"Don't beat yourself up for it"

Your grace abounds in deepest waters

Your sovereign hand

Will be my guide

Where feet may fail and fear surrounds me

You've never failed and You won't start now

So I will call upon Your name

And keep my eyes above the waves

When oceans rise

My soul will rest in Your embrace

For I am Yours and You are mine
.
.
.
.
. 

"Jerlyn, don't force yourself to read anymore if you don't understand. Don't beat yourself up for it ... Don't read anymore, just take a break. Some days you just have to take a break, just stone and you can even pretend you're reading. Don't read anymore, look at pictures! Marilyn, show her some pictures! It's okay if you don't understand it now, you'll get it. You can always ask Marilyn for her notes, or you can always just come to me for help." 


Today for tutorial, my assigned group and I had to find out what cocaine does to your brain to make an individual addicted, before teaching it to the whole class. I started reading the article we were assigned in confidence, but then things began to go downhill. People were talking, voices were buzzing ALL around me and no matter what I did, I could not block the voices out. I kept reading the article over and over again, but everything just couldn't fall in place. Nothing was coherent, everything I read just stayed as meaningless words in my brain. All I heard was people around me talking and talking and talking and talking.

I kept reading the same 2 words over and over again. "Withdrawal reaction, withdrawal reaction, withdrawal reaction, withdrawal reaction, withdrawal reaction" I just kept reading the same things and I couldn't move on to the next few words because I couldn't even get my brain to process the first two words. I got so frustrated and my eyes started tearing and the tears got onto my tablet's screen and it messed up the touch screen and I got even more frustrated and my frustration made me more frustrated at myself because I felt like a loser and I felt weak and I felt embarrassed because my classmates all know me as the "one who cries" and I was only confirming their beliefs. And I just kept trying to read the article again but nothing made sense at all, nothing could be linked together. And then around me people were just laughing and discussing and knowing everything and there I was crying behind my hair (which unfortunately is now short so did not help at all in hiding me) with my face 15cm away from my tablet screen because I probably thought the closer I got, the easier I could read and understand the article (lol what logic)

And when Marilyn who was besides me reached out to pat my head and my shoulders, everything felt more real and like "shit people can tell now and it's not just me" and then my tutor came over and kneeled besides me to tell me "it's okay if you don't understand it now. don't beat yourself up" and it made me even more upset
.
.
.
.
.
Well in the end I realized that I had already understood the main point of the article right from the start............ I just thought it wasn't enough, so I just kept trying and trying to read the article again and again, trying to squeeze out more information from the article ... When in reality there wasn't even any more information to squeeze out from the article (than the one I already knew right from the start).

I'm so so so so thankful and appreciative of the people who came to check if I was okay and just show me love la :-) And I could tell Mari just put in effort to try and distract me la, like she showed me pictures of her falling down (from taking an ootd photo) and talking about my waterbottle and all haha. And I'm also just super taken aback by what Ms F told me today during tutorial... She has (and is) doing so much for me already and it's just really nice to know that I have a tutor who looks out for me la, because you really don't get that a lot.

Thank You :-)