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July 8, 2006
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 July 8, 2006 2:25 AM
Comments
Please don't edit; you did set them free (ENORMOUS spelling gaffs are MY exception - and you probably don't put those out there in the first place). Your words, even when they tear my heart out, are so beautiful.
I love you, my Friend. If I weren't such a huge ASS I'd see you and tell you myself.
I should tell you how much I cannot get over what you live with each day and have dealt with all your life and yet what wonderful things you have accomplished. I am astounded. I am privileged and honoured to know you. I wish you could actually FEEL the positive energy, love and generosity you put out in the world (despite the costs to yourself). You inspire me in spite of yourself.
I don't tend to know EXACTLY what I believe in these days (and I decided some years ago that I didn't actually care if "God" had a face or a name). But I do believe this: Somehow, somewhere and in some place you will be easily and perfectly HAPPY and you will be rewarded for everything that you are. You are so smart, loving and good. And (PLEASE) it will be a long, long time before you are "there" (wherever it may be), but I believe in this. I cannot live thinking otherwise.
Posted by: Kate at September 30, 2006 3:42 AM
I just came across one of your 2003 blogs by accident and I was really drawn in. I just keep reading, maybe I'll read all of them who knows. You are a really gifted writer. And I hope you know you aren't alone in all of these feelings. You sound very familiar to what I say to myself very often. You haven't posted in a while, I hope you are doing well.
Take care.
Posted by: Summer at April 6, 2007 5:09 PM