When You Believe in Everything

 

  6 December | Natalie at Age 5 taken September, 2007

Right now, it’s one of those times when I want to go back to being five and believing in everything. Like that fairy’s are real and Santa Claus comes every Christmas but if you try to sneak a peak, he’ll run off with the rest of your presents leaving you with little or none. Or so says my super cute cousins.They call me on the phone and tell me how much they miss me tell me about their dogs and ask if I saw the new Tinkerbell movie and tell me I better be sure to write to Santa soon, because he has to have time to make all my gifts.

Placenta’s, Cancer, and Old Movie’s I Used To Love

07 January, 2010
They had us play with a placenta on the first day of being in the baby part of the hospital, most of my classmates thought it was cool, I thought it looked like a giant period clot and was kind of gross and iron-ish smelling. Ew. I thought I was here to play with babies, not placenta’s.

08 January, 2010
Today I found out that: 
- we have more newborn deaths than any industrialized country. 
- 1 out of 3 pregnancy’s are cesarean.
- I want a natural childbirth, even if it hurts like hell.
- there is such a thing as “designer deliveries” where people schedule their c-section, with a tummy tuck following right after. HAH!

09 January, 2010
Found out my papa[read: grandpa] might have cancer. There’s a big lump in his throat. Literally. I say might, but everyone seems pretty positive. Everyone keeps visiting, as though they’re saying their goodbyes. I want to yell at them all. Not let them in the house. Tell them to go home, that there is time enough for this. No more brownies and pot roasts. It won’t change the way this could end. I’m starting to feel the meaning of what Dante said in Inferno, “There is no greater grief than to remember days of joy when misery is at hand.”

10 January, 2010
Found out how putting a due date on things really makes people say a lot of things. Funny how we wait until the last minute for things. Or maybe it’s just that we are more pressured to remember.

11 January, 2010
Mostly just watched silly movies that I used to love, like “The Babysitter’s Club” and “Watership Down.”
 
[Listening to: Snow Patrol | Run]

Not Enough Time

Nov 1: Books open everywhere but nothing seems to make it from the page into my brain. I study all day on Sunday. I get my homework done for the week and try to read ahead, but now, now it seems like I’m always behind, trying to catch up  on the weekends. But I can’t care anymore. After studying a week or so in advance for my last exam only to do worse on it than the first broke me. I’m done. I told my teacher this, that I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t know it all like they seem to think we should. “As a nurse, you know that the answer should be this, even though according to your text book and everything else you studied it says this, because that’s just not realistic,” she said to me when I tried to argue my way into getting another point on the test. I just said, “okay” when I really wanted to tell her “I’m not a nurse yet, I don’t have your experience.” But she’s brilliant and young and so successful I find it daunting. Here I am, a girl who started the Nursing program with a 3.8 and now it’s dropping every quarter. I’ve never felt so stupid. So I tell myself, okay, well, lets study. But I don’t learn that way. I never have. But here I go again.

 

Nov 2: “Patient has an altered GI status AEB frequent, loose, brown stool and complaints of abdominal discomfort. Will continue to monitor the patient and assess levels of comfort. “ It is things like this that I spend my time writing these days. Patient this, patient that, and quite frankly, I’m horrible at it. Something I find rather funny considering I’ve always been a great paper writer, etc. But no, when it comes to filling in boxes of this and that I either write too much, too little, or get off topic. Mostly because I’d rather write things like, “Patient has crazy red hair that flies around her face like a candle flame.” Or “Patient’s grandson would not stop flirting with me and asking his grandmother to push the call light so he can once again feign a question about his grandmothers problem (ie what is edema again?) to only really want to chat about how he loves sports and has tickets to a game, and do I like sports?” But no,  it’s all technical and boring and that’s just how it goes. I hate reading charts because all I see are facts and nothing else. There was nothing about how she went weeks without proper treatment because she kept getting told to take some tums. Everyone assumed she was too old to have any real problems. But yes, this is what I’m studying to do, condense people into pathologies and treatments. 

Nov 3: Bonnie is the name of my mental health instructor and sometimes I feel like having her admitted to the hospital because she’s a danger to my sanity. Mostly, she tries to blame me for all the things she messes up, like nursing facts and common terms. Just today in class a phone started to vibrate, she starts telling us to shut them off, that they aren’t allowed in the building. People start to check, but it doesn’t belong to any of us. So I tell her it sounds like it’s coming from her bag. “No, I turned mine off.” But she opens it up and I see her shut it down. I just wanted to look her right in the eye and say, “Yes, it was, and I saw you shut it off, so don’t lie to me, shame on you.”  I didn’t, I kept my mouth shut, but only because I know I’m on her good side. Not sure why, considering I’m always arguing with her, mostly because she accuses me of this and that and I never appreciate being treated like I’ve done something I haven’t. But yes, I’m passing her class. In fact, I’m at the top of her class, no thanks to her. I just find psychology and mental health absolutely fascinating. Maybe it’s because I grew up with a bipolar/schizophrenic father and haven’t been miss sunshine all my life myself. I really enjoy it. I learn so much about life and different perspectives and myself really. It’s sad sometimes, really sad, to think about patients who seem to be doing so well and only find out later that they tried to kill themselves again, it’s hard. It makes me feel like I’m not doing my job right, but there’s only so much I can do, and the rest is up to them. And sometimes, sometimes I think that these mental illnesses are just as bad as any terminal illness. They are manageable, people can live with them, but they are not generally fully treatable. Just think of having all these big dreams and high hopes and then to suddenly start hearing voices and realise that your entire life is going to have to change. It’s like a balloon  floating up up up, only to burst and fall into tiny little pieces. That’s how I imagine it anyway.

 

Remember How To Live

Nov 5: Test today in mental health. I know I did worse. I couldn’t remember things right. No matter how much I study these days, I can’t remember things right. Maybe I have dementia, early onset. Haha. Anyway, another test to study for, already. A bigger one. A harder one. This nursing is going to make or break me.

Nov 6: I’m heading out to go to the little girl I babysit’s soon to be ten-years-old birthday party. I’m the guest of honor. So I’ll be spending the evening braiding hair and doing nails and telling them all to enjoy not having to wear bras or makeup or all that frilly stuff that comes eventually. Little girls are always so eager to grow up only to get there eventually and fight so hard to stay young with their anti-wrinkle cream and tummy tucks. What a funny funny world.

Nov 7: Did nothing all day. Can’t believe I wasted the day sitting in bed and watching mindless movies that I used to love as a kid and reading through books I’ve read a dozen times. I should have studied. Should have vacuumed. Should have cleaned the bathrooms or the kitchen or both. Should should should. That’s what this day was made of.

Nov 8: I need a break, somewhere far away from anyone or anything I am familiar. Somewhere that can teach me how to live because, as Annie Dillard says,

I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live, as frankly, to forget about it. That is, I don’t think I can learn from wild animals how to live in particular[…]but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive.

I would like to do just that. Because these days are filled more of all the things I have to remember – dialysis, nephrotoxic drugs, complications of kidney failure, BUN and creatinine levels. Right now, all I want to do is forget, let it all go and remember how to live.

 

When Everything is Dying Beautifully

It’s October and my days are full of terms like CAD, CHF, sepsis, myocardial infarction. I’m learning all about the heart, how it works, what can go wrong, how to treat it. But still, there is so much missing that I cannot learn without experience, without living. I’m starting to feel as though all this studying is causing me to merely understand less about the things that mattered to me once. I wonder sometimes, if this is what my teachers meant when they told me not to neglect my talent. I always thought I could do it all, or that what I was doing was something I wanted. Not that I don’t enjoy nursing and all that comes with it, but I miss reading more than just textbooks. I miss answering more than just the questions that are at the end of each chapter. I miss having time for myself. In all this studying, this learning about things mechanical and tangible I can’t help but wonder, why don’t I ever write anything like this anymore?

2007 | Variegate

It is a brisk, bright, blustery October day, the last of the burnt-red and brown leaves are falling from the tree branches into the agitated wind. Every morning I hear the geese fly over my window along with the airplanes, as though they’re all on a similar flight plan, set out to get far away from here. It’s autumn and days are spent. On these cool days, I feel like the trees out the window, shedding their leaves as though shrugging off their character so that they can start all over again. I used to think they must feel reluctant to change all the time – green to yellow to red to brown – like they must hate all the variation. But that’s what these days are all about. And maybe it’s all this change and prolonged suffering that makes us beautiful. This is a life of making and unmaking. I am like the seasons, temporary, yet a permanent entity in the world

Some Day My Prince Will Come

It’s two in the morning and I have several tabs up of different costumes. Matt and I are discussing what we’re going to be for Halloween. He keeps saying he could just be a farmer since apparently that seemed to work on the ladies. One lady anyway. I told him he should do something else. He wants something he can make at home and I want something that’s nice but doesn’t make me look like a slut. Of course, everyone I know keeps telling me I should dress up as a nurse, and I know they don’t mean I should wear my nursing scrubs. Next, they’ll all be asking for a sponge bath or a free exam. Neither of which I plan on giving.

I scroll through a couple of costumes – giant teletubbies, munchin outfits, batman costumes that cost 500 dollars, prince charming.

“Matt, why don’t you be Prince Charming for Halloween, that would be funny,” I tell him.

“I’m prince charming for 364 days out of the year, I have to be something else for Halloween,” he says and I laugh. But I know that in so many ways he’s got it right. He’s more charming than most people I know, though he’s rather lacking in royalty.

 

Listening to: Got My List | Jonah Matranga

The World Spins Madly On

I am sad today. I am feeling more misunderstood than a teenager going through puberty. I miss Boaz because he’s not here, because he encompasses all the things that have died and gone and I can never get back again. Like innocence, high school, my first set of teeth, and the courage that comes with ignorance. In these moments, I cannot be consoled or figure out how to get back to where I was – happy and hopeful. Instead, I stand in my bare feet, Tracy Chapman singing the same song again and again – I always hold a place for you in my heart—and I spin, I spin like a five year old dreaming of dancing and better things. I spin until I’m drunkenly standing. I spin until I’ve caught up with the world and all is right again.

Let’s Time Travel to Today

 

There is talk about the past and talk about the future, but no mention of the present. It’s as though we are timetravelers, living everywhere but where we are supposed to be.

Sometimes, I want so badly to small again, when life seemed so matter of fact, so full, so endless.

I remember when I was a little kid and my mother took us on a trip to Santa Cruz. It was the first time I went to the boardwalk, the first time I remember staying up so late, and the first time I went on a roller coaster. The roller coaster was called The Giant Dipper and was painted red and white like a candy cane. My brother didn’t want to go on so it was just my mom and I. I was a bit uncertain myself, but then I overheard some teenage boys behind us re-thinking going on. Eventually, one saw me and whispered to his friends, “Come on guys, it can’t be so bad, a girl is going on.” So they all slinked their shoulders and stood in line behind us, me feeling even more grown up than ever. The entire time I was full of anticipation, my eyes wide as I heard people screaming. However, when I got to the end, they told me I couldn’t go, I was too short. I cried and cried all the way walking out the exit. My mother just held my hand and whispered that she’d get me on that roller coaster. She walked in one of the little shops on the strip and in her hand was a pair of platform sandals just my size. So we stood in line again, both of us giggling at our little secret, but still, I wasn’t sure if it would work. When it was finally our turn to get on, I held my breath when he measured me until he gave me a signal that I was good to go. I remember looking at my mom in that moment and thinking that she knew everything, that she’d always be there to help me figure out a way to get through life, even if it meant cheating a little. And I rode that thing all night, with my hands held up and screaming.

In some ways, that’s how I’ll always remember my mother. Proactive, finding a way to fix problems and doing it, living every day with us kids as though we were going to run out of time, not things to do. I wonder to myself when it is we change and how we can become so different, so easily. It’s strange to see her now, always so tired, so busy trying to catch up that she doesn’t have time to live in the present. Now I get to be the one to buy her platform flip flops and show her that we’ll get back on track somehow, because after all, I am my mother’s daughter.

An Eye for Possibility

 

I have spent my summer like it is the only thing of worth I have left—carefully, slowly, stretching it out as much as I can, because when it’s gone, I don’t know how I’ll survive. But it passes anyway me in a standstill as everything else passes me by in lists and holidays.

Today I tried to plan my vacation to Europe and managed to have every ounce of excitement smothered from me when I realised how much the trip is going to cost me. I leave on the 26^th of July and don’t return home until the 17^th of August. I start in England, have a wedding to attend in Sweden and a friend to see in Barcelona. It’s all so much.

I hate that there is no one who will stop me, who will sit me down and tell me how life is, that I have to stop dreaming, stop fighting life. No one says a word, so I keep buying. I keep planning. I keep going everywhere. I keep on believing I can do it all. Yet, somehow, without anyone telling me to stop, something has changed. I feel as though some of the naïve and boundless passion has gone. I write less. I take hardly any pictures at all. And I don’t even draw anymore. There’s just nothing I feel the need to say.

I keep thinking that it might pass, that I’ll wake up one night in a fervor and write until it’s morning in the notebook I keep near my bed.  But it hasn’t happened yet. Instead, I spend my time trying to reclaim my passion in books I once read and loved, but even they fail me, because I cannot go back. I cannot reclaim the person I was a year ago when everything seemed possible, when I felt I could save my family, save my friends, save the world. I can’t go back to when having words was all I needed.   

I can’t help but wonder if it’s okay that I wake up some days and want to do nothing, want to see no one, say nothing. A part of me feels it’s my own way of punishing time and the way it goes faster when you wish it would slow and slower when you wish it would just speed up. Maybe it’s a way of trying to stop getting older, every second, every day. Maybe it’s a way for me to ignore all the things I have yet to do that must be done, that won’t wait for me to catch up when I want or when I’m ready. Because I’m not. I’m not ready. I want to stay right here and that frightens me, because I was never the girl to avoid change. I was never the girl to look forward and be afraid of what might be there. I was always the girl running right into it all, into everything, as though all those possibilities were a pile of lives and I couldn’t help but bury myself in them all, all their colours and shapes, some of them crunching beneath me, others slipping into the folds of my sleeves for me to take home with me.

“I hope you always have your eye for possibility,” a friend told me once. Right now, I feel I’ve lost and if this is what settling feels like I don’t want it. I just feel so very plain and empty. It’s like standing in a room of my own and finding that it was never what I needed, all that space, emptiness, and freedom. Instead, give me children to take care of, places to see, a job to do, chaos to make order of. Give me all the things that make the stories worthwhile. Give me the need to get up in the morning and do something, however frivolous it may seem. I would give anything to have that feeling again, even if it means no longer having a room of my own.

Hurts to Breathe

I’ve spent the last couple of days convalescing, but I feel more like it’s made me go insane. Staying indoors for copious amounts of time was never something I was good at. I was the child you grounded and not spanked, because believe me, it was far more effective. All the same, I’m feeling better, despite the pain in my chest when I breathe, like everything in my life has finally found a way to let me know that I have to learn to let go, or it will all suffocate me. So here I go, letting it all go. Letting go of Boaz and the way I still find evidence of him in all kinds of places, letting go of my mother, letting go of trying to be the perfect daughtersisterfriend, letting go of trying to hide parts of myself I feel might offend people, letting go of myself, letting go of worrying about the future, where I’ll go, who I’ll meet, if I’ll ever find the courage to settle down. Just letting go.  Maybe then I can breathe again, full, deep breaths that take in everything and let it all out again.

Now about Matt, he’s flying in on Saturday and we’re going to spend the next five days lazying around California style, hopefully getting some sunshine in. Some of the people I know find it strange that Matt and I still talk and see one another frequently. I know a couple of friends who are convinced we will end up married at some point, and I don’t know what to say to that. I do think about it sometimes. There’s always Matt and I. We uncovered each other’s lives as though we were excavating for evidence of something before this lifetime—cautious, hopeful, curious. Our imaginations wild with the possibilities. What we found was something better than old skeletons, we found ourselves. And despite all we’ve been through, I could never forget that. So maybe that’s why we still talk on the phone regularly, see each other when we have a chance to, and tell each other everything there is to know about one another’s lives.