Loooooong week

Want to know why I've been saying nothing here for a while? Well, Jay over at Adventures of a Christian Collegian put it excellently in his list of things he has learned at college.

Professors are knowingly and incontrovertibly in an evil alliance to assign all quizzes, tests, and major papers during the same exact week. This cannot be avoided no matter what professors you pick. Even the ones you thought were cool (because they were younger and perhaps only went by their first name, which was something usually along the lines of "Mark" or "Jenny") are in on this conspiracy.

I had three tests this week, a quiz, and two major assignments. Throw into that my job working at the commons, helping to plan a pro-life rally in the spring, staying up late trying to keep my potentially concussed roommate awake, and fitting a religious retreat into my schedule, it's been a hectic week. I've had about four nights out of the past seven that have only had about four to five hours of sleep.

In the past 24 hours, I got 15 hours of sleep. I went on a run with one of my friends too, and I feel awesome, even though I'm helping to run a table to promote a pro-life speaker tomorrow, and I'm not entirely sure what's all going on with that. But that's not all of why I feel awesome.

Friday night at the retreat, we had faith sharing. Now, this scares the ever-loving hell out of me (I like using "ever-loving" as a swear modifier, but it doesn't really make as much sense here). I love faith sharing though. It feels so good to be able to talk to people and feel like they understand you, and maybe to get some things off of your chest. My usual policy with faith sharing is that once I think of something I want to talk about, I always wait fifteen seconds after the last speaker, to give someone who maybe urgently wants to talk the chance to get up there and speak. Plus, it kind of makes it easier to avoid going up front too if I give myself that time period.

God however, had different plans than for me to sit quiet that night though. After a couple of people went up (including one of my close friends, that had a problem he hadn't told me about, but I'm glad he let it out), I was doing my counting thing, and I got up past twenty. Nobody was making any moves, and finally I just said "screw it" to my insecurities and I stood up. Once you stand up, you can't really sit back down without people noticing, so I was locked in.

A lot of people had been talking about prayer and what it's done for them, so I started there. I said how what prayer does is awesome, but what prayer is is even better. I talked about how great it is to be able to talk to God whenever you wanted to, and my favorite ways to pray. And then I said how there was one prayer I wasn't sure about. Whenever I say it, I wonder if I'm saying or using it right or whatever.

That prayer is the Our Father. There's a line in it that says "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." But as I told them, I have a huge grudge. There is someone that I haven't forgiven, and I don't know how to forgive him. I don't know where he is or what he's doing or whether he's even sorry or not, and I don't know how to get closure and let go of this whole situation. If I'm doing well, I don't usually think about it, but when I start getting tired or stressed out, if I have nothing else to distract me, it will be the only thing I think about. Just on and on through my mind, as many bad thoughts about all of this as I can think of. I told them how sometimes I just can't function right because of it. And I apologized to my friend Dan, because the "problem" I talked about in this post had to do with how I can't forgive this person. I've been praying about this, but I still haven't found a solution.

Afterwards, people were hugging me, and I kept bursting out into tears. My friends told me to just keep praying, and that God never gives us more than we can handle. One of my friends told me I was beautiful, because that was the first thing that popped into her head. I definitely felt a lot more beautiful than I had in a while.

For the first time in almost three years since this grudge started, I actually talked to someone about it. Sure, I didn't go deep into it, and when Dan wanted to ask me more about it, I had to tell him that I'm sworn to secrecy about the specifics (which is the truth, until I ask for that promise to be given back to me). But I did bring it up. I finally told people about it. In my daily journal that night, I think I wrote "I did it!" close to eighteen times in a row, I was just that happy.

It may not be much, but it's a start, and that's how healing works, a little bit at a time.

I knew this would happen

YES! College is getting into full-swing, and I am tired and swamped. My computer science homework had me up until 6 in the morning last night, and it was really just to solve unsolvable (at least with our current knowledge) things that the teacher never told us we'd come up against. Fun stuff.

Also, I cut my thumb on a shard of glass that was embedded in the sole of my shoe. I just thought it was a pebble, go sue me. I have to slow down on the guitar practicing until at least tomorrow night, I think.

My friend is doing good, he came back after the weekend, and I had supper with him and some other people. He didn't come to the Catholic meeting after supper, but I'm glad he's at least well enough to hang out with people on some degree.

I am seriously behind on my responsibilities as a webmaster for the pro-life club on campus, Students For Life. I'm starting to feel really guilty. I definitely need to change some things, like, everything on the resource page and most of "What we've done" and the board page. That, and I just need to create a new layout in general. The website makes me feel like I'm browsing the internet in a cave. It needs to be cheerier. The rest of the club is doing admirably, and we're hoping to get Jason Evert and/or Christopher West to give a speech on campus, with help in part due to Generation Life. We've got a life rally being planned for the spring as well, with Peter Kreeft showing up on the final day of it.

I've also been having guilty dreams about not exercising enough. In the past three days, I've had two dreams about old coaches of mine berating me for not being in shape as well as I was, or telling me about various opportunities I have on campus to exercise. So, I'm going for a run. Right now. Bye.

Why no post?

This is probably one of the longer gaps I've gone without posting anything. I'm sure all four of you (and I can't even count something cheesy like my mom, because she doesn't even know about this) were extremely worried.

Well, I'll explain in probably one of the best lines from Scripture: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

I'd like to slightly amend that for the purpose of explaining things. "There is no(t many) greater fatigues than to fear for the life of a friend."

One of my friends, who will remain unnamed, came to me late Wednesday night, and wanted to talk to me in person. Then when we met up, he wanted to talk to me somewhere more private.

Apparently his sister had gone through a complete psychological breakdown about a week ago, and his parents had never told him. He was really worried about his sister, and he was worried about how his parents would react (his parents don't exactly rate high in parenting). He has problems of his own too, so he was worrying that he was going to have a breakdown too, that he would just wake up the next morning and not care about anything.

So, I hung out with him that night. We went exploring the basement of one of the commons, got some cheeseburgers at McDonald's (protein is always good for depression, although that was unintended), and then we made a mash-up of two posters we found in the commons, a blood donation poster, and an ad for a big dinner being held by a frat. Imagine a poster where they try to get you to donate blood by showing a huge black guy with a football helmet on trying to eat the biggest damn hamburger you may have ever seen. And we hung it up. And at least one of them is still hanging up in my commons, because I guess no one has realized yet that it's a spoof.

Like this, only with a helmet on too.

Staying up late killed me though, because once I was done hanging out with him at around 2:30, I had to study for a French test, which I did pretty well on, despite being sleep deprived and stressed out. Later that night, my friend called me again, said he had talked to a psychologist today, but he was worried that his parents had gotten a 302 (involuntary commitment) for his sister, and that they would do the same. In the course of the conversation, he also told me that his psychologist said he was going through "suicidal ideation," which means he's been thinking about committing suicide, without any actual plans or intent to commit suicide.

Luckily, he decided to go home for the weekend, and he's getting help there, but I'm still worried about him. After hanging out with my friends who came up for the football game last night, I slept for ten hours straight, and I still feel kind of tired. So, if you could, please pray for my friend.

Funny and Serious

My blog is rated PG-13! I'm glad, because I was rather worried I might cross over into an R rating. PG-13 is not bad though, I can live with that comfortably. Although it did flag me for using the word "hurt" 5 times. Oops, now six.

As for less comfortable things, since my friend Randi is resigning from the role of president, and I just found out that James, or vice president, is also heavily burdened with schoolwork and will be resigning either at the end of the semester or in a month, people will soon need to be stepping up to take leadership positions. The question I've been asking myself is whether or not I could manage to do that, and also more importantly, whether or not I should. It would be a big commitment, but it's also an important job, especially on our campus. I just hope my prayers will be answered and I'll have some idea about what to do.

Just FYI

I am a one-armed god of programming (metaphorically speaking, of course). Technically, it was more like one-handed with a thumb, but still. Last night my hands got scratched up, and I bandaged them, but it became that everything but my thumb on my left hand is stuck in a clenched position so as not to crack open my wounds (which is not good), and the ring finger on my right hand as well.

This morning, I had my first computer science test of the semester. I was really worried about it. There was a written part, then a programming part. I got around 18/20 on the written part, I'd guess, and I was one of the first people to hand that section in.

When I got to the programming section, I was pretty nervous, but it seemed like I finished the entire program with half an hour to spare. I was confused. Only one other person had finished, and he had only given back his sheet a few seconds before I finished writing my code. I took an extra five minutes just to make sure I had everything that was asked of me. Amazingly enough, I did. So I handed in my paper, and was the second person finished. I beat like, 95% of my class to finishing, and I only had about four fingers to type with (I don't really use my pinkies).

Maybe I might have a future in computer science after all. Thank you God for gifting me and helping me out. I definitely had some help, because there was a word bank that I was not expecting and that totally saved me in the writing section.

How Am I Not Myself? #2

I totally realized yesterday that I had been forgetting about these. I really liked the idea, and I feel kind of bad that I let such a nifty idea slip out of my mind. Anyways, on to the real entry.

I have a friend who went through some very traumatic situations a few years back. I helped this friend through a lot of these problems. I feel very strongly about these sort of things that my friend was thrown into.

Very rarely do I go a week, or most of the time even a day, without part of what I learned from my friend cropping up somehow in my life. It makes it hard to forget my friend. It makes it hard to forget what my friend went through.

However, sometimes I do forget. I forget in a bad way. Worse, sometimes I just choose to ignore the pain my friend experienced. What I sometimes let myself do is just a big "screw you" to my friend.

Very rarely do I ever hate myself, but the times that I feel that way, it's usually when I've chosen to forget about my friend.

How am I not myself?

I am not myself when I forget the pain of my friends.

Help a Brother (or Sister) out!

Over at Andy's blog, I first saw an entry about questioning what you're going through because of all of the difficulties in your life. Check it out. It links to another blog post on one of his friend's blogs, and you can either follow the link train, or just check it out here. I guess this blog post is kind of part three in this series.

We all know that sometimes life is hell. Andy saw that, and it's true, but you still keep making your way through all of it. Will, Andy's friend, has been working hard at trying to make the church he is in better, and that's very hard too.

I guess what I really want to say here is to help out. Help out groups you're in, help out your church, your sports team, your business group, anything. Help out the people in charge, because while they may seem like they're totally in control and invincible, secretly, like Andy and Will, they're really having a difficult time.

I'm the webmaster of a pro-life club here on campus, and because of that, I go to the board meetings we have to plan stuff. My friend Randi, she is the president of the club, and this is pretty much the first big leadership position she's had. I knew she was nervous and scared, but she's been doing a really good job with everything in the club, especially considering that she and the rest of the board are practically rebuilding the club from scratch.

We had a board meeting on Wednesday, and Randi said she wanted to see all of the board members after the meeting (some people from the Catholic club on campus were there as well). I figured she just wanted to talk to us alone to discuss the influence the Catholic club was having on us (it's a secular pro-life club, so we can't really be overtly supporting one religion). She had a much more pressing issue to discuss.

My friend Randi had gone through two panic attacks over the past few days over everything she had been worrying about for being president, not to mention all the pressures of just being a college student. She really just wanted to know that if she decided to resign, that someone else would step up and take her place. We all pretty much told her that the club would definitely be in good hands if she decided to resign, and that if she felt like she had too much work, she should have told us. We would have helped more if she needed it. Heck, as the webmaster, I do almost nothing. I easily could help a lot more, and I told her that.

Leaders aren't invulnerable. They need help too, but more importantly, they need to know that there are people available to help, people they can call on. So even if you just tell someone that you'd be willing to help with events in the future, that'd be quite a burden off of their backs.

I'm sorry for my problems

Tonight I screwed up a bit. My friend Dan thinks it was because of alcohol, which is good, because he thinks it's an outside problem instead of just me. I was supposed to bring "The Truman Show" to his dorm and watch it there with him and some other people. I showed up finally about two hours late, and Dan just advised me that he would "let this go, but you should probably just go home now John." Dan had called my cell phone much earlier, when I was only a little late, and while I took a quick poll about what to do, one of my other friends took my phone and told Dan that he had stolen my phone.

Myself, I don't know whose fault it was. It definitely wasn't the alcohol. I was thinking about not going to Dan's dorm before I started drinking at all. I just didn't want to see him. It's a long story, and I can't decide if it's my fault, his fault, or someone else's fault entirely.

Like I said a few posts back, I have a problem. Usually it's nothing. This week has been crappy, and something Dan had said a week or two back had sort of set off flags in my mind. It wasn't until today though that what he had said really had an effect on me. I read something in a book every student had been given at our high school graduation. I just didn't want to deal with what was bubbling up inside me, so I fell asleep at my bed so I wouldn't have to deal with anything. That always seems like the best option to me. Do nothing, hide away from your problems. They'll go away in a little while if you get some rest.

I know I should apologize to him, but right now I'm just trying to figure out who to blame. He doesn't know what's wrong with me, so I can't really blame him for something he didn't realize he was doing. I think I should blame myself, but my mind is telling me that's not right either. Maybe I should be getting more help with this problem. Usually it's no trouble at all. I went through the entire summer without a single hitch, I just think the stress of a new semester of school and a lack of sleep is getting to me.

Right now, Dan is IMing me, implying how he feels hurt, and I just don't know what to say. He said he felt hurt, and I said I was sorry. I told him I didn't know how to explain, but that I did feel like an ass. Then he had to head to sleep.

If there's one thing that I definitely know is my fault, it's this: I'm sorry that I don't know how to deal with this better. For all of my smarts, I'm still in the dark. I'm sorry that I can't figure out how to deal with this.

Under the influence

Right now, I'm still sort of getting rid of a bit of tipsiness. My fingers feel a bit weird as I'm typing this out, like the letters on the screen are appearing faster than they should.

As a person of strong resistance to alcohol, I rather had to hit myself hard to get into this state. By hitting myself hard, I mean I took six shots of vodka in a row, in less than a minute, and a shot of Southern Comfort later. It left my stomach feeling a bit weird, but once it calmed down, I was good.

It's funny the things that you'll do when you're not as much in control of yourself. We were planning on going to a toga party, but we went to a dance party some members of a Catholic club on campus were hosting. The other members of my group got bored and left, but I stayed. Dancing is fun. Who needs to get drunk and try to pick up girls? Techno music and dancing with no inhibitions is where the real fun is at. I'm glad I didn't leave.

At some point, I went into their kitchen to get a drink, and I decided to make a message out of the magnets they had on their fridge. You know the magnets I'm talking about, those little white ones with words and suffixes on them? Over what seemed like a very long time of searching and deliberating, probably made long by my slightly handicapped state, I finally made my message. I sent it in a text message to myself, so I wouldn't forget it. It said:

Together we give honest friendship. Share the heart. Smile, believe, trust your companions.

Really, in a perfect world, it would be difficult to find truer words.

Jesus saves us... from unexpected things.

So the other day, I went to the first meeting of the semester of the anime club. I hadn't been there in about 8 months, considering last semester I worked during the meeting time, but I got to go and chill out and watch anime. Yes, I know, I'm a nerd.

Isn't it just so cool how people think up these crazy ideas? I mean, I would love to be able to do the stuff people do in animes. Give me control over paper to make it into creatures and bows and arrows and stuff? I'm game. Lightning-fast samurai skills? Sign me up.

I was sitting next to a guy that I had just met, and he was new up at this campus. I felt like I had helped him feel comfortable, and able to relax more and have a good time. Whenever I think about meeting new people and making them feel like they're in a group of friends they just haven't seen since before they were born, it makes me think about doing the good work of Jesus.

Suddenly, an amazing idea hit me! Wouldn't it be awesome if Jesus did stuff like in the animes? I want Jesus to be some badass warrior who slices and dices vampires in a post-nuclear, post apocalyptic end time. I want the Knights Templar to be revived as a mercenary organization that searches for ancient relics, all while shooting up zombies and werewolves and stopping demons from taking over the world.

...

What's that you say silent shouter? You say these sort of things already exist? You say that Jesus fights vampires and Mass just becomes watching Jesus whoop ass on a big screen TV? You're telling me that the Knights Templar really do become a group of holy mercenaries, and they also have to deal with bombs fueled by the powers of Hell?


I didn't believe the silent shouter either, but I checked out his sources, and they're legit. This is some awesome religious comic-bookery. If you're ever bored and want to be entertained by some awesomeness that is good for your soul (well, maybe all the blood and violence isn't, but, eh), check out those comics. You may have some trouble finding Loaded Bible, because you'd have to buy it someplace like here. Or download it illegally. Not that I'm encouraging that.

Thank You God

I have a problem that luckily enough, I haven't had to deal with for the past two months or so, but going to mass tonight, it got really bad. I was trying to fight off tears during mass, and I was trying to make sure I didn't look like anything was wrong with me. During my quiet time after receiving communion, I was praying to God to help me with what was going on.

Walking home from mass, I was just trying to keep from having a panic attack. I breathed through the fabric of my shirt once or twice to slow down some hyperventilation. My plan pretty much was just to go to sleep and try to cry into my corner without my roommate hearing or noticing me, if he was even there.

I got back to my room, and there were like, nine people in it, 6 of them girls. My roommate was pregaming, and I got convinced to go along with them. We went to a frat, and while I'm not really a frat kind of guy, I had a pretty good time just hanging out, getting less awkward with my roommate, and being a good wingman to all of the people in our group, guys and girls alike.

Right now, maybe it's just from a little bit of alcohol still floating around in my system, but I feel so much better. I don't know if it was just letting off steam or something else, but somehow, it's like my prayers were answered. Through drinking and partying.

Weird.

I'm a hypocrite.

I realized I was a hypocrite just moments ago. Now, most people are hypocrites in one way or another, but sometimes we don't realize what it is that we do that is hypocritical. Through a wide range of "coincidences," I came to realize that the last post I made is hypocritical.

I was pissed off at my friend Alex. I had to drag him back to safety for an hour and a half. It left me feeling tired and weary, to say the least. I felt like he didn't respect me in my relationship, that if he really was my friend, that he wouldn't do stuff like this to me. We were together a lot today working at a concession stand at Beaver Stadium (Go Penn State!), and we managed to make things all right. I sort of implied that I felt hurt by all that I had to do, and I didn't want to do it again, and Alex implied that he wouldn't drink so much that I would have to do that.

There is someone I treat in the very same way as Alex treated me last night. That person is Jesus.

I went to a religious group meeting, and the leader talked about how we need to develop a relationship with Jesus, that a relationship with Him, God, and the Holy Spirit is really the core of our religion. Getting towards the end of finishing Donald Miller's "Searching For God Knows What" has also reinforced this idea in my head of a relationship with Jesus.

I realized that most of the time, I am being a total jerk to Jesus. I am drunk and angry and heading towards trouble in His eyes, but I still want Him to let me go. Jesus, however, just keeps on pulling me back. He's been dragging me back to safety and away from a much more serious punishment than a fine for probably a good 10-15 years. Yet He still keeps on pulling me along. Some of my other friends might say about me "Let's just leave him here, he might be okay." Jesus tells them no. He wants to bring me home. A lot of the time I fight Him, I pull up my legs so He's forced to carry me, I try to run out of His supporting arms and into a frat house so I can just party some more. Each time, He comes running to help me. Many times I feel angry about His help. I'll yell at God and Jesus because I don't understand why they won't let me go do the things that I want.

But in the end, God knows what is best for me. I just have to learn how to accept that.

I'm sorry, but I just can't deal with you right now

Tonight I got a chance to hang out with some of my good friends for the first time since last year at school. We are a group of guys that was affectionately dubbed "The Freshman Guys" by the Catholic group we were in. I had some ridiculously fun times with these guys last year. Sometimes things would get a bit out of hand, and usually I would be the one to try to sort things out, because I have the highest tolerance to alcohol out of our group, I'd say I'm probably the most patient, and I like to think I'm good at defusing situations (Seriously though, how many people have actually used the line "Bros before Hos" to stop an argument?). I'm happy to help out, because I like to see my friends have a good time, and I just like helping people too and helping make peace between people.

Tonight though, has pushed me past my limits. Me, Alex, Brian, Dan, and two other guys all were drinking a bit in Alex and his roommate's dorm. Alex, somehow being the biggest lightweight ever, was already pretty tipsy off of probably a small amount of alcohol (I had gotten there late). Me, I had a straight shot of 190 proof alcohol, several shots of whiskey, and I quite literally felt nothing.

Eventually, one frat and a house party later, I figured Alex had had enough to drink, and needed to go home and sober up. This was at around the time he took off his shirt and pants during a one-man dance to "Greased Lightning." Don't worry, he still had his boxers on, but still.

Long story short, Alex didn't want to leave. He just wanted to go party more. He fought with me, Brian, and Dan the entire. An hour and a half I fought with him to try to get him home and keep him from getting an underage citation. Dan wanted to leave him. Brian wanted to leave him. I said no. He was my friend, and I was going to get him home safe.

He bled on me, he almost got me beat up by frat boys, he had me carry him quite a few times, and just in general he was a absolute asshole at letting me help him. If there was a way for him to slow things down, he did it, excluding actually getting into a fight with me.

I eventually got him home with Dan and Brian's help, but he just wouldn't go to sleep. I was so tired. I had done most of the carrying of Alex this entire time, as Brian was still kind of tipsy, and Dan's idea of getting Alex to come along was telling ridiculous lies and hoping he'd believe it. We sat in his dorm room for a while, hoping he'd sleep, but he just didn't want to. Eventually, he needed to go to the bathroom, but he wouldn't let anyone come with him. I knew this was code for "I'm going to run off to the commons or something because I still want to have fun," but I had endured enough. I let him go. I had gotten him back on campus, I had gotten him back to his room, and if he wanted to screw it up from there, I would let him. I left just a few moments after Alex left his room, and already there was no sight of him down the hallway. I made my way outside, and just stopped in the stairwell to pray for him.

I had done this sort of thing, praying for Alex when he drinks too much and runs off. The last time I was worried he would get hypothermia and die outside somewhere, but luckily, my prayers somehow were answered and I found him after searching for close to an hour. He had been in a lounge drunk dialing people.

I started walking, but still praying, and I started getting sort of vindictive. Maybe he needed to get caught. I prayed to God to let the right thing happen, whether it be keeping Alex free from the campus police, or whether it was him getting a citation so he'd learn a lesson.

Walking back though, I realized something. Taking care of Alex the way I had was not something I wanted to do. Sure, if he happens to drink too much and starts puking, hell, I'd be right there with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of water. The entire time I was helping him, he just disregarded everything I did for him. He forced me into situations where I had to use force against him to try to help him because I was pissed off and I couldn't think of any other way. Thinking about that started drawing me into a panic attack, because I hate getting mad at people. I hate getting mad, because usually when I'm really pissed off, I end up hurting someone I love. I so rarely get mad, but I just wanted to beat the living hell out of Alex tonight.

He's my friend! I'm supposed to love him! I just felt like a bad person because I wanted to hurt my friend and I couldn't think of anyone to call or talk to because it was already two in the morning, and most of my friends were probably already asleep, and I didn't want to wake them up just to listen to me rant and end up crying on the phone to them. So instead, I walked the eight minutes or so back to my dorm room, completely alone, scouring my mind for who to turn to while trying to hold back tears in front of the people I walked past.

I need to talk to him about this, but I worry it will just degrade into me telling him how much I think he was a shitty friend and that what he did shows he doesn't care about me and that he has an alcohol problem or something, and I'd end up yelling all of this in front of a bunch of people who don't really know how we drink and whatnot, and it'd just be shameful for him, and I don't want to do that to him. I can't just let this go and keep on looking after him when he can't manage to control himself, and basically, that is how he got so out of control. He never put any sort of limit on what he drank, he just kept on going.

He called while I was writing this, and told me he was heading back to his dorm after going to probably one of the furthest places on campus from his dorm. I told him it was all okay, and he thanked me for helping him out and dealing with him, but he doesn't realize or even really remember everything I had to go through helping him out.

I guess the real question is, how do I go about figuring out this situation? How do I forgive all of that? He said we'd hang out tomorrow night, and he definitely wouldn't drink as much, but I don't really believe him. Even drinking half as much would put him in the same state. I don't want to be in that situation again but I don't want Alex to get in trouble and I just don't know what to do. He hurt me deeply tonight (this is my third draft for this entry, and most of this one has just been filled with me crying as I typed). I just don't know what to do here.