Sometimes, the only thing that holds you together is strategically placed duct tape (over your mouth) and a prayer. As I bide my time until I leave for college, I find that my last days of high school feel like a daily trip to an asylum--with all the inmates cycling through apathy, irrational anger, and extreme anxiety every time the bell rings (Pavlov would be proud.) Even when I'm at my busiest, I feel as if I'm accomplishing absolutely nothing. And with teachers/nurses like mine--the kind who expect parrots/patients instead of pupils--even the solitary confinement within my mind doesn't permit for escape.
It sounds cynical, sure--but it's how I stumbled across Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Its reminiscence of Catch-22 had me at hello, as did its setting of an insane asylum. But further inquiry into its title revealed an interesting tidbit:
"A cuckoo's nest may be just a playful name for a madhouse (as well as slang for female genitalia), but the common association of cuckoos and insanity comes from the baffling and brutal behavior of cuckoos themselves. In nature, cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds' nests, depositing one egg per nest. Because the newly hatched cuckoo chick is not related to its step-siblings, it throws the other eggs and even live chicks from the nest. It is a process by which an outcast becomes a tyrant and in which disorder, displacement, and competition hold saw over any sensible design." (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Introduction)
Wonderfully insightful, and without a doubt a reflection of my situation; however, I'm not sure if it's because I'm in the nest with a bunch of cuckoos, or because I'm the cuckoo.
Either way, our branch is making a trip down to the DC temple on Saturday. Whether I'm being rescued or ordered to repentance remains to be seen until then. I have tomorrow to prepare myself, and I expect to spend it cleaning my house. I find that when I put my house in order, I douse more than tubs and toilets with the bleach. Some prayers and scriptures by candlelight might be nice too, since they usually frown upon open flames in the asylum.
How do you prepare for trips to the temple? How do you keep yourself sane in between trips?