shirt with a skull on it. His name was Mike. I was touched, I guess, by what he said, realizing that it was true; I was touched by his being touched by the bodies and by the whole catastrophe. I also had my hands full of toilet paper and I wanted to leave.
So I walked home and was very sad, and felt as if I wanted to transfer my life to someone else. I felt frusturated by my general passivity with regards to the hurricane - I guess I did a Little Bit but cannot quite be comfortable with the idea that you can feel satisfied and notguilty if you do Your Little Bit. Because I actually have a great many Bits that I keep all for myself, and there is a nauseatingly huge amount of tragedy that goes on in the world anyway, which is why these American Tragedies like September 11 or Katrina hit me with about the same force as campaign finance. Maybe it's better to have a generally optimistic view of the world, an idea that the world is an OK place, at least America is, and then when the news picks up these stories you can be Shocked and you storm into action and do good. What seems to happen with me is, I hear these stories and I'm so unsurprised -- more like, I'm permanently in shock about the screwedness of the world and the horribleness of needless death, and so I become a hard, useless fetalball. I have friends who feel like this and I am always trying to talk them out of it, point to the beauty of the world and the goodness of God and the ultimate rightness of things. Oh God, help me believe in the ultimate rightness of things. Help me not be overwhelmed by evil, but overcome evil with good.
There are many people like me - well not like me, terrifyingly unlike me, strange in personality and dialect and belief, but they are also in on the divine conspiracy: to overcome evil with good. God, help us find each other. Help me shed my fear and despair.
