Sick, sick, sick.

I'm a hot mess. I can hardly keep anything down. I've been in bed almost 2 days now, stomach in crazy pain. Right at the start of my 2-week vacation, too. I just finished my final for school, and now I have to wait 2 weeks for my test score to see if I passed and can go get a job and be gainfully employed.

Epiphany. I bet I'm such a nervous wreck about passing the final that I'm making myself sick. Dammit! And you can't just tell yourself, "Eh, let it go" or "Frankie Say Relax!" Take my mom for instance. If she's upset about something, tell her to "calm down" and the world would have a new nuclear threat to worry about.

My biggest fear is that I don't pass the test.

"So," Mom says. "You take it again. You get 3 tries at it."

You have 48 hours to complete the test. I ended up needing a good 7 or 8 hours of solid work time to do it. I looked up every single multiple-choice answer. I double-checked the spelling on the name of every medical equipment transcribed. I obsessed over comma versus semicolon versus period and what the dictator really intended by their speech pattern.

Yeah, I can take it again if I failed it.

But I don't think I could do a better job. I really don't.

And that's what it's all about - a job. Getting one. Feeling that ever-elusive feeling of self-reliance. I don't get to feel that all that often.

Aw, hell. I guess it's like I always told my grandmother before she died:

It beats the alternative.