Month: December 2013

Life Isn’t Fair So Your Choices Better Be Good


Today’s blog post might rub some people the wrong way but I hope you’ll understand as you read it that this comes from a place of compassion & concern for my fellow man.  (Yes, I consider myself a feminist but I truly don’t see anything wrong with using masculine pronouns when referring to all of humanity because frankly it just sounds better.)  Something I’ve been thinking about a lot this year is the impact of choices on our lives.  A lot has changed in my life in the past two years.  For example, I’ve graduated from college, become a nurse, gotten married, and moved to a new state, and in just the past nine months I’ve bought a house, a puppy, and a very nice used car and started serving as a preceptor and a charge nurse at work.  These are, in my mind, all good changes but change is inevitably difficult at times and, at least for me, leads to a lot of introspection and general analysis of life.  In the past year such introspection and analysis have continually landed me on the same theme: the importance of making good choices in life and the consequences that arise when we fail to make good choices.

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Let me first say that I am fully aware that what I consider to be good choices and what someone else considers to be good choices may be completely different.  And with very few exceptions I am totally okay with that.  But if there is one thing I can safely say I know to be true in life, it is that we are each responsible for our own lives and the choices we make, and said choices are the greatest determinant of our own happiness and success.  I know that I have accomplished a lot for someone my age and I am very much aware of the fact that I have a lot of people to thank for helping me along the way to where I am now.  But I also realize that all the help in the world would have been useless if I hadn’t also made my own good choices (getting good grades in high school which allowed me to apply for and obtain a scholarship to college, seeking out internships and jobs in college that helped me obtain a good job after graduation, etc, etc, you get the point).  Please understand that I am not trying to brag or say that I am more successful or better than anyone else.  I am well aware that my own idea of success and happiness does not apply to everyone and vice versa.  I am just saying that when I think about the miserable situations I see so many people in, including many my own age, I can’t help but notice that all (or at least most) of these people have made a series of bad choices throughout their lives.  Let me further explain so I hopefully don’t sound like one of those god-awful judgmental pricks that annoy me so much.

I’m talking about the people who are working dead-end jobs with no hope of advancement who can barely pay their bills (or can’t pay them), who are in miserable relationships with people who treat them like trash, etc, etc; I think you catch my drift.  These people are usually the ones who dropped out of high school (and not because they had to take care of a dying relative or something like that), got pregnant in high school or maybe shortly thereafter and often with someone they did not exactly have a solid relationship with, or perhaps graduated from high school but with such poor grades that college or even technical school was never an option.  These folks probably did not think about the future beyond tomorrow and never exactly planned out a career or any sort of goals for their lives.  The homeless are another good example.  I have always had a special place in my heart for the homeless for some reason but when I look at most of the homeless people I’ve met or known about (I did a clinical rotation with the homeless in nursing school and actually got the privilege of talking to a lot of homeless folks) I’ve noticed again the same pattern: bad choices.  For some it was drugs, for some it was gambling, for some it was having too many children whom they couldn’t afford to support, and the list goes on and on.  Even many of my patients at work whose lives are miserable due to disease are often in the positions they’re in largely because of poor choices they’ve made: failing to control diseases that could be controlled or even eradicated through proper diet & exercise, etc, etc.  It’s hard to watch because you know that these people could have had better outcomes if they’d made better choices.  It’s a very complicated subject, but it’s the truth nonetheless.

Let me be clear here: BY NO MEANS do I think we should not be compassionate or helpful to those who have made poor choices.  ABSOLUTELY NOT.  My point is that the greatest lesson I hope to teach my future children is that they better have their act together from day one because life is not fair.  For example, lots of people have unprotected sex in high school.  But not everyone ends up with some disgusting STI or gets pregnant.  But some do.  AND YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHICH ONE YOU WILL BE.  Lots of people drive drunk and never hurt anyone.  But others do.  AND YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHICH ONE YOU WILL BE.  Lots of people smoke cigarettes their whole lives and never get lung cancer or COPD.  But many do.  AND YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHICH ONE YOU WILL BE.  I think you can see my point.  If there’s anything I know about life it’s that it isn’t fair.  Some people make one or two bad choices and their whole lives crumble around them.  Others make a lot of bad choices and don’t seem to suffer as much.  But in my limited experience those I’ve seen consistently make good choices have ALWAYS been better off because of it.

So if/when I have kids someday, these are the things I’m going to teach them:

Stay in school.  Get good grades.  Work hard at everything you do.  When you get a job, be the best because otherwise you will just be a drone like everyone else.  Make yourself stand out.  Don’t be afraid to reach for the stars.  Go to college or vocational school and plan a career where you can both support yourself and be happy.  Never have unprotected sex with anyone unless you are 100% ready to be a parent RIGHT NOW.  Be kind to everyone because you never know what battles others are fighting that you know nothing about.  Karma is real and whatever choices you make, good or bad, they WILL catch up with you sooner or later, and you better be prepared for the outcomes of your decisions.  I will teach them all these things because I will love them and want the best for them, just as my parents did for me.

Perhaps I will never become a parent (who knows), but nonetheless I will strive to teach these things to my nieces and nephews, my patients, and anyone else who is willing to listen.  Because I care.  As much as the world sometimes makes me feel cynical and cold, I do love people.  Life is crazy.  People are crazy.  But I love this life that I’ve made for myself (with the help of some great friends and family) and I want others to be able to share in the kind of happiness I’ve found.  I don’t mean that everyone needs to have my exact lifestyle, education, or career.  I just wish for everyone to find that passion for life and learning that I’ve found.  I like to think it’s contagious, and I hope that I can spread it around just through this blog post if nothing else.

I hope this post hasn’t come across as arrogant or rude.  That’s not how I meant it at all.  I just wanted to share the idea that choices really are important in our lives, and especially with a new year just around the corner it’s something I think we all need to take to heart.  I know that many people are great testaments to the fact that sometimes a bad decision can actually end up being a good thing (lots of teen moms would agree with this).  And there is a lot of truth in that too.  And not every person who makes all good decisions is necessarily going to be completely happy.  Again, everyone’s idea of happiness and success is different.  And that’s ok.  We each must find our own barometer for happiness and success, and then make good choices that align with that.  Otherwise we are just drifting along in life with no paddle to steer us toward any goals, hopes, or dreams.  And I can’t think of much sadder than that.

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Processing Grief During the Most Wonderful Time of the Year


A week from today is Christmas so I know I “should” be writing some kind of joyful, uplifting post about how this is the most wonderful time of the year.  And in many ways it is.  But I work in a hospital so whether I like it or not I’m confronted with the fact that Christmas can actually be a very sad & difficult time of the year for many people because of sickness, accidents, mental illness, drug abuse, and of course death.  My own family has lost several members over the past year & this will be our first Christmas without some very special people.  I don’t mean to be depressing, but I just feel like I need to address this subject because I know I’m not the only person who is feeling very conflicting emotions at this time of year.  Part of me loves all of the decorations, parties, Christmas music, & general “cheer” that the holidays bring.  But part of me also feels the weight of grief in knowing that this Christmas will be a bit different than those of the past.  This leads me to a greater topic that I want to address.

grief

A friend of mine recently posted something on Facebook about how sad she thought it was that some religious people believe that grieving, even at funerals, is wrong because the focus should be on the loved one being in Heaven.  I was very struck by that post because I too have witnessed this sad phenomenon.  I have been to lots of funerals in my life and over and over again I have heard the same basic phrases: “She’s better off now.  She isn’t suffering anymore because she’s with Jesus in Heaven.  Don’t despair.  You’ll see her again someday.”  To be perfectly honest, until my grandmother died five years ago I was quite guilty of saying some of these things myself to other people whose relatives or friends had died.  However, when Granny died I realized how completely unhelpful such things are.  I know that people mean well when they say these things, but standing in the line at the visitation the night before Granny’s funeral, I realized that the only words that really comforted me at that time were these: “She was a wonderful person.  We all loved her so much & we will miss her forever.  I’m so sorry for your loss.”  I needed people to recognize that, yes, this WAS a major loss.  And I had every right to feel sad, depressed, and even angry at the fact that she was gone.  (To be honest I’d worked through a lot of these emotions even before she passed away because of her being on hospice for quite some time, but even so the pain of losing a loved one is never easy.)  I remember going to her funeral and wanting to cry so badly but feeling like I couldn’t.  Now, this is largely my own fault I suppose for not feeling comfortable enough to cry in front of my own family.  How ridiculous is that?  My sister wasn’t afraid to cry, but I was.  I never once cried in front of my family when Granny died.  I only cried when I was alone or with my now-husband (then boyfriend).  There are a lot of underlying reasons for why I only felt comfortable enough to cry in front of him, and I am still working through those reasons even now.  But I can’t help but feel one of those reasons was that for so much of my life I’d been inundated with the never-explicit but always strongly implied idea that grief was somehow sinful, somehow selfish.  I don’t know exactly where this idea came from and I am blaming no one in particular for it.  It was just there.  Maybe I made it up, but I don’t think so.

When I was a junior in college one of my OB nursing professors told us a very personal story about her own miscarriages and the eventual birth of her first child who was either stillborn or died within a few hours of birth.  The point of the story was that there was so much grief involved with losing this child and that she had to learn to work through it.  She learned that no matter how much she tried to just “move on with life” and push it away, the grief was still following her.  I’ll never forget that lesson.  I remember so strongly sitting in that class, thinking about how it had been a year since Granny’s death and I had done everything I could to run away from that grief because I was busy with nursing school and just didn’t want to deal with the grief of her passing.  I just didn’t feel like I had the stamina to process it so I kept pushing it away.  And just like my professor said, the grief kept coming back.  It kept haunting me.  It wasn’t until I heard her speak about how she finally learned to confront the grief, to handle it, to honor it, to accept it, to process it, that I realized how much I needed to do the same thing.

My professor was so right.  Grief is a process.  It isn’t something that goes away overnight.  For some losses, the grief will never totally disappear, but no matter how much we feel like we can’t handle dealing with our grief for whatever reason, it will never go away at all until we start to process it.  Indeed, grief will haunt you forever until you learn to really work through it.  This can mean so many different things for different people (and can be different even for the same person depending on the nature of the loss).  I think it’s fair to say that most people process grief at least partly through tears.  I know there are exceptions to every rule, but the majority of people do cry when they’re sad.  But sadness is just one part of grief.  There’s so much more to it than that.  Grief can encompass anger, frustration, and so many other feelings because whenever we experience a loss in life there is a part of us that wants to shake our fist at the sky and ask “Why?  This is so unfair!”  And quite often it is unfair.  And there is nothing wrong with feeling that way!  It’s just part of human nature, of experiencing life.

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So my challenge to myself and to anyone reading this is to really think about the losses you’ve experienced in life, especially any unresolved grief that might come back to haunt you at Christmas, this time of year when memories can seem stronger than ever.  And instead of trying to just forget it or push it aside, really confront that grief.  Begin to process it.  Sometimes we think we’ve moved past a loss only to realize months or even years later that the wound is as fresh as ever.  And that’s ok too.  We just have to find ways to process our grief.  For some of us that means listening to music or reading a book or writing a poem or song.  For some it means seeing a therapist or counselor.  There’s no right or wrong answer here.  The point is that we need to be honest about our grief.  We can’t try to hide it or deny it.  As families and friends we need to support each other and not be afraid to show our “weaknesses.”  If this is your first (or second or tenth) Christmas without a loved one, don’t be afraid or ashamed to cry or just not be as “jolly” as perhaps you usually are.  It’s ok.  Just be honest with yourself and your family and friends about your grief.  You never know who else may need your encouragement to process their own grief as well.

I hope this post wasn’t too depressing but it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot this year and felt like I needed to write for my own sake as well as hopefully to encourage others.  Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays to all my lovely readers!

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Social Anxiety Strikes Again


My palms are sweating.  My heart is racing.  My stomach is in knots.  Sounds like I’m getting ready to give a speech in front of a bunch of people, right?    

Actually, no, I’m just going to a Christmas party held by one of my coworkers.  Parties are supposed to be fun, right?  Wrong.  When you’re a natural introvert who suffers from a touch of social anxiety like I do, the idea of going to any social gathering with more than say eight people is terrifying.  Most people who know me would probably never guess that I feel this way because I like to think I’m good at hiding it.  Yes, I’m an introvert, but I’m not shy; like most things in life, introversion and extroversion lie very much on a spectrum & I believe I fall on the more liberal side of introversion (in other words, close to the middle).  I love talking to people, anyone really.  But I thrive on one-on-one or small group conversations.  That’s where I shine.  And I require a certain amount of alone time in order to stay sane.  Put me in a group of more than roughly eight people and suddenly I feel like the same old awkward teenager I used to be, the one who never knew about all the “cool” TV shows and music that everyone else knew about and who was generally out of the loop about just about everything.  I’m not that person anymore and I know it, but there is still something about being in a larger group of people that just sends off firecrackers in my brain.  And not the good kind of firecrackers.  The kind that say “Run away!  This isn’t safe!”  I might not really act like the turtle with its head in its shell, but deep down I’m often feeling that way.

This must sound totally ridiculous to those of you reading this who thrive on large groups, parties, clubs, and all of those supposedly fun things.  I on the other hand hate crowds and any sort of social situations that do not lend themselves well to intimate or deep conversation.  (Hint, intimate does not have to mean sexual, despite our society’s tendency to equate one with the other.)  Hell, the idea of going to NYC and walking around those crowded streets makes me feel like my throat is closing up and I can’t breathe.  I’ve even realized that I have this same type of anxiety around my own family, if a gathering consists of more than say eight people.  I know that must sound so silly.  But it’s true.  Perhaps the reason for this is that when you put 20-30 people in a house together you rarely have meaningful conversations with anyone.  You just say “Hi, how are ya?” and other such trivialities to everyone.  I for one long for so much more.  Yet I love having a big family.  Argh.

I am coming to realize that my mind is a mass of contradictions.  For example, I actually love hosting cook-outs and other casual “parties,” and yet the idea of attending one that isn’t composed of my closest friends inevitably causes me to have a mild anxiety attack.  I don’t have this problem when I’m around a lot of people at work or in class.  I think I handle those kinds of situations quite well.   I also am not afraid of giving speeches, teaching a class, or taking on leadership roles at work such as charge nurse.  I actually ENJOY all of those things!  But there is something about pure SOCIAL situations that still scares me if there are too many people involved.

With help from my therapist I’m starting to understand these things about myself and slowly learning that there’s nothing “wrong” with me because of them.  I know a lot of people are the exact opposite of me and fear intimate one-on-one conversations because they are too “exposing.”  But I love those kinds of conversations.  I’ve found that people almost universally like me when I am able to talk to them one-on-one or in a small group.  But in a larger group I have a tendency to just fade into the background and ask dumb questions like “Why do people put olives in martinis?”  

I don’t really know why I’m writing this other than to make myself feel better for being so “uncool” as to have a mild anxiety attack about something as silly as going to a party, something that most other people would be excited about.  The truth of the matter is I had a decent time at the party.  I almost always do.  But I still get anxious about these kinds of scenarios.  And deep down I’d always rather spend time with people alone or in very small groups.  If you’re reading this and you can relate to what I’m saying, feel free to comment so we can all feel less alone.

As an aside, I had my first winery experience yesterday with a group of close friends and it was AMAZING.  I haven’t laughed that much in a long time, and it was fabulous.  The winery was perfect for me: casual, friendly, & not the least bit pretentious.  Underneath it all, I promise I really am a fun person.  😉

As a further aside, I should add that I have at worst a mild case of social anxiety. I know there are people out there who suffer far more, or perhaps I should just say differently, than I from social anxiety. I don’t mean to say my experience is representative of everyone with social anxiety issues. I just wanted to share my own story.

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Novel Aspirations: My Greatest Dream in Life


Those of you reading this who are writers will know what I mean when I say that I am having one of those days when I want to write about so many things but my mind can’t seem to slow down long enough to settle on any of them.  I love nursing, I really do, but my greatest career aspiration is to be a writer.  I don’t even really think of writing as a career because writing a novel has always been my greatest dream, going all the way back to childhood.  I’ve always been fascinated with books and stories and the older I get the more my love for reading (and writing) grows.  I want desperately to write the kind of novel that really makes people think, that makes readers really examine their own lives and beliefs.  But I have no idea where to start, and at twenty-four (almost twenty-five) years old, I figure I haven’t experienced enough of life to be able to write such a thing anyway.  There’s a part of my brain that tells me I’m crazy for thinking I could ever influence people with my words, whether written or spoken.  I try not to listen to that voice but there are days, like today, when that voice is louder than the other voices in my head.  I’m not schizophrenic or anything but we all have voices in our heads, you know the positive ones that say “You can do it,” usually followed quite swiftly by the negative ones that say “You’re crazy for dreaming such things.”

writing a book

I was talking to a dear friend of mine recently about the struggle we all face to feel normal in a world that sometimes seems to do nothing but scream “You’re weird!” every time you walk out the door.  Her response was “No one ever changed the world by being normal.”  I love that so much and I fully believe it’s true.  I used to think I couldn’t be happy in life if I didn’t become famous somehow.  Now I realize how foolish that was, but there is still a part of me that feels like I won’t be fully satisfied with my life if I don’t really make a difference in this world (the poem I wrote that is the title of this blog was about this exact struggle; see my post “Inspiration Behind the Blog”).  I’m old enough now to realize that you don’t have to be the next Mother Teresa or Gandhi to make a positive difference in the world; actually we can all do that just by being good decent people every day that we live.  By reaching out to those in need, by showing mercy when it would be easier not to, by baring our souls about the struggles we all face so that our friends and acquaintances realize that deep down we’re really all the same.  And yet I keep coming back to writing.  As much as I love nursing and realize that my career offers me a multitude of opportunities to help others every day (or night) that I work, I can’t help but feel that no matter what I accomplish as a nurse, or even as a mom someday, I’ll still want more.  I still want to write a book.  I still feel like that’s the best way in which I can touch this world.

At the rate I’m going now, I don’t know if my book will ever happen.  At this point in my life I’m still much too worried about what others would think about some of the things I want to write.  I know I have to move past such trivialities if I want to ever write something truly great, but that isn’t going to happen overnight.  I also realize that even if I do actually write a novel, it might never get published.  And even if it did get published, that’s no guarantee anyone would actually read it.  But I still feel like I have to try, because as I told a friend yesterday, I write principally for myself, to bring peace to my own soul.  Of course if my writing can somehow inspire others, then that is a wonderful bonus.

I have no idea where I’m going with this post but I just knew that I wouldn’t get anything accomplished today and most importantly I wouldn’t be at peace with myself until I wrote about something.  Even if it was something as ironic as writing about writing, as the case may be.  In any case, I like to think that this blog is a small step in the right direction toward accomplishing my dream.

For those of you reading who would like to share what your greatest dream(s) is in life, I’d love to hear from you.

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