Cartwheels in Yeshiva (IS) 1

I had heard of some people having trouble keeping to the rigorous schedule of the Yeshiva but I knew that I would never be one of those. I even had some friends or chavrusas that needed a break but I looked down at them. I felt great pleasure in my ability to stick it out. I may be dumb, I may be slow, but I would endure. We had always heard stories in Yeshiva about the bachur who had a tough time learning but at the end, he got the girl. He was the one who tried, he persevered, and he made it. I knew that, that was me. I had had a very hard time learning and the information went in very slowly, but I had learned how to take it easy and teach myself and I knew that at the end, all would be OK, and I would come out on top. One thing was for sure, I would never give up, after all, my perseverance was the only thing I had going for me. It was this kind of stubbornness that I encountered when things got really bad. How could I stop? No way, not happening. It wasn't even a doubt in my mind. It never entered my mind that I would stop learning. I knew that I was one of the chosen, I was one of the elite. I was a masmid, this was my reputation, this was my hope, even if I wasn't a community known talmid chochom, I learned enough that I was able to pretend in my mind that I was famous and my learning gave me the semi realistic hope that things would work out for me, I'd find good shidduch and a good job teaching in a Yeshiva. In retrospect, I was quite distant from any piece of data that had to do with our world. I was in a dream land that was very far away from my body, from my life, from my fears and from anything that I had experienced. I lived in the only place I knew to call home; the fabrications, hopes and dreams of my mind. My heart was sound asleep, unconscious is more like it.