Around this time I stopped going to class altogether - and things became intensly quiet. For about three years the thought of peace and quiet horritfied me for a number of reasons, but I couldn't bear the thought of having to hold court with only my aching head and the contents inside being priisioned thoughts To sit in my dorm room and be scared to contemplate going out and talking to anyone, because I was to consumed with the enorimity of mental contradiction to be able to go out and be 'normal' - I would get take out dinner and go back to my room. I would lie in bed and try to pray try to find some sort of solace - a reason to not have all the faceless thoughts I had...but any rescue from it failed to come. The other thing about depression is guilt - the guilt in your head is enormous. I sat on many days damning myself saying that depression is just an affliction afforded to the weathly of the world. How many people in Bosnia had the luxury of enough comfort to be consumed with self crisis, how many simply had to survive and each, when seen on TV thanked God and their family for their lives and they're having gotten through all they had faced. And I, without exageration,  couldn't take it. I loathed myself, I loathed my place and I  had an unfogivable contempt for myself. I was at a private university - living a priveledged life and all I could do was this - this was all I was producing for all that I was given. Surely God would punish me for my shortcomings. And then the mind would seamlessly transition - with utmost ease to taking the pain of others as a personal cross. People's smallest burdens were fought on a mental battlefield in my head with much blood, agony, and casulties, I wanted peaces for others - for myself - for the weight to end - for people's fathers to come back from the dead, for illnesses to lift, and for the worrld to get along just like in the old 1980's coke commercial with the little kids and all the damn candles glowing. Knowing that it couldn't tormneted me. I couldn't watch TV. Every song, seemed to be about lost love, of pain, or lamentation. I remember watching a 60 minutes epsiode on children in Russia with AIDS and they were so  helpless. I was UNABLE to deal with it. I had to leave the room after about five minutes and go try to sink my head into other  thoughts.  I couldn't deal with thinking about the pain and unresolved unjusttice - about how unfair it was for them to suffer such things. My mind rumbled with the spinning fury of a locomotive - I was flooring it in neutral - and ached, my body manifested physical pain. It all seems so dramatic, so utterly overblowm, so self-important, but my mind was overcome. I have never been so deeply in touch with the immediacy of pain - and grief and unending tremoring fear.

A LITTLE LATER STILL It was around this time that my stomach acheds peaked in their pain. I was CONVINCED that I had cancer. I knew that I had stomach cancer - that constant abdominal pain was a leading symptom of something horrific. I had chest pains that I knew were, at any time, going to throw me into cardiac arrest and I'd die at twenty from a heart attack. I was reading every online journal I could get my hands on about cancer. I skipped class and went to the library to learn more about, what I just knew, was growing inside of me. I wrote down and chronicled (and have since lost) every thought, every meaninful quote, every note of interest. I figured that at least I could educate myself on my demise and not be surprised by what would kill me.(I know this all sounds so dramatic, and looking at it in this contex, it REALLY seems that way, but it seemed so inevitable and hopeless back then.)  I didn't want to be ignorant. Afterwards I would go home and eat crackers and think more about it and think about how I needed to be doing something, but was unable to because of my stomach aches, and the apathetic storm in my head. I would instead try to fall asleep. I began sleeping with music on - couldn't have my thoughts and volumess of gaping silence to become lost in. Music,. music, music, distraction, distraction, crying quietly, music,  no meds. I clung to sleep,  books and fear.

I'll get back to this laster...am pooped