Update...

So, the sleep doctor suspects my oversized tongue(?) is choking me at night, evinced by the swamp of drool on the pillow. This, in turn, disrupts the sleep cycle and this, in turn, contributes to my feeling like being run over a truck in the morning. Or afternoon. Really, any time. This explains why no amount of sleep has been refreshing for the last six years. Cripples, he said, in so many words, frequently have this problem.

He also said that I didn’t open my mouth wide enough. Of course, that could have had something to do with the wooden stick halfway down my throat. On Thursday, I get to sleep at the hospital, connected to wires and monitored by a camera.

Yay!?!

Angel starts rousting me out of bed at 7:30 tomorrow; And, today, well, was the first step back to sanity. Today, I made it to every class. Objectively, it’s not a huge step but it feels so much better not to be drooling onto a pillow or hyperventilating in the hallway.

This morning, Fayne walked with me to my first class. And, then, later Joey appeared again. He showed me some of his art work (how cool was that? he’s really good, too). He inquired about the pinched, lemon expression, and I told him going to class was freaking me out. A next-to-complete stranger, he offered to walk me (ok, not so much a stranger anymore).

This was very cool. The morning I saw Fayne, I’d prayed for help. The anxiety was becoming too much. The fear was going too far and I allowed it to push me into a box the size of a cigarette package. Smaller. Monday was as far back as I could allow myself to recoil without springing in all directions, and, lo and behold, Fayne appeared and sent the e-mail to my professors that I feared sending. Today, I talked to all three of them. And will keep communication open (hear that, me?).

The coolest thing, though, was that I prayed that someone would walk with me. The length from the dorm to the batten center allows for too many u-turns. Bushes. Shrubbery. In the hours implicit in anxious minutes, there is too much room for retreat. It would be better God, I prayed, if the walk wasn’t so solitary. If there was yet another sign of the kindness in the world, of the reality of grace after all this terror.

When Joey said he’d walk with, I almost cried. Another one of those kairos situations.

Why is kindness always so surprising?

Oh well, let it be a surprise; it means it’ll always be this awesome.