July 8, 2006
Bullet With Butterfly Wings
the world is a vampire, sent to drain
secret destroyers, hold you up to the flames
and what do I get, for my pain
betrayed desires, and a piece of the game
even though I know-I suppose I'll show
all my cool and cold-like old job
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
someone will say what is lost can never be saved
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
now I'm naked, nothing but an animal
but can you fake it, for just one more show
and what do you want, I want change
and what have you got
when you feel the same
even though I know-I suppose I'll show
all my cool and cold-like old job
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
someone will say what is lost can never be saved
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
tell me I'm the only one
tell me there's no other one
jesus was an only son yeah
tell me I'm the chosen one
jesus was an only son for you
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
someone will say what is lost can never be saved
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
tell me I'm the only one
tell me there's no other one
jesus was an only son for you
and I still believe that I cannot be saved
and I still believe that I cannot be saved
and I still believe that I cannot be saved
and I still believe that I cannot be saved
Posted by swift at 3:42 AM | Comments (1)
Pete and Repeat
It's been seven months since my last confession...no...wait, seven months since I finished nursing school. I am getting to the place where I don't get physically ill from the anticipation of going to work. Nursing school I just gutted out with my eyes closed, but this...this actual caring for the infirm stuff. Madre de Dios. The buck plops right in my lap. One morning I got home and was completely hashed. I had gotten teary eyed and a little gaspy when I was out the hospital doors and tasted my first breath of fresh air in 13 hours. My husband and I talked. He wanted to know why I was struggling so much. He asked me, "Didn't you learn everything you needed to know in nursing school." My answer to him and the world in general is, "Hell no, not even close." It would be nice to have an internship and residency program of some sort before nurses take other human being's lives in their hands. Basically I got 3 weeks of orientation and off I went. "Here's your code to the controlled substance dispenser and a drawerful of insulin syringes and how many extra shifts can you work this week." Trial by fire -- only it's the patients that get blistered.
Anyway, I'm just barely starting to inch my head out of outer darkness, or lower darkness, or whatever nice way there is to call my ass. I look inside, both while in darkness and with a little light shining and I see nothing. The huge gaps of time in my past are bigger. There's so much I don't remember, so much I can't tease out about myself. I just plain confuse myself. So, I thought that I would start blogging old journal entries. I randomly pulled one out and started looking through it and damned if I wasn't feeling the same thing in 1988 that I do in 2006. Same problems within myself. Same angst. Same. Same. Pete and Repeat.
P.S.
Oh my. The temptation to edit old entries may be too much. Is to leave them be to set them free? I don't know if I like who I was in 1988. I don't know if I want anyone else to see that I was, as one therapist described me, a Libertine. So, to edit or not? How does anyone ever write an autobiography. Ouch!
Posted by swift at 2:25 AM | Comments (2)
January 18, 2006
Lost, but Alas, No Dr. Jack.
Nursing school has been over for a month. I am completely stripped...of emotion...of compassion...of patience...of my resilience. I remember writing at some point that I felt like Bilbo: "Thin, like too little butter spread over too much bread." The butter is long gone. The bread is stale and moldy. Even the rats don't want to nibble it.
My brand new, exciting, wonderful life is stretched out before me and (pardon the horrible analogy) I feel like I've been freed from Birkenau and told to, "don't worry, be happy and get on with it." I am not able right now. I am weighed down with smothering darkness and it presses and presses and grinds and grinds. I feel no sense of accomplishment. I feel no joy. I think only God understands how tired I am, and I won't let him near me.
Posted by swift at 12:59 AM | Comments (1)
