The Luck of the Lancasters

My family is terrifyingly lucky. We always seem to miss disasters by sometimes a few minutes, others by a few days. 2 weeks before 9/11 we took a trip into New York city to see the sights. I believe we went to Ellis Isle, we rode speed boats around the Statue of Liberty, we went up to her crown, and we went to the top of the Twin Towers.

I was only in 2nd grade at the time so I didn't realize exactly what happened, what 9/11 really meant, and how lucky we were. I also didn't realize how close we were time wise to 9/11. For a few years, I thought that we had gone earlier in the summer. It was our last family thing before school started up again.

I remember being up on the roof of that tower. I remember one of the top floors had a touristy map of the city on the floor and I remember bending over to touch the colors. I remember how fast the elevator took us up.

It's chilling, almost haunting. To think that even though school had started, how many kids were in the city, in the towers on that day, seeing what we saw, and having that be their last memory. How many kids lost parents, grandparents, even siblings on that day and in events that occurred in the following years.

It's haunting to think of all of those who were luckier than we were and missed being in the disaster by a few minutes, or a forgotten purse. Of all those people in the city who were the luckiest who missed the injuries but who were close enough to hear the planes and towers crashing, to see the shards or smoke, to feel the ground shake from that much material crashing to the ground.

Of the lucky ones within the disaster, who were able to take cover from the raining debris, of those who were pulled from the tower rubble alive.

But those people, I wonder how lucky they feel. they were given their lives back but at what price? how much mental trauma do they have to deal with? Could they live normal lives after physically healing?

There are times I say to myself, we are lucky, but then list off as I have done above and think, that doesn't count as being lucky since I survived the day in the comfort of my own home knowing that my family is safe.

But we were lucky. We weren't there. 2 weeks. That counts as luck.

My family is terrifyingly lucky.

ISDotG: Stuck on Repeat

Something that most people don't understand, is that the brain has a mind of it's own. Yes, I know, that doesn't make much sense but keep it in mind.

There are times when my brain feels like it is its job to tear me down, break me apart, until I am nothing more than a catatonic shell. It waits until I am alone and whispers stabbing words as if it was singing a lullaby. Lately, it seems to be stuck on repeat.

Something that I believe many brilliant people do not handle well are successes. When a brilliant person succeeds, it is an amazing feat that many of the general public cannot do themselves. But when a brilliant person succeeds, it is the most destructive thing that can happen. That success gets put onto a pedestal by the general populace and becomes a beacon of terror, of inadequacy, to that brilliant individual. You see, brilliant people are expected to succeed, to even succeed better and more often than the general population, I mean, that's what makes them brilliant right? However, the pressure of that success sometimes becomes so immense that it forces that brilliant person into an internal unstable shell. In their minds, they can start to believe that they can never be as good as that success, all they can do now is fail. There is such a massive stigma around failing that it can break a person's sanity.

Sometimes brilliant people can never accept what they have done or accomplished. Sometimes we feel like we can never do enough.

In high school, my schedule included class everyday, trombone lessons once a week, work on weekends, college classes at night, and our school's broadcasting club. If I told this to my friends, they would call me Wonder Woman. They didn't know how I did any of it and stayed sane. This shocked me. I look and that and say, I have too much downtime. I could do more. I am not doing enough. I don't have the right to relax. Granted, I relax anyway, but I get this sense of guilt that I didn't deserve to spend that time doing nothing productive. I could spend that time studying, or writing a paper.

To the world, I was like a super hero, but in my own mind, I was worthless.

Worthless. 

The lullaby on repeat. Worthless.

I don't deserve to relax, I don't deserve to do nothing with my time. I have no right to take a light semester. I have enough time to be taking 2 more classes, maybe even more.

This is what awaits me when I get in my car to drive home from campus.

I understand that it is perfectly ok to not do anything after I graduate. I understand that it's ok to not go to veterinary school. I understand that I don't have to know what I am doing with the rest of my life.

But I am not good enough to let my self take a break. Take a break from what? I barely have a full schedule. I sit around playing a video game for hours. What contribution does that have on society? How am I being a productive human being when I can't even interact with people? 

Worthless.

Not go to vet school? You're weak. Normal people can handle this. Why can't you? It's because you spend all those hours being worthless and not doing anything constructive. You don't even have a job. You can't even handle attempting to get a job. How are you going to survive in the real world?

These are all real thoughts that have gone through my head more than once, usually on repeat in a single moment. The unfortunate thing is that distractions only work for so long until your mind hijacks that distraction and adds it to the list of things you should be ashamed of doing instead of doing something productive. Sometimes, all that seems to work is crawling into a catatonic ball and waiting until it goes away.