It has been nearly a month since I have slept a full night on an actual mattress. During Labor Day weekend, about a month ago, the unit above my apartment sprung a leak in the bathroom and an existing problem got worse. A small spot of mold turned into a swarm, spreading from the upper corner of the wall, down the closet and into my personal affects. A small growth of mold that we wrote to a landlord about in a letter with our rent had multiplied, and forced my roommate and I out of our apartment. The water pressure had also destroyed the tiles in our bathroom’s shower leaving us miserable and dirty to boot. As you can imagine this was not how I wanted to begin my last semester as an undergraduate at university.
Over the course of the month I have seem my health be affected by the disturbed sleeping pattern, the uncomfortable arrangements I have had to make, and my studies have hit an all time rock bottom. This was the first time in my life that I have been physically without a place to call home; luckily I have been able to shack up at the office on an air mattress (occasionally sleeping on the couch to give someone else the mattress to sleep on) which has definitely eased the pain a little. But I can honestly say that this has been one of the worst months of my life.
All throughout this month I have learned how much I am actually able to take without breaking. I really feel like shit right now, burnt out and beat up, but my mind is keeping my sicken body going. I need to get this work done. No matter how much trudging it takes I am going to begrudgingly finish everything as best as I can. I am going to keep my mouth shut, no matter how much I think a teaching method is wrong. Maybe one day I will be able to incorporate what I have learned at college into something meaningful.
I am writing this blog post now sitting on the air mattress that I purchased a couple of weeks ago. My room has yet to be fully finished, I am waiting on a contractor to finish shampooing the carpet, and I have piles of work that needs to be taken care of. The past two weeks I have been nursing a cold that had seemingly gone, came back, only to be gone again leaving a persistent dry cough. I survived the first round of midterm exams, have one more next week, and will be officially halfway finished in about two weeks. This semester has truly been the worst and I am absolutely looking forward to the real world. A world without examinations meant to trick you into the wrong answer, mislead you, and generally make you feel shitty about yourself. A world where the end result matters and not the theoretical process that you used to get that result.
I can smell the roses. Let’s just hope that life does not through another curve ball my way. My apologies for something that is less humorous – I have been unable to write a funny piece this whole month. I’ll make an attempt to get back into the groove of things soon. I promise.