Wailing sessions prevent insanity

Sometimes I yell at people that aren’t there and other times I find myself hating person sitting next to me because he is sitting next to me. I do things for no reason, weird things, rude things. Some people have accused me of being crazy but I like to use a better term, a more professional term to describe the randomness that is me and that may be you too.



Insanity, that is the word that describe the new developments that are me. I have recently wondered why this word has played such a big and important role in my life. Why do I burst into song on a crowded subway? Why do I dance on my desk, in the middle of class? Why do I insist that the most poignant conversations I have are with my cat? It has to be because I am certifiably insane and I wondered how it could happen so quickly and so thoroughly? 



The reason is tears. I don’t cry, I haven’t cried in years. This has led me to believe that the reason for these bouts of insanity are from the tears I have held back since tenth grade and I am now a sophomore in college. According to studies done at the University of Arizona College of science it is a proven fact that 7% of the people admitted insane asylums are insane because they either lack the ability to cry or choose not to. Of this 7 percent of insane people 93 percent have been returned to sanity by a good wailing session.



The first to see results from a wailing session with her therapist is Mary Chaplin who said; “My psychiatrist told my mother had passed away in a car accident the night before and the next thing I knew I was on the floor, sobbing like a baby with a dirty diaper.”



Mary, a 33-year-old mother, was admitted to the asylum in Sept. 1999 after digging up her dead dog and taking it for walks, or more like dragging it for walks. Mary also would direct traffic in her living room and often would climb trees, insisting that her cat needed rescuing even though Mary had no cat. 



“I hadn’t cried for years, the tears would just never come. I didn’t know that the death of my mother would be the end of my insanity,” Mary said. 



Of course Mary’s mother was actually not dead but her psychiatrist decided to try out a hunch that she had thought of while she was crying over her headless bird Peaty, who had been decapitated by her brother when she was a little girl. She didn’t know that crying had saved her from a life of insanity and she didn’t know it would save the life of a woman who had spent nine years of her life inside a padded room.

Of course this is all a lie but I believe that an occasional cry can solve a lot of mental conditions. So for those of us who haven’t cried in years maybe we should get together sometime and have one of our own wailing sessions.

I joined the heart sick masses?

I became my worst nightmare in a matter of days or was it moments? I have always been a practical, down to earth and seemingly boring person. Some people say that my head was screwed on too tight like those barbie dolls you have as a kid and their heads fall off and then you put them back on but the barbie never looks right again because her chin is too close to her chest. That is how people in Maryland always thought of me.
Of course at BYU--Idaho I am considered liberal and a little too lose with my thoughts. I am a survivor though. I don't cry, I haven't really cried in years unless you count death. I don't fall for anyone; at least I like to think that I don't.
I once considered myself a non-chaser and very subtle person but somewhere along the lines I fell short. I fell for someone I didn't really know, I succumbed and I took him at face value. I was roped in by words and wishes. Of course through out this fly by four week relationship I gave myself pep talks. "You don't really like him that much," or "you just met him, how can you like someone that quickly," those were the thoughts that ran rampant in my mind. But somehow my mind lost the battle and my emotions took control and I found myself yearning for something I shouldn't want and could never have.
I still don't know why I wanted to be with a guy who cuddled and then tried to kiss me on the first date, which in case you are wondering I never gave him that privilege....ever. I am not a tramp, slut or whore and so I tend to not let myself succumb to the physical. I am solid, some have even compared me to a tree. But alas trees can be axed down and this guy definitely left more than a knick in my bark.
I started chasing after something that was unattainable or maybe I was just romantacizing things that weren't really there. Who knows but somehow I fell for the louse and I became the pesky persister. I didn't know anything about him and so when a week went by and I hadn't seen him and he pretty much hadn't said a thing to me I began to wonder who he was with and how many girls he had made moves on that week. Maybe he was seeing a different girl every night or maybe I was too ugly for him, both of which are extremely likely because this guy was no monster faced tree chopper.
So to make a long story short I fell, yes you heard it I fell. I succumbed to my emotions and I became paranoid and almost obsessive. I guess it is all part of the Prettyman curse that a witch placed on my family some years ago. My Dad has always blamed things on that and so instead of blaming myself for being weird and possessive I will blame the loss of what could have been a beautiful relationship on the Prettyman curse.

Journalism controls my life

Hmm my day how do I sum it up in just one word? Boring! Ya it was pretty unproductive like the rest of my week. There seems to be a repeated theme in the excitement in my life right now and I wonder what that could be? Probably the focus of my major...journalism. I am an editor for BYU-Idaho's school newspaper and I am taking two journalism classes this semester. In less than two weeks I have done more with my life than I did my whole senior year of high school. Lets start with last week. I some how managed to arrange a date with a guy I met while helping a writer do an interview at the ice rink(he works there), which seems impossible for the impossibly shy person that I am still trying to shake from me. We had the date, got a little friendly and now I am a little head-over-heels for him--I figured I would throw that lame cliche' in to go with my cliche' story--and now I am missing someone I don't know because he has been gone for the past few days on a school trip. Because of this I have been distracted and so I bombed two tests this week, one of which was for a journalism class. How else has journalism taken over and changed my life? I spend my Saturdays laying out pages for the newspapers and the rest of the I spend nagging my writers to meet their deadlines and to come up with some good pieces to put in the paper. I also spent hours writing my first editorial about capital punishment and then had the editors rip it apart in front of my face and pretty much call me a pathetic loser but somehow I still like the piece once I have made a few minor changes. Yesterday I spent 3 hours interviewing a complete stranger who turned out to be pretty darn cute and a lot of fun. By the end of the interview--did I mention it was 3 hours-- him and my roommate were salsa dancing in our living room. Right now I am dreading a long day tomorrow of torture at work so I think I will end this because what more can I say.

Spring

Living in Rexburg has its perks. I have a social life, I know what a shocker. I eat whatever I want without any parental supervision involved. And the list goes on but what Rexburg truly lacks is the beauty of home, Maryland. Everyone out here hears me say I am from Maryland and they immediately think of a dirty city. I have and never will think of Maryland that way because it's not, not even close. I live an hour from D.C. and I live down the street from a river where heron, osprey, bald eagles and more beautiful species of bird exist. I also live down the street from Amish people, lots of Amish people. It is gorgeous in Maryland. I miss digging my bare feet into the warm dirt and the green grass. I miss the sweat of summer, the wet cold of winter and the glorious red of fall. Most of all I miss spring. For years I never knew what se

Rexburg City Hall and Madison Memorial Hospita

Getting the information for this story seemed really easy at first but it wasn’t quite as easy as I thought. First I had to find an angle and that is when I opened the press release from Rexburg cities main Web site about City hall sharing office space with Madison Memorial hospital. There was only one person that I could contact that was listed on the press release but I tried it. I also used information from the Web site to send out emails to the people who were in charge of the changes that were being made to City Hall and Madison Memorial hospital.
I really thought that the only changes were, that they would just be making more room for the hospital but the significance of the whole situation was over my head until I did the research and wrote the story to figure out how much of a benefit the changes would have on the community.
So after sending out emails I gave it a few days for a response. And I even tried my hand at emailing the Mayor of Rexburg and he actually emailed me back within 24 hours with the Press Release attached and a little note telling me that he had forwarded the email to the main person in charge and that he was grateful for my interest on the subject.
The press release was really helpful but the email that I received from Kristy Geisler, the community affairs director, helped to clear up any misconstrued ideas that I had previously held. There were still some details that I needed and I wanted to get a perspective from the hospital so that story wouldn’t contain any biases.
So I contacted Jennifer Steinmetz, who is in charge of public relations at the Madison Memorial hospital, and she gave me even more details and supplied answers to my questions about the hospital involvement in the situation.
I now know that Madison Memorial Hospital is taking over the existing Rexburg city hall and there is a brand new city hall being built that will house all of the departments. This at first seemed really insignificant to me and I thought it was a waste of money but then through email and phone conversation I found out that this venture could be successful for everyone in Rexburg, including college students.
With the growth of BYU—Idaho there has been a lack of space and so this will help the hospital to fulfill the need. City hall has actually had the funds to make these changes for a while but now they are going to be able to put that money to use and make a profit by selling the existing Rexburg City Hall to the Madison Memorial Hospital and are creating more space for themselves and city hall.