Remember How To Live
8 November, 2009
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.
