hell week, and how I survived it

To call this week a living hell would be an understatement. It might actually be an incorrect statement - it indeed felt like hell, but it certainly didn't feel like I was living. This week was so excruciatingly saturated with long tests and thesis work and oral exams and and sleep deprivation and Father Dacanay and Global Health, that it is a wonder I am still alive (and blogging) right now to tell the tale.

I really should be sleeping, conserving my energy for when life decides that it is time once again to torture me. But I have something that I want to say, and it is quite important, and you must understand that in trying to say it coherently, I will be squeezing out whatever juices are left in my last remaining brain cells. I shall not waste time then.

Yesterday, I slept for four hours only, woke up at 6 AM, and spent the entire morning studying for my oral exam with Father Dacanay. Worse still, I was so busy studying that I had eaten only a pack of Sweet Corn. By 12 noon, I was so tired and miserable and depressed that I wanted, almost willed, my body to have a nervous breakdown. Perhaps then I would be excused from having to function normally for the rest of the day.

But as much as I wanted to head to the clinic and plead mental incapacitation, I dragged myself to the study halls. When I got there, I found my friend Jessica happily making some copper wire art for her friends. She was spelling their names with the wire, twisting it with pliers to form the letters in cursive. I was temporarily stunned. My body is on the verge of completely shutting down before my 3 PM Theo quiz and my 5 PM Dacanay Orals, and here she was, making fancy copper wire art. Oh, the envy I felt! It took all my strength to keep myself from flinging my pile of readings into the trash can.

And then came Rap, looking his normal self, but with a pile of biblical texts in his hand - ammunition for his own Dacanay Orals, surely. He asked me how my studying was coming along, in his typical cheery manner, and I said, "Terribly," in my typical depressed manner. As I tried to suppress as a surge of sadness, he asked me if I wanted something to drink (implying that if I did, he would get it for me). Or if I wanted something to eat, or if I had eaten lunch at all. I said no to all three and promptly asked him to tell me everything that I would need to know for a quiz that was to take place in an hour.

And maybe it was the way I looked and sounded when I said it - a half-lidded, unshampooed mess of a girl with the cracking voice of a pubescent boy - or maybe it was something else entirely. But the next thing I knew, he was saying wonderful, simple words of encouragement to me. What a shame it is that I do not remember anymore what they were. He could have said "Kaya mo yan" or "You can't give up now" or "Want some tea?", but the wording does not matter. He was trying to lift my spirits, and that meant a lot to me.

You might be wondering, "The hell, man! He didn't even say anything profound!" You would be correct; he didn't (not in that moment, at least). But what was so striking to me in that moment is that it should have been me comforting him, and not the other way around. Here was a guy who would have to face, in that single day, three quizzes (well, one quiz that would count for three), one long test in a major subject, and one whopping Dacanay Orals (and still have to have the energy for thesis work afterwards). The week had been equally unkind to both of us, but on this day, he certainly had to deal with worse crap than I did. It was five days into my ordeal, and I had deteriorated into some mean, cranky lower life form who stopped smiling, or laughing at jokes. But Rap, five days into his own ordeal, still found the energy and patience to reach out and be a friend.

. . .

There is no moral to this story. I want to give a thank you where a thank you is due, and perhaps, in my prolonged state of fatigue, I am not doing a very good job of expressing myself.

But let me thank you, Rap, for egging me on when I was on the verge of giving up (i.e. cutting that Theo class and missing the three-quiz quiz in favor of curling into fetal position and weeping). You are a wonderful specimen of human being, and I don't know how I would have survived this week without you. You are the reason I tell the tale.