I Struggle Y'all

I have never claimed that I have my act together. More often than not I am a big old ball of nerves. I struggle with all kinds of things. I struggle to wake up in the morning and get out of bed. I struggle with writing a paper.  I struggle to maintain relationships, to keep my interests going and I struggle to not let my lazy nature get the best of me.


Struggle is all I have ever known in one way or another. I got through nursing school, not by being one of the smartest in the classes, but by sheer dogged determination.

I acknowledge my weaknesses. I understand this about myself. I want to go far in life and unlike some people who cannot admit their part in sabotaging their future, I am all too well aware of my own. I own it. I embrace it and I fight it with all my might.

Depression and anxiety are my bedfellows. We are on intimate terms. I make every effort to turn my back on them and carry on with my life; enjoying my family, going to work and school and just living. Rightly so, my depression and anxiety are very jealous. So every now and again they have to let me know they are still around.

I do my best to struggle through the mud (at least it feels like mud). I keep plugging along because.... well there are really no other options.

So when people tell me I'm awesome or great or really smart. I really struggle (see, there's that word again) to accept a compliment that is not owed me. I am none of those things. What I am is just too stubborn to know when to give up.

I Miss Her

I wasn't ready for this new adventure in my life. It wasn't time. It probably never would have been for me. I just wasn't ready. Who can ever prepare themselves for the loss of a loved one? Really? Even if she had been sick for a long time with a terminal illness, I don't think the pain would be any less. My sis was the other half of me. We might have been twins if we hadn't been born three years apart. So similar. So different. I always felt that she was prettier than me, smarter than me, and more talented than me. Does it matter? Not one bit. It never did. I loved her because of her qualities that I was jealous of. She knew how to make me laugh. I would move mountains for my sister but instead I distanced myself from her in the end. We both had made choices in life that separated us in many ways.

We both loved photography. She chose to focus on people, where I chose to focus on scenery and architecture. We both loved to write. She wrote a lot of fiction. I wrote about what was going on around me. We both loved books. Very similar in tastes. We grew up with a love of horror novels, specifically Stephen King. We both adored our children. We tried to do things together with them as often as we could. I remember a trip we took to Myrtle Beach and the Aquarium. The kids had a great time. We had a great time.

Life hurts us at times to show us what we should hold dear. It has to like that or we wouldn't appreciate what we have. I have so many memories I look back on with my sister. I have so many regrets for recent years and things that each of us, in turn, did to put distance between us. Recently I had picked her up and taken her to Fox's Pizza in Eastover. I was on a short lunch break at work and I just wanted to spend time with her and talk. We did that. We talked. About nothing important. But we were together. People listening to us would have wondered. Because our conversations were always all over the place. We joked a lot. I don't think anyone alive will ever get my sense of humor the way my sister did.

The kids are going to remember their mother. Dylan and Brian will remember their aunt. I will remember my sister as a little kid who got on my nerves. The sister who broke my favorite doll the same day I got it for Christmas. The sister who I would ask if she were wearing a bra or had on deodorant when she went outside to play. I'd ask loud enough for all of her friends to hear. My sister, who on my second date with my ex-husband when I was 14, chose to embarrass the crap out of me. I will remember walking to New York with Wes and Granny. I will remember us playing in our old house on Baywood Rd. Running in and out and me going through the glass storm door and Wes almost losing an ear from flying glass. I'll remember playing blind man's bluff with Wes one 4th of July at the same house and me hitting a tree dead on because I was blindfolded.

We share so many memories. Playing in ditches made for pipes in Hope Mills. Swimming at Hope MIlls Lake. She was with me when I went and got Katrina and Steven from their mom in 1999. We were so close. And then not. Just in this last year it seems, life had sent us down separate paths. I was so disappointed when she didn't go to my graduation or pinning ceremony from nursing school. She was disappointed when I left Eastover and moved to Red Springs. We each had our regrets. We tried. And we would have gotten close again if given time. We always did.

I miss her. 

Journey into Nursing

                                                                                                                                     

                                                                                                           

I was fourteen years old when I decided I wanted to be a nurse. I walked down Yanceyville St in Greensboro, NC to the local American Red Cross station. I got my CPR and first aid. I was very proud of myself. No one had asked me to do it. I really wasn’t sure what prompted the desire. I was fourteen, it could have been anything. After that, I went to Moses Cone and became a candy striper. Back in the day when they were called a candy striper and not a junior volunteer. We had the cute little pink and white candy striped dress. I loved it. I got to do medical records and go to MRI, take films back and forth. I thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere of the hospital. Later that summer, I had to move to Va to live with my father and I put in the back of my head the desire to be a nurse. I was a teenager. I was rebellious. I really didn’t want to do anything that anyone wanted me to do and I ended up getting married at seventeen and moving to Mayport Fl when I had my newborn at eighteen. My ex husband was in the Navy and he was out in Puerto Rico or just deployed most of the time. I was eighteen years old, in Florida, with a newborn. I loved an adventure so I handled it very well. I loved it. I loved being on my own. That lasted about a year or so and we moved back to Va. I started working at a nursing home in Fredericksburg Va that would train you and certify you to be a nursing assistant. I was in the process of doing that when my then husband I split up and about six months later my son and I moved back to Greensboro NC where I had originally moved from and I quickly sought out a school that would teach me to be a CNA and help me get certified. Then I started working at Forsyth in Winston-Salem. I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I was working on a medical-surgical floor. I was working night shifts and I did that for a while. Then I got in to working at a medical insurance company called Aetna. No experience with anything but some of my best experiences have been those that I’ve gone into blinded and just seeking out a new opportunity. So I worked at Aetna. I quickly rose in the company. I was there about five years. I left there to go to United Healthcare. Again, nursing school was still in the back of my head but it was just being put off. We obtained custody of my second husband’s niece and nephew; his brother’s children in 2000. I had gone to school on and off, trying to get the credits I needed to get into nursing school. At some point, we decided to move from Greensboro NC to Stedman NC, which is outside of Fayetteville. It was, I believe, 2002. I was pursuing prerequisites to get into the nursing program. I was still a cna but I wasn’t really doing it. I managed to secure a job working for a pediatric neurology office. I started out front desk but quickly rose to being the office manager. I brought all his billing in house. He was having it sent out for third party billers to do. He had a billing company doing it and I brought it all in house. I worked with him for seven years. During that time, I gave birth to my second son. My children are fourteen years apart. My niece and nephew that we had custody of went to live in Louisiana with their father and things just kept getting put off. I was working on that career. I was performing EEGs in the office because my philosophy of style is that you need to know every job that is under your command. That way if someone is out that you can cover for them and if you need to train someone you can do that as well. It’s just very important to know all aspects of your job.

I got into nursing school in August 2009 and I started at Sampson Community College. In January of 2010, my husband and I split up. My second husband. I stayed in nursing school until June or July of 2010 when I was getting ready to start my senior year. They had summer school there. We were doing our psych rotation when I withdrew. Basically lawyer fees, health problems, just all kinds of issues were going on at one time. I did not doubt that I would graduate nursing school but I do not feel like I would be a very competent nurse. So I withdrew. Went and started doing billing for a very busy psychiatric practice in Fayetteville. And I got my act together. Got my home situated. Got my son where he needed to be. And then I reapplied to nursing school at Johnston Community College in Smithfield. I didn’t want to go back to Sampson. I felt it held some memories that I just did not want to deal with at that time. So I got into Johnston and I finished this past May. I graduated. I still want to cry when I think about all things that have happened over the last 24-25 years that have been my journey to getting what I wanted to do. That I continually let life get in the way. That happens. Life does get in the way sometimes and if you allow it too, it will continually do so. That’s just how it works. Now, whenever I see youth, I tell them, you always have time to get married and have a family. Do what you want. Serve in the military. Go to college. Travel to Europe. Do mission work. Just do the things that you have the desire to do because you do not want to turn around later and have regrets that you didn’t get it done. 

My goal in nursing has always been to serve others. I’ve always been a selfless person, per say. I have always felt the need to make others comfortable. I am very empathetic. I can very easily place myself in other peoples’ shoes and understand their point of view.  I work at Johnston Medical Center in Smithfield. I absolutely love it. I’m a very firm believer that God puts us where we need to be and not necessarily where we want to be. I have found on a medical-surgical floor that I may have five and six patients a day but I still have time to connect with people. I still am able to have that conversation with that elderly person that’s telling me “you don’t understand what it’s like to lose your dignity, for your body to fail but your mind to still be sharp”. I had another one tell me “there is no such thing as modesty when you reach our age”. My favorite population is the elderly and I want to care for elderly patients. I want their quality of life to be the best that it can be until the very end. They deserve it. They have stories to tell. I love to write. I love collecting stories. I love knowing where someone came from, what they did when they were young. Did they grow up in tobacco fields, cotton fields? Did they marry young? What did they do for a living? Where did they go to school? Did they have any children? I love to talk to the spouse of one of my patients and find out what he was really like when he was younger. I ask to see pictures. I talk to these people. I’m very much a person that wants to be able to not just treat a patient, their wounds or give them medicine or do those types of things. I’m the type that wants to be able to make sure they have the resources available when they leave the hospital that they need. I’ve been looking at career paths and I was looking at being a nurse practitioner and I was looking at being a clinical nurse specialist. Based on my research it looks like the clinical nurse specialist is where I want to be. It is a well-rounded career that includes all aspects of patient care, to include case management, to include treatment of their disease process. I want to be able to follow up with a patient after they’ve left my facility, to make sure they don’t just come back. I will have a patient for three days. Just recently I had a patient that I had her as a patient. I discharged her. I saw that she had come back in and then the last week I worked, she had passed away. She was not old. She’d been very ill but she had told me when I was discharging her that she was ready to go home. She said that when you feel good, you want to be at home. She said “I feel good right now, that’s where I want to be. When I feel bad again, I’ll come back to the hospital”. She knew. She was happy. She knew what the result was going to be. I felt sad when I heard she had passed but I felt good as well because I felt like she truly knew and lived her life as best she could in the condition she was in. And that’s all we can ever ask of anyone is that they have that opportunity to live life. I wrote a story a couple of years ago for a class I was taking at Sampson Community College. The story tells of what it was like for me in my head during my struggles and I’m going to read it right now. 

Picture a mural on a wall. The wall is painted a deep purple, almost black. A tree, barren of any type of foliage stands off center. In the distance there is a small, shanty style building. The building is grayish in color with one window and a chimney. The tree is in the foreground and much larger. Walking away from the small dwelling is a figure. You cannot distinguish if the figure is male, female, adult or child. The figure actually is slightly larger than the dwelling but smaller than the tree. On the right side of the mural is a large building, four stories with a red cross depicted on the front. There are several cars out front of the building and people walking in all directions. The building is brightly lit in contrast to the small shanty. There is beautiful shrubbery landscaping around the building. Between the dull shanty and the brightly lit building is a long field. The field is covered with, in spots, flowers, and in other spots, thorns. There are also objects laying on the ground, some in heaps blocking an easy path through the flowers and others in singulars. Objects representative of obligations, bills, illness, and relationships are scattered throughout. Not all the objects are dull and gray in color. Some are bright and pretty to look at but offer a distraction. Throughout the mural, scattered about the air, are short phrases. “You’ve been accepted.” “You can do this.” “I am leaving you.” “You are sick.” The phrases are done in quotation marks and in a beautiful calligraphy. On the side closest to the four story building, is another figure. This figure can be seen standing on a balance beam. This figure can be seen to be that of a female. She is balancing on one leg, with her arms outstretched. In each hand, she holds an item. In the right a key, in the left a weight, and she is squinting off in to the distance. The details of her features are not important. Her dress is simple.

I never finished the story because I never knew where it was going to end. My story is actually just beginning. I’ve graduated. I have my whole future career as a nurse in front of me. And I have so many things that interest me. I’m 41 so I don’t really have the luxury of just taking time off and enjoying my new job because I feel that if I want to pursue my education as far as it will go, then I need to start working on it now. 

Nursing is a career. It is not a job. It’s a calling. It’s a gift. It is something that unless you are a nurse, you don’t understand. That you put your heart out there for other people to lean on you. You put yourself out there to be abused verbally, to be attacked physically, and yet you treat the pauper as well as the king. You treat the criminal as well as the elderly patient. You treat everyone with dignity and respect because that’s the least you can do. Anybody can dress wounds. Anybody can administer medications. All these things can be taught. It’s the art of compassion, the art of follow through, the art of making sure that you are doing the best for every patient you have no matter what kind of day you have, no matter what kind of home life you have that you are present in that moment with that patient. There are many many days when nurses go home and they want to cry, or they cry before they leave work in the break room. Because it is emotionally draining. It’s physically draining. But it is rewarding. If you can get up in the morning and you can pray on your way to work that someone touches your life, not just that you touch someone else’s life but that someone touches your life. That you get something out of your day. You can’t have a bad day. There’s not one day I’ve ever gone to work as a cna, as a nurse, as an office manager, as a biller; any job that I have had, I have always taken something away from the day. I’ve always had a good day and it’s always been because  I was able to help someone and I was able to learn something from that individual

Selfie or Why I No Longer Care What I Look Like In Pictures

There are thousands of photos of my family that have been taken over the years. So many pictures that take up so many photo albums and space on internet. Before a few months ago, only a fraction of the photos included me. I would only post the pictures that included me if I thought they were flattering. You see, I have a poor self image and hate the way I look in photos. Out of fifty or sixty photos, I would only like one or two that would include me.

Something has changed. I'm not sure what but I have embraced it. I no longer care if I am attractive or not in a photo. I seize the moment and snap away. I do still care about my appearance but now it is more important for me to capture the moment of not just my loved ones but also me enjoying my loved ones. Yes, I still cringe but I keep the photo. I post the photo. I share the photo. Life has taken on a new hue for me. So much is going on in the world that I just want to cherish and embrace it all. Including embracing myself.

He was Perfect in His Imperfections

"He was perfect in his imperfections." My favorite quote. I read it in a book a few years back. I have long forgotten what book it comes from. I keep going back to that quote. When I look in my son's eyes, I see this creature that I created with his father. A brown haired, hazel eyed boy of eight. A boy that seems to be at a loss as to who he is. Sweet, loving and funny. He wants to make people laugh. He never wants anyone angry with him. My boy is high energy, impulsive, inattentive, and stays in trouble. He loves babies and animals. As he gets older, I see more of his dad in him. I see how he is so different from his brother Brian but similar in some ways. I don't see a lot of me in him yet. Maybe the tender hearted part. Maybe the wanting to please others. He's my little man.

So many things have happened since he was born. Good and bad. I often wonder what long term effects the last few years are going to have on him. He struggles at school and in his interactions with other children. He's learning about consequences and integrity. He has started to enjoy reading. He loves video games with his step brother. He adores his dad and his new little sister and brother. He misses Brian so much.

This is my son. My beautiful, bright, loving son. To me he is perfect just the way he is. He always will be. That's what makes us parents. That's how love grows out of our womb. We take an imperfect human and see perfection. Every parent does it. It doesn't mean we don't hold our children accountable. It doesn't mean we overlook or ignore bad behavior. It doesn't mean we don't punish or reprimand. All it means is that despite all of this... Despite the trials and tribulations of childhood.... Despite the trials and tribulations of our children in adulthood (my son Brian is almost 23).... Despite it all...."He was perfect in his imperfections."

Letting the "but" go

It seems since the dawn of man, people have been looking for validation. Did they do something well enough? Do they look good enough? Did they make the right decision? When do we stop looking for validation and have confidence in our own abilities? Why do we care what others think of us?

I ask this because I suffer from extreme bouts of depression brought on in large part by my overwhelming feelings of inadequacy. I have no idea when these doubts started cropping up. I know suffering from depression from the age of sixteen has brought on many a problem of its own. I manage the best I can without medication. Usually I do quite well. The insecurities I cannot pin point. I do know when I have something good in my life and am achieving levels of success, that I start to panic and doubt myself. I'm not smart enough, thin enough, pretty enough.... on and on... You get the picture. The depression coupled with the feelings of inadequacy is enough to cripple a person. Enough to cripple me anyways. I have a great future as a nurse in sight. Graduation is a mere few months away. I have a wonderful man in my life who adores me and my children. I have a home that is coming together the way it was meant to. So what is wrong? Absolutely nothing other than my brain working in overtime to find something wrong with everything.

I am lucky enough to have people in my life who love me and see things in me that I am not able to see in myself. These people listen to me and talk to me and show real concern for me. And I love them for that. But only I can pull myself together and start recognizing my own worth. I should know that I am smart, a hard worker, attractive, a great mother who has a big heart. I am fun and funny. I can be sarcastic. I quickly figure things out and can make quick decisions when needed. I know these things about myself. But for every good thing I know about myself, I follow it with a "but".... I'm smart but... I have a big heart but.... I have to let the "but" go and just stand on my own two feet and not seek validation.

Letting the "but" go.  

The Wait

There isn't much that marks the passage of time for her. One day flows into the next. She's not sure if it's day or night or Monday or Tuesday. She is unaware and she could care less. She waits. She's not sure what she is waiting for. Maybe it's a sign. Maybe it's an acknowledgement. She just waits.

A plain girl. Unassuming. Average. To look at her, you'd never know the passion she has experienced. The love. The joy and heartache. She looks like the local librarian or the postal woman. Everything about her is so plain and simple. Brown hair, brown eyes, average height, average weight. She blends in so well. She could be a ghost. It makes it so much easier for her to wait.

A long time ago, she had a spark about her. An air of anticipation. To be around her, you couldn't help but feel the excitement. She looked the same as she does now but that spark.... Oh how that spark turned her into the most beautiful girl in the room. She was a true vision. When did the spark die? She's not sure. It didn't happen all at once. It went out a little at a time. She didn't notice it. That's how slow it was. Life went from a beautiful series of events to a waiting game.

She waited. Among the rooms of her home, she waited. She ate. She looked out the window. No one called. No one visited. She waited. Alone. She slept. She read. She wasn't aware that the seasons changed. That she grew older. She couldn't tell you if she was happy. She couldn't tell you if she was sad. She just was. And that was enough.

She didn't think about the past. About her love who left her for another. About her children who never were. About her parents long dead. About her dreams gone unfulfilled. She didn't think about the present. About her home gone to disrepair from neglect. About her lack of money or company. She didn't think about the future.... she just waited.

She was a ghost for all that it was worth. Her home, her tomb.

One night, as she waited, she heard a noise. It could have been a branch brushing the side of the house. It could have been a squirrel running along the roof line. But it wasn't. She knew it wasn't. She knew it was what she had been waiting for. She stood up. Brushed her hair back from her face. Smoothed her dress out. She walked to the front door. The spark... that spark that made her so beautiful before? It had returned. Oh she was beautiful. She shown with a bright light from within. She was transformed.

She opened the door. She was not scared. She was not worried... She just knew all of at once what she had been waiting for. She walked outside. She walked outside and into the waiting arms of death.