I’ve been gone a while. That’s my bad, school kind of came and hit me like a freight train. Since my last post, I’ve come back to Hong Kong, done 3 days of hotel quarantine+4 days of home isolation, helped plan a cultural show and got back into school. I think I’ve handled it pretty well to be honest. I’ve been trying to stay calm, and take things one step at a time. My work-life balance has definitely improved, hopefully it continues. I switched my hairstyle twice too, and met another guy from the Caribbean. Since August, life has been moving at a mile a minute. I probably should’ve given you guys an update in the 2 months since, I hope you can forgive me. I should be a little more free now, so hopefully this can become a bi-weekly thing, instead of bi-monthly. SO what happened these past 2 months? What didn’t happen is more like it. Oh, one more thing, I passed out from the stress.
The horror, I know. I have to say though, it’s an interesting experience to say the least. I woke up with a fever on Friday morning, and smartly decided to not eat anything for breakfast or lunch. Surely, nothing could go wrong right? Wrong. I get up to use the bathroom, take 3 steps, and all of a sudden feel a sharp pain in my side and chest. I heard that I fell. Everything went black, but I remember hearing shouting, so I joined in, why not harmonize? Two minutes (it felt like two hours) later, I open my eyes, but I don’t recognize my corner at all. That was concerning for a couple reasons. The first one is that I had to consciously remind myself that I was awake, and that people were in my face begging, pleading me to wake up. The second reason is that I was (technically) in my corner. Just the one from last year. Instead of facing a window with a view of Starfish Bay like I normally do, all I saw was a curtain and a bed. Then it hits me, I’m in my roommate’s corner, the corner that I had last year. To be honest, I have never felt a fear like I did then. I wanted to tell my girlfriend that I was fine, but as my vocal cords recovered, I could barely even look at her. I had to watch her tears fall without being able to do so much as stroke her head and tell her that I was going to be fine. Even if I could have done that, I would’ve been lying through my teeth. I honestly didn’t know if I was going to slip out of consciousness again, and leave everyone around me to beg a skeleton to wake up.
I didn’t get to that thankfully, and eventually I could nod my head, and say a few words as I saw my tutor appear in front of me. I learned later that I hadn’t fallen once. I had stumbled once, fallen against a desk, and slid off again. Didn’t hit my head, but being propped up against a wall showed me how fragile and quick everything can be taken from you. The ambulance came, and I walked out with my usual bounce, but no one around me knew that if a gust of wind brushed me, I might have fallen all over again. The ambulance gets to the hospital fairly quickly, and on a gurney, they wheeled me into the waiting room.
I hated myself for making everyone around me panic like that. I hated myself for the call I was going to have to make, casually telling my family, 24 hours away, that I had lost my consciousness. I hated my body for giving up on me. But most importantly, I hated myself for the pressure I was putting myself under the previous week, which I am still 99% sure caused my ‘incident’.
But Justin, didn’t you say that you had a better handle on dealing with your stress? Didn’t you say that you weren’t going to let school do this to you? Surprise! Apparently I lied. September was one of the most stressful months of my life. Every day I woke up, my mind immediately went to my EE, or to my TOK Essay, or to anything else that felt like if it wasn’t done, I would die. The week leading up to my little episode, I slept 4 hours a night. Going to bed at 2 and waking up at 6 to try and finish that damn EE. The same EE that my last post was about. What can I say except nobody’s perfect. I had hoped it would come more organically, but there had to be a reason why my work-life balance improved. God Himself had to tell me to slow down. The same stuff I was talking about before, the internal pressure to be perfect, the excessive comparison to everyone else around me caused me to lose sight of what was truly important, and to be honest, had I landed differently, I could have lost a lot more than just my sight.
Anyways, pardon the detour. I waited in the hospital waiting room for four hours, before I was wheeled away from everyone who had come to stay with me. Whisked away from the outside world. At first, I thought that I could get used to this life. I had a room basically to myself, where I could stretch out and I finally started jeen-yuhs (I promise I respect Kanye West’s music, just his music). It was a nice change of pace. That feeling of comfort lasted about 7 hours. At 3AM, I was wheeled into the ward whose name entitles this post. At first, it didn’t seem too bad. There were more people, but only about 5, 6 if you include me, so I just rolled over and went back to bed.
That “everything will be fine” feeling lasted about 20 seconds after I woke up. I had the pleasure of eating some of the worst food I’ve ever seen, before actually taking stock of my surroundings. It was as if I fainted again. All of a sudden there were 2 more old men in the ward, and forgive me, but these guys were FIGHTING. Coughs left, right and center. One of the guys, bless his heart (no, seriously, bless his heart because it was under some serious pressure), could not stop letting out noises that shouldn’t come from a human mouth. Next to me, one guy wouldn’t stop groaning in agony. When I say all hours of the night this man was in pain.
I felt sympathetic of course, but after a while, my sympathy turned into annoyance. Not at the men themselves, but the fact that I, now fully recovered, had to stay in the same ward as men who clearly needed some serious specialist attention. Annoyance eventually turned into sadness though, as it’s impossible not to let being in the middle of all of this affect your mental health. Also, being in the middle of an unfortunate Dutch Oven didn’t help my mental state either. Seeing grown men have accidents and be changed like babies wasn’t the most pleasant experience.
As the doctors ran more tests on me, I kept on getting the same answer. “Looks pretty normal.” Over and over and over. So then if I was normal, WHY was I still there? To be honest, even as the room made for 8 swelled to contain 10 people, I never felt more alone. Isolated from everybody on campus as school reopened, I was forced to keep telling everyone that I would leave tomorrow. But as the days flew by, tomorrow became a mere idea, instead of a possible reality. Every day I woke up and did the same thing. Eat whatever junk they had given me, try to grace online class with my presence while some network TV was on full blast, finish class, sleep, eat again, and sleep again. The nurses didn’t talk to me. I’m sure that you can all tell I stood out in the hospital room, and as I sat down in a chair to try to get some work done, my roommates let me know I was ‘special’. Headphones on, as I tried to focus, I began to see pointing hands in my peripheral vision. I heard laughs and rapid Cantonese around me. Then I realized that there wasn’t something funny on TV, there was something funny in the room, wearing the same plaid pajamas as the rest of them, but this one had twisted hair and dark skin. I had to feel everyone laugh and gesture to their heads, as if in disbelief that hair could do what mine was doing. What hurt wasn’t the laughs, or the knowing looks, or the fact that I couldn’t understand anything that was going on. What hurt the most is that they couldn’t even respect me enough to laugh at me subliminally. They felt bold enough to laugh right in front of me, knowing that I couldn’t do anything but take it. Nothing like being a novelty.
Anyways, I had recovered by then, but the tests kept on coming, while I came no closer to leaving. They poked and prodded me, scanning my chest, my brain, my lungs, everything. But then they started doing the same things twice, and after not seeing a doctor for 2 days, I decided I was leaving. Thankfully, the school had connections, and on Friday, the week after my episode, the doctor told me I could leave. Having had my first shower of the week the day before, I couldn’t have packed up fast enough. I got back to school at around 3 PM, and went to bed.
I’m better now though, thankfully. Just got the last test result, my heart is fine. I can go back to football, track, gym and everything else. My life can resume. If I had fallen differently, though, I might not have been so lucky. Don’t leave it up to chance.
If there’s one thing I want you to take from this. It’s to just take care of yourself. We’re all under pressure from all sides. Living far away from home, learning in a new language for the first time, or just trying to make it through the day, existing is a struggle. But even as we all try to make the best of what we have, it’s important to know what matters. What’s the use in having a perfect predicted grade if you collapse from exhaustion? What’s the point in getting that one question right if you sleep through your alarm for the next week? What’s the point in being the best, if you don’t live to see your success. Please, don’t make the same mistake I did, I’m begging you guys. Seeing everyone around you fall into complete panic as they worry about how to help you, unresponsive and unfeeling, isn’t fun. Hearing my parents’ hearts break as I told them what happened, not even a month after I had promised to take care of myself as I tore myself from their embrace at the airport, wasn’t worth getting an A. Let your loved ones take care of you. Don’t let them worry about you. Our goals are important, but we can’t reach them, no matter how willing our spirit is, if our body is weak. Take care of yourselves, I love every single one of you.
P.S. I just want to shoutout a couple people who went above and beyond for me:
Sonya- thank you for always being there, with McDonald’s, some raisins, and a hug whenever you could visit the hospital. 我爱你. I wouldn’t have stayed sane in there if it wasn’t for you.
Mummy, Dad and Zach, for always being there for me to rant to or cry with. I promise to to stay healthy so you guys don’t have to worry again.
Fiona and Hayley- for the constant checking in, snacks and pulling strings to keep me from having to stay there for another week
Mika and Aren- you guys were some of the first people to run to my side, and get help. I owe you more than words can express.
Fiat, Jeremy and Taha- my roommates. I love you guys and thanks for always checking in, and for catching me when I fell.
Everyone who sent me any kind of encouragement, it kept me going when I didn’t see a way out of the ward, but if I listed everyone I would run out of space. You guys know who you are.
My teachers for being so gracious with deadline extensions and for the constant encouragement and care
The football team for stopping me from risking my health when I got back to campus, even though I really wanted to get back into training.
Last but not least, I have to give the Big Man Upstairs all the thanks, because if it wasn’t for Him I wouldn’t be here. He made sure that although I fell forward, I also fell into His Protection.