October 30, 2000 ~ I Forget That I Have a Body

The demons are gathering for the party of the year, and I speak not of Halloween. I can feel them creeping in, gathering in the corners, hiding in the trees. If I listen very hard, when the wind calms and the rattling corpses of the fall leaves become still, I think I can hear them laughing. The demons are the stress in my head. This is going to be a Hellish week.

Today in class, Cory said something that I really related to. She mentioned how sometimes she will be sitting in a chair reading for six hours straight. What caught my ear, however, is how she described the feeling she gets after an especially long period of reading. "I forget that I have a body. I am so absorbed in the books that I am pure intellect." Yeah, I hear you, Cory. Sometimes I forget that I have a body too. It is so draining to just sit for so many hours doing nothing but taking an intellectual journey.

Then, of course, I finally do remember my body, move, and am shocked by the aches every muscle has developed and the incredibly weary feeling of my blurry eyes. I am trying to counteract this effect by remembering to get up at least once an hour and walk around a bit. So far, my memory in this respect has been less than encouraging.

Plus, my caffeine intake has increased by a good 1,259 percent. The fact that my hands are shaking all the time now is probably a bad sign.

I have hundreds of pages to read and three papers to write. I do not look forward to getting up at six tomorrow morning to work after staying up until some godforsaken hour. How will I ever manage?

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