Somethings wrong.(B Y)

Towards the end of that zman, even I could tell something was wrong. I just could not ignore it any longer. I was just so nervous. I needed to do well. I didn't know why I was so nervous all the time. Just so happened to be that my brother had come to study in the yeshiva for that zman. He had always known me to be so devoted to learning and I was embarrassed that he had to see me this way. I didn't know what was happening. We had been learning bchavrusa. I told him " I don't know what's going on, but I have to take a break". I had never been this way. I would never leave in the middle of a seder. It was really scary to not know what's going on. It was quite disconcerting, begin to feel like I didn't have as much say over how much I could learn as I thought. Until now, I had gotten a particular pleasure from feeling that I had control over how much I could learn, now I was beginning to feel that sense of power and control slip out of my hands. It was not easy to learn, I had to force myself and it made me so stressed. I must have felt stressed for years and I must have ignored it because now, it was coming at me with a vengeance. It wasn't just stress, it was holding me by the neck, it was hurting. It just could not be ignored. I had never encountered something like this. I had been scared and worried. I had had scary thoughts. I had felt insecure and shy but I had never been overpowered and threatened by my own will to succeed. How can you betray me? How can you stop me? All I want to do is learn. This is my dream. This is all I know. How can this possibly be happening. Avi knew better than I, he was far ahead of me. He had also begun to feel the stress of learning and he had begun doing some reading. I wasn't so willing, at first to read secular books but he helped me understand that it was ok in order for me to feel better. I started leaving second seder to go to another beis medrash down the block. I would scribble out any answers I could to questions about life, meaning, beliefs and fear. This helped. What I didn't know then was that I was in such bad shape that it would take years of relaxation and reconnecting with my deepest desires for me to begin to feel a semblance of humanity. I had not idea how far I truly was to the most basic and natural feelins of adulthood, maturity, and humanity.