A Break In Quarantine

So, the world has shut down due to a certain virus. This lockdown has naturally postponed my travel plans and also my plans to become famous. However, it did bring about a nice opportunity recently...

A certain person that I have been trying not to like too much due to the potential emotional fallout had a birthday last week. Owing to our previous discussions about drinks she liked but could not remember, I bought her a Juice Journal. I brought this journal and a mini bottle of scotch that did not fit in the valentine I had made for her in February, and I took these to her parents' house, where she was staying for the weekend while visiting from San Antonio. Bear in mind that we are under shelter in place orders, so I have only left the house for food and drinks, and even having dinner with my grandpa has made me somewhat nervous.

So I arrive at the house and in my mind, I am wondering how to stay six feet apart and talk, when she just says "want to come in?" and I give the honest reply of "...yeah" and I do so. She loves the gifts and I meet her bengal cats, one of whom strolls up to me in a reportedly surprising move, as this one is typically less social. She has been working with patients who have the virus in the ICU, so essentially the front lines, and we discuss treatments and annoying doctors and time flows by. Her mother returns from mowing the lawn and her father from work, and as they bring out this free pizza that he had acquired, I start to try to leave. But it is made clear to me that I am not allowed to leave, so I sit down and have dinner with this gorgeous friend and her parents. She and I sit side by side with myself opposite her father, and her opposite her mother. We talk about the virus, about her father's job in landscaping, about bee keeping, about this and that. At one point, this girl says something with an incredibly strong country accent and I am fairly certain that I reflexively winced at it.

After we finished the meal, I insisted that I needed to leave in order to keep my family from discovering that I broke quarantine. The lady toward whom I struggle to restrain affections offers to walk me out. It seemed like it could potentially be a moment to tell her that I liked her, particularly considering that this was the first time I had seen her since I had sent the valentine (and the actual last time I had seen her was in mid-December). But I had decided before going there that this was not the time, and I am glad that I am holding onto that much sanity. We had not actually physically touched throughout our interaction over the past few hours, but I then gave her a hug, officially tearing quarantine asunder.

I do not know how her family perceived me, but hopefully well enough. With her, I am attempting to invest in a lifelong friend regardless of whether any romance has a chance to blossom.

Relief & Fine Evenings

As difficult as it is to believe, I feel a lot of relief from the news of the other day. It was further helped by a Wednesday night on the town with a close musician friend who happens to be visiting to play some shows. We went to a German place that has das boot, but upon our visit, they had apparently run out of the boots in the small size. Furthermore, shortly after we ordered, the owner let us know that they had been closed for half an hour and that we were not supposed to be served. So we were forced to quickly attempt to down our roughly 1500 milliliters of Kolsch beer. We very nearly managed the attempt. On the way back, we stopped at the bar which had previously had karaoke on Wednesday nights. They had a shortage of KJs for the moment, but we did make a new friend at that bar who also enjoys karaoke, and she left her contact info in the journal for future karaoke adventures. At her recommendation, we also visited another dive bar where she assured me that there would be karaoke that night. There was no karaoke. But the bar did have billiards, which was also an enjoyable game.

This evening, I get to have dinner with family and then see my friend play a show, and hopefully also meet other artsy folks in the area through that show. It is nice to do anything besides deal with my sister and myself in an attempt to remain devoted to my studies. 

Relief From Her

I felt so awful since last night, and all throughout today. That wet blanket of depression was back and for seemingly little reason. And then the girl I liked posted an insta story of a rose that had been delivered to her at work. And the weight felt as if it lifted. Finally I could stop overthinking, practicing how exactly to say what I wanted to say and ask if she liked me back, but also I have kept myself from liking her just in case she would not return the sentiment, and even if she did like me or was open to such an idea, we would need to separately pray about it and seek counsel from God-fearing people, etc. etc.

It really makes you wonder how I have stayed single for all of these years. But also how I have managed to retain most of my close female friends. Anyway, as great of a human as she is, she was very distracting, and perhaps with the knowledge that her affections have been cast elsewhere, I can finally focus properly.

Here is the thing. With her in mind, I knew that I needed to be better. And to some extent, that has been a very helpful thing. She is someone with whom I can share medical jokes/facts and geek out about Bible stuff. And I do not really have that in other people. My main thought recently had been that she exceeds my standards, but I do not think that I meet hers. I started to think that I need to become a doctor just to retain her interest. But I cannot do this doctor thing for her. Nor for any friends or family. This whole journey through medicine is my sacrifice to God, the one that He chose for me, and I need to be willing to give it up to Him at the very moment that He wants me to. Because it is His.

Maybe our timelines and geographical locations and spiritual and emotional states will match up at some point. But that point is obviously not now, and it is frankly relieving. No pressure to make things work in a given time period. Just trusting God.

Trip Cancelled

Well, the trip to SE Asia that I had been planning for two years has been cancelled, or at least postponed. The breaking point was when they changed my flight from a Dallas departure to an Atlanta one. Until this time, I was merely going to delay the flight by a month or so, but that kind of change without my consent was enough for me to just ask for a refund.

Last night, I was hit by depression again. My appetite has been decreasing and I have not been able to make myself study very much. At the moment, I have convinced myself that the girl I liked will not like me in return, which has a poor effect on me mentally. But the alternative of a let down would potentially be worse, and I do not want to risk that. But these things are merely pieces of evidence that my mind churned up after the mood change came on. The depression has not reared its ugly head in such a way for a long while. What is more, this mood change came about after I had had a good workout and a meal with the more stable part of the family.

I feel better at the moment after having coffee and sitting at Starbucks, but not much better. I fear that I have only postponed the eventuality of a depressing feeling. But maybe things will be looking up!

Maybe I just have not properly worked up the nerve, but I did go off alone for a moment to try to yell at God. The tension currently infiltrating my being seems to be pushing for that kind of release, but when I tried, my mind seemed unwilling.

Maybe I am just unwilling to be honest with myself. I should be studying for this exam, but I just keep doing worse the harder I try, in large part because I cannot find appropriate relief when I need it, which is of course because I have lost such connections due to my dedication to this pursuit of medicine. And it does not help that my sister with a personality disorder lives right next to me, and my mornings which were previously peaceful with my biggest hurdle to studying being myself, they are now frequently filled with her arguing on the phone or playing music or any number of focus-inhibiting activities.

I will try to go back to spending the remainder of my day actually studying since I did little to accomplish that thus far today.

This & Also That

Studying is not going great. But how about we avoid discussing that?

Recently, I have been reading the book of Hebrews. The author of Hebrews is likely either Barnabas or Apollos, those evangelists who worked with the Apostle Paul. I am assuming that it is Barnabas because why not. So one reason I had never particularly liked the book of Hebrews is because it has such a great focus on Jewish history, specifically regarding the use of sacrifices within the temple by the Levitical priests. The most annoying phrase in the book had previously been "a priest in the order of Malchezidek" because it never mattered to me all that much. But this time through, I wanted to get that full picture of what Barnabas was trying to say.

So he argued that Jesus was a priest in the order of Malchezidek, and this had a couple important reasonings. See, Jesus was in the tribe of Judah rather than Levi, so one would at first be inclined to think that He should have no business with offering sacrifices. However, Barnabas argues that if the Levitical priesthood was really that good, their sacrifices would have completed the task of acquiring forgiveness of sins; on the contrary, they had to repeatedly offer sacrifices over time because the sacrifices were not adequate to offer continued coverage. But with this new covenant, a new type of priesthood is required. That is when Malchezidek comes into play. Malchezidek did not belong to any tribe. He was a king and priest of his region, but Abraham still gave him his 10% tithe. So this gave some precedent for a priest outside of the Levitical priesthood. So because the Levitical priesthood was limiting in terms of its ability to cover sins and because that covenant was essentially over and done anyway, Jesus, who was from the tribe of Judah, was able to do things in a new (but also retro) way in the order of Malchezidek.

And in other news, I was got a call the other day from a reality performance show saying that they really liked me, and asked about my availability. Tomorrow, they will be doing a background check and wardrobe has asked for my measurements. So it is beginning to sound real. The only downside is that I will likely have to delay my Southeast Asia trip by a week or two in order to do it. It could be a dream come true.

Valentines & Studying

I went on my first vacation in two years (unless you count the kind of stressful weekend trip to Disney World right after that awful test last year). Cruises are nice because you are forced to unplug (unless you pay up for internet) and I at least am reminded of my talents that have not left, despite years of constant confrontation with my inadequacies that can eclipse such things. While stretching at the gym, I was approached and asked how I stay so flexible or so thin, and while singing karaoke, I have strangers going up to the KJ on my behalf unprompted and saying "You are going to want him to sing."

The end of the cruise was the day before Valentine's Day, and I had made preparations ahead of time for the girl I like to receive my valentine in the mail. A big selling point of my making origami gifts is that they show time and effort, but they are also inexpensive. Of course, this girl is sort of the impossible type, the kind that, like myself, just statistically should not be someone who I would ever naturally encounter in daily life. So I did not stop at mere origami and poetry and chocolate, which likely would have impressed her enough. I added to it a little scotch tasting, which we had had plans to do together last time she was in town until family and weather dashed such a proposition. Finding descent scotch in 50 ml bottles required a trip to Dallas (Total Wine had the goods), and then the right poster board to fold into boxes, and then figuring out how to package it right and which carriers would allow me to ship these gifts, all of these things were involved in creating this ideal gift to try to win her over. (No carriers allow alcohol shipments by the way)

It turned out that she was even in town visiting that weekend, but she was at a Bible conference, which made the scotch an even funnier gift. And she was bubbling over with amazement over all of it. It has been a week since then and we keep chatting. Anyway, since she was already in town for that conference, I do not know when I could reasonably expect another visit from her. And I am studying, so I cannot spare the time to visit her. I want to let her know that I like her and want to like her more, that she has exceeded my standards, and ask whether or not she may feel the same way. I wrote line after line of poetry in an attempt to ask it in a letter, but I did not feel peace about that. So I wrote a poem just stating things I like about her and maybe I will give that to her regardless of her answer.

In the realm of studying, well, it continues to be hard to stay motivated. As with last year's studying, test scores are progressively going down. And when scores go down, you begin to lose hope of ever leaving this phase of life. But if I can just get past this thing, this season could at long last come to a close! I keep trying to bring back images from those mission trips, of the people suffering. You know, fun weekend thoughts. Every time I let myself get distracted with my phone or something, I let future people suffer more. But if I can pull it together enough, I can save some of them! Therein lies the trouble though. How do I pull it together enough? I just need to focus for a few more weeks. Just a few more and then I fly away to SE Asia!

And when I get back, I need to figure out a game plan to take that stupid playing doctor test and find employment. Because one thing I have learned from living with my narcissistic sister at home is that I cannot live like that. Too stressful and critical and accusing in too dumb a way.

Getting Righted

I finally bought the tickets to Southeast Asia. I booked the first two nights in a hostel there. This means that I can put it out of my mind and finally put my focus back on studying.

I have spent this week trying to right myself with God. Well, not even that really, so much as clearing my mind and purifying my thinking. That combined with a regular exercise schedule is making me feel myself again. Instead of whining about where I think I should be at this point, I have to realize that the peace I felt with every horrific turn of events was a real indicator that God is making me stay put for a reason. Or reasons. 

A big part of being okay with where I am is relearning to give it to God. Giving God those failed exams, the ever-present issues with my university, and my hopes of romance in the future, giving these issues to Him in the present can allow me to have whatever future He has for me.

Today, I read in 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12, "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody." Of course, one aspect of being an academic can be an aversion to working with one's hands, but that certainly changes in the mission field. But what struck me most about the passage today was the ambition to lead a quiet life and mind one's own business. Because in the midst of trying to make a name for myself with the podcast, I simply see contrast. The secret ultimate object of it is for the podcast to become famous enough to generate income to fund medical missionary work, but at a glance, this passage seems to indicate that that is not the best pursuit. Then again, the Apostle Paul was speaking to church congregations rather than to, say, a missionary with side aspirations of being a comedy entertainer. The basic principles remain obvious, of course. Do not refrain from getting down and dirty, show that you are willing to work hard with your fellow man, and in general be a respectable person.