« September 1988 | Main | December 2003 »
November 29, 2003
Daniel
Took a few minutes to cruise other blogs. Just wasting time when I should be writing my final paper. The usual procrastination. Ran into some 9/11 stuff. Jogged back some memories. I've survived my life from a very early age with various protective mechanisms: numbing, filing, compartmentalizing, deep shafting, whatever works. As an adult, numbing is the easiest. I just don't feel mine or anyone else's pain. I just do what needs to be done. At work. At home. Where ever. What ever. One foot in front of another. Push ahead. Push along.
When I least expect it someone or something just punches through my skin. I'll walk into a patient's room and look and him or her and there will be a connection, a bond and I'll feel and I'll care more than usual. The hole from Daniel Pearl's death has never closed. He will pop into my head unexpectedly and I will feel the loss of someone I never knew. The loss of something beautiful and precious that needed to be here for as long as possible.
Posted by swift at 10:23 AM
Becoming a Hepburn
Went to pick up my sister's three boys at the airport this a.m. I was in my usual boot-cut, t-shirt, clogs, no make-up and just the basics of daily hygiene. As I was rushing from the parking lot to the baggage claim I caught site of an older woman. She seemed to be floating along the people mover walkway in her own little globe of light. She was tall with her graying hair swept up from her slender long neck. Everything about her was in place and simply elegant. Just like Audrey Hepburn.
On the drive home, amidst trying to keep the 6 year old from spontaneously combusting, I thought about my attempted metamorphosis of style/self. When I was much younger I wanted to be like Audrey Hepburn. Thin (always the thin thing), delicate, long necked and always genteelly dressed. Oh, and I wanted the streak in my hair that she had in Breakfast at Tiffany's. The streak that only showed when she wore her hair up. I was tall. I could be thin, couldn't I? Couldn't I?
By my thirties I had given up on Audrey and decided maybe I could do Katharine Hepburn. She was more my speed. Much stronger, more forceful, lower maintenance and she hated to wear dresses. There was still that thin thing though. I could still try for thin. I could!
Today, after seeing that woman I realized I've given up my Hepburn dreams. In fact my style has deteriorated since high school. At least then I wore make up. I am what I am. I like my jeans. I like my t-shirts. I like my clogs. I figure if men look good without make-up then I do too. Sorry guys. The only way I'm going to be like a Hepburn is if Katharine has a third cousin named Bubba up in Montana somewhere. Me and Bubba Hepburn. Yup. We be just alike.
Posted by swift at 9:09 AM
November 28, 2003
The drugs. The drugs.
It's the four shift weekend. Work sleep, work sleep. I've done the Ambien experiment in earnest and I think the results are conclusive. I sleep less but my mood is better. I seem to dream more without it. During the day today (yesterday?) I drifted from sleep and dreams to being groggily awake and dreaming. Very strange yet satisfying. So, I guess the Ambien goes away except in dire emergencies. I will miss my old friend. Time to wean and move on.
The new drug, can't even remember the name right now (Topamax), seems to be the missing brain chemical link. At least for the time being. I don't' know if I'll ever be done with psych med Russian roulette, but I'm actually having rational conversations with my husband for the first time in a long time. How interesting is that? I really have no idea how normal I am to those living outside my body. I seem to be an endless source of amusement to my co-workers. My children are not quite sure what to make of the lack of screaming rages, though they still think I'm crazy. They'll probably always think that. I always will be the eccentric Mom. That can't be helped.
The drugs. The drugs. I could go on and on. I don't know if I would medicate myself if I wasn't a parent. Maybe I still would. It's a hard call. My husband says he could handle me unmedicated but I think he's liking the saner more gentle me. I would like a few weeks alone to get used to this newly chemicaled brain. Yeah, like that's ever going to happen.
I feel medicated. My reactions are slower. My thinking is slower. Maybe this is how the normals feel and think. Kind of fluffy. It will take getting used to. I can focus and not explode but I don't know if I'm really me. Who would that be? Am I learning what I need to learn about myself when I use the drugs to control my rage and insanity?
Looking forward to this being the last night of work for a few days. Want to be home and get back to my nest. Need to continue to simply and eliminate and make it a place I really want to be. Thanksgiving is this week. I'm trying to work as much of the holidays as I can for the $$ and to reduce dealing with extended family crap during the holidays. That is the joy of working in the hospital. Blood, guts, and time and a half.
Posted by swift at 1:28 AM
November 27, 2003
Humble Holiday Pie
Thanksgiving Eve into Thanksgiving Day. Long, tired night. Busy. ODs. Pneumonia. Broken this. Septic that. Modern healthcare is a wonderful thing but what in the hell are we keeping ourselves alive for? Why are we spending all this money? Why are we putting ourselves or our loved ones through all these horrible things? For what? Why are human beings the only creatures on this planet that can't fulfill the measure of their creation, their potential? What a pathetic waste most of us are - self included. Yet we struggle and fight and beg to live just a few more moments.
And a wrap your fist around a drumstick, fa la la la la.
At the end of this past July I went to visit a best friend in Phoenix. I had a chance to take an aunt to Tucson so we could have lunch with her two sisters. We chatted pleasantly on the way up and back. This aunt is in her 60s, as is her husband. Neither is in good health and their prospects for getting any better are zero. They are going to die by inches. She spent a good part of the drive talking about the land they owned in Montana and how they were going to retire and build their own cabin there (by hand of course). I'm smiling. I'm nodding. I'm thinking, "Yeah, WHATEVER! It's never going to happen." I felt so superior. So smug. So "better than."
I've thought of that drive several times over the last five months. I've continued to feel smug and better than -- until this week. Suddenly I realize that she's just being human and I'm just as human and I can just get over my damned self. The last five months I've talked off and on about moving to New Zealand, after getting my RN and working off my contract. I have all these plans in my head for getting my Masters in Public Health with a combined certificate in Health Care Administration and Cultural Anthropology. Then I would pack up the man and children and hie off to the South Pacific to purify drinking water and combat low birth weight infants. People are smiling. They're nodding. They're thinking, "Yeah, WHATEVER! It's never going to happen." I have no idea what they're feeling or thinking because they're much to kind to punch my wolf ticket. When I'm making these plans for myself I feel so full of life, so on fire! I want to take it on and burn it up.
I realize that this (what may be) pie in the sky planning give us hope when we are faced with the hopelessness or drudgery or blackness of our lives. It may happen. It may not. That cabin in Montana may get built. I may arrive in a canoe in the Seychelles with a bottle of Clorox. Who the hell can say? But, please, don't ever let me feel smug again. Don't ever let me feel better than someone else again because they're trying to have some hope in the midst of their hopelessness.
Posted by swift at 6:54 AM
November 23, 2003
Mabuhai!
Recently attended my in-law's 50th anniversary party in Honolulu. During the party, my husband (Filipino-American) asked me (5'9" 200+ lb Euro-Mutt White Woman), "Now, you're telling me you feel perfectly comfortable here??"
My answer. "YES." After 15 years of being together he still doesn't get it? I guess it would be hard for anyone to understand unless they lived in my "skin". I've never fit in anywhere. The constant moving, the childhood trauma and mental illness, the long-term social ineptitude. I never settled in anywhere with anyone. I never identified with any group. I'm a drifter. Became a shape shifter to survive. Being white and middle class and a military officer's daughter, most of the people I was surrounded with were white and middle class. They were the hardest on me. They were at the base of my humiliation and pain throughout my life. If there is such a thing as "white" culture in the U.S., I've never felt a part of it.
So, drop me in a party in downtown Honolulu with two hundred Filipinos. I'm going to have fun. I'm going to soak in the love baby. I'm going to dance. I'm going to laugh. I'm going to smooch the babies and yell "Mabuhai" along with everyone else. I'll be damned if I'll be uncomfortable in my skin anywhere anymore.
Posted by swift at 1:34 AM
Why a Blog?
Why a blog? My brain just goes and goes and goes, especially when all the meds are clicking just right. Sometimes I think things that seem profound and brilliant to my withered self. Sometimes I frighten myself. Sometimes I just want to get it down because I know I'll forget it and I want to remember it. I used to journal off and on. Haven't done that for years. There have been so many changes and they are all lost, or just locked away in my brain. I'll never get them back. Want a record for myself. Want to express myself to the air. Want to say this is me and not care if anyone listens. It's just me and the tree in the forest.
Posted by swift at 12:15 AM