It gets better

So, here I am. I'm trying to explain the past 4 months to Jen and how I can't be where I am anymore because I "feel like I shouldn't be here." You can imagine her confusion. I admit even now, it sounds crazy. I was going to leave Nyack after 4 years. I was one semester away from finishing. All of this, based on a feeling. I can honestly sit here and say I did the right thing. I don't for a second doubt that. I regret not leaving sooner. This whole process could have been easier, and avoidable. However, here I was. My life was a total train wreck, but I finally felt like I had something solid to hold on to. It was an extremely hard process trying to explain to my friends at school what was going to happen. Trying to explain to Jen and my family that I was going to continue school at home. Talking through things with my parents. It was hard, but again, I had this feeling inside of me that it was going to be o.k. This was to be tested in the next two weeks. 11 days after that night, in late November, I was at work in the mall and I was feeling really lightheaded. My heartrate was crazy and for some odd reason I felt like it was skipping a beat. I asked to leave work early, had one of my friends come pick me up, and I went back to our room at school. I had been sick earlier on in the day, but it was nothing serious. I tend to take vomiting in stride. However, I really started feeling sick at this point. I did the only logical thing I could think of. I layed down....to no avail. My heartrate was really starting to make me nervous. I felt like I was running flights of stairs and all I was doing was laying on the couch. I called our school trainer who'd helped me during my 3 years of baseball there at school. She told me to come to her office. She layed me on the table and listened to my breathing and heartbeat. She seemed very calm when she said I needed to go to the hospital and quickly. There was definitely something there, but she wasn't a doctor so she couldn't be sure. Off to the hospital. They swabbed the back of my brain (not literally, but it felt like it) with one of those long q-tips to make sure I didn't have the flu. Seriously? The flu? I think they were just checking me to see if I was serious about feeling sick. There's no other excuse for the pain I endured while they checked both nasal cavities. Nope. All clear there. They took me in and layed me in a bed. I wasn't allowed to go to the bathroom which was a serious issue. At this point, they didn't know I had salmonella, but I wish they had. It would have explained why that bed was such an uncool place to be for more than 7 minutes. Like I said, I had salmonella poisoning which took them 3 days to figure out. Most excruciating 3 days ever. My heart was skipping a beat, but it was due to exhaustion and fighting the sickness. My heart still does it to this day if I'm really really exhausted, but otherwise I seem to be good. J, you can tell me if that's an issue. So, now I'm definitely done school in New York. My parents came and got me and brought me home. I spent the next couple weeks getting back on my feet and searching for jobs. God had a plan for me, this I was sure. I hadn't quite honed my listening skills yet and it showed immediately.