I can’t sleep…and it’s troubling since I need to be at school by 8. This year has been a whirlwind of crazy changes. I don’t think I could have ever imagined where I’d be now a year ago. Gogone was dying. My job was slipping away. The world felt like it was collapsing. I feel like I’ve breathed fresh air in a way…and in others, I feel like I’m drowning. I am an honors student. I am a nurse. I am a pothead. I am a post-menopausal woman at 30.
Three decades on this planet, and I feel like I’m only awakening now. I have never felt so fulfilled in my life. I feel like the girl with a hundred grandparents. When I’m at a clinical site, I can rarely keep the smile off of my face. In six months, I’ve seen the gamut of human emotion and been transformed. I have seen love so beautiful and pure…pain and agony so chilling. Knowing something in your mind can never live up to experiencing it first hand. I was holding the hands of one of my favorite patients the other day as she rocked back and forth on the toilet. Constipated. Again. She was gripping my hands so tightly. I asked her if I could give her some privacy, and she looked up at me with a pained smile and said, “No. I need you. I want you here with me.” She is 82 with dementia, among other problems. It’s silly, I know. But, for that one moment I knew that I had made her day a little better. How much would it take to go from a fully functioning adult to an elderly lady, straining on the toilet, feeling so miserable that you just want to hold another human being’s hand? I walk into every patient’s room as if they are a dear relative. I look into their eyes. I sing with them. I listen to them. I assess them. I’m learning this new language…and suddenly it’s like I’m everything I ever wanted to be…an actress, a psychologist, an anthropologist, a detective. I don’t feel like I’m working and it’s absolutely amazing.
Then there’s everything else. In growing as a human being, I feel like parts of my life are irreparably changing. I feel now more than ever the shortness of life…the futility of anger, resentment or hostility. For the first time in my life, I actually can say that I love myself. I am a kind, intelligent and funny woman with patience and compassion. I have friends…honest to goddess friends who would pull over to check on you at the side of the road…or call you to make sure you’re ok if you don’t show up to class. I’m working on my relationship with my parents, and I think I’ve finally truly forgiven them for the past. I know myself and I trust my gut. Sometimes, though, all these good things can turn my life upside down. Sometimes these changes within me put my marriage to the test like nothing else.
In the first week of school, one of my favorite instructors warned us that nursing school will change everything. She said that we’d all be best off if we leave our families until the program is up. From what I’ve seen in the lives of my classmates, she was frightfully accurate. I find myself questioning everything to its very core. I suppose I’ve always over-thought things, but this seems different somehow. I feel like I’ve finally grown up into the woman I want to be…on the path I want to be on. Who knew it would be nursing?

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