Help

So... this time that I have been dreading has arrived. During the next 4 weeks, we have more programming than ever in the history of the Center. And fewer permanent staff members. Preparing for these programs brought me to the edge of what I thought I could handle as a human being without my head starting to spin on its axis and blow smoke out of any available orifice.

And that was just the before. Now we have the during and it's quite as intense as I expected.

Our summer volunteers are starting to arrive. While this ultimately means relief for me and a reduction in pressure so that I can adequately do my job sans aforementioned spinning and steaming, it also means, at the beginning, a big time investment in getting them settled in, organized and trained (which in some cases means the "this is a mouse, here's how you click" sort of training).

Today we have three programs simultaneously. Tomorrow I leave at 6:00 am to pick up the fourth. Except for my lunch hour, which I try to uphold religiously, I haven't seen the inside of my apartment (while I'm awake, that is) for several weeks and the trend doesn't appear to be grinding to a halt. Dishes and laundry and expectations are piling up.

And then there's the situation of the sudden and unfathomable demise of a relationship close to me, and then the realization that it actually wasn't sudden and unfathomable at all. I waver back and forth from compassion for the two people inside of the demise-ing relationship to the selfish relief of knowing that it sure could have hurt me a lot more than it did.

In the midst of this I have been holding out AUGUST 31 as my torch, my carrot, the light at the end of my tunnel. But suddenly, this week, it wasn't enough anymore, and I slipped seamlessly from "come on Jess, you can do this; just four more months" to "OK, here it is - the breaking point. Now I can't do it anymore, at least not without help."

This is my first full-time "real" job ever and it's really stressful and I'm far away from home and I don't have people geographically close to me who I can turn to and I can't seem to reign in my emotions and it's too much for me right now.

I have been flirting with the idea of therapy for a long time now, putting out feelers, trying to find someone here who could do it in English, someone who might understand my culture and my background a little better than average. I am fluent in German now (accent-free, even, according to some), but the German language center of my brain doesn't communicate with the emotion center, and I know that if I have to start talking about my feelings and my inner voice in German, it ain't gonna work. The search was pretty fruitless, but to be honest I wasn't looking all that hard. I was afraid to give it my all and not find anything, and then that little flickering candle of hope would be blown out.

And then a friend came to my rescue with the right solution - not ideal, but one I could live with, and I called up my new Telephone Therapist for Missionaries. After an hour, it was clear to both of us what the next step was, and I steeled myself to go to my homeopathic-loving German doctoress and convince her to prescribe me some harsh chemicals to restore order to my hormones and homeostasis and life. Which she did, after some prodding and a weepy "the therapist in the US really thinks this will help me".

And I do too.