Sunday, May 04, 2008

• Nailpolish, or, why college could be fatal

  Currently Watching West Side Story (Full Screen Edition) By Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno, George Chakiris see related

  The girls on my wing tried to kill me a couple weeks ago.  They don’t know it.  And they probably never will.  But nail polish and asthma are a bad combination.  And when you add to that mix most of the girl refusing to open windows because it’s cold and only one girl doing it such that instead of airing out the dorm, it merely swirls air that carries the smell of death in the form of an asthma trigger… It was not a good situation.  I’ve written before about what physically happens during an asthma attack and how to help someone having one.  What follows is a look at a feeble attempt to face what it does mentally head-on – it’s from my journal that night, and it’s unedited.

  I’m so scared.  I don’t know why… of what.  Am I afraid of dying?  No.  All things considered at the moment, I’d much rather be dead than alive.  Is it the process I’m scared of?  No.  I don’t think it’s dying I’m scared of.  I think I’m just… chemically… scared.  Whatever it is that is making my hands and legs shaky, is probably also contributing to the fear.  There – I got a full breath.  I’m so tense.  Relaxing would help.  Then maybe I could go to sleep.  But I’m scared to sleep.  Why?  I think… because it’s drowning.  No one held underwater is going to not get an adrenaline rush with the fear they need to save themselves.  I think the fear is probably a physical reaction to that moment I know will come and I will have to let go, sink beneath the surface of sleep and let my body automatically take that first gasp of water – air – uncontrolled oxygen.  Maybe I’ll survive it.  Maybe I won’t.  But it would be a lot easier to face if I knew for sure.  I’m scared, God.  I don’t know how much of it is a chemical reaction to this and I don’t know how much I’m just failing to trust You.  All I know is, there’s a piercing pain in my throat with every breath, and an ache in my lungs, and I think I might throw up… and I’m scared to try to sleep, God.  I want to curl up and hide, but my brain is screaming that my hiding place could be a trap.  You, O God, are the only true Hiding Place, the only safety that will actively hold me.  You alone, O God, will keep me alive or kill me as you see fit, and no fumes anyone can throw at me have any power over me.  You are my Strong Tower.  In You I am safe, even when I don’t feel like it.  So I think I am going to go read Psalm 91 and 46 and go to sleep.

  Thank God I wasn’t able to sleep.  Because the meds I thought were working weren’t able to do enough by an hour after I took them.  By the grace of God, my fear of sleep kept me awake to notice and go spend the night on another floor (a solution I had resisted before because it’s against dorm rules.  I changed my mind when it was clear my life depended on it. )  God was my Hiding Place that night, a Strong Tower who kept me safe… and He still is.  Even when He uses my own silly fear to do it. 

  “The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous runs into it and is safe.” – Proverbs 18:10

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