September 1, 2020
Another new month which always used to bring me hope. Like I made it through another month, but I don’t feel that way anymore. It’s still a pandemic. This has been the craziest and one of the worst years of my 44 years. Plus I’m tired of making it through and surviving month to month. I did some stuff yesterday, housework etc. Not enough because it’s never enough and I’m never okay with just sitting around. It makes me feel lazy and sick even though I’m not. But that’s how I feel. That’s where the antidepressants come in. It’s not normal to want to do nothing. I have no desire to do anything really. I can’t sit here and feel sorry for myself. I have to just take some ibuprofen and drink some coffee and get some shit done. I tried to say goodbye to him. I tried to make him understand how badly he hurt me and why I didn’t want to be with him anymore. That’s really all I can do. Just go on. Because something the marriage counselor said to me was that he seems to be in a perpetual state of denial and I believe that. I never thought of it that way before, but it’s true. HE can’t handle it, not ME. It hurts to hear it’s over, but I do think it’s the healthiest way and I wish we could have a goodbye but it’s not up to me. Plus he knows I want it so he won’t give it to me. I’m already alone so it shouldn’t matter. I went through the hell of the last 6 months on my own. Working through the pandemic, struggling, going to school, losing him. I did it and I’m still here. I’ll never know for sure if he’s a narcissist but my gut tells me he is. My gut tells me he’s selfish and wants to keep me hanging on. I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t have the energy to get all dolled up and pretend everything is okay when it’s not. Listen to him fantasize about having a business and moving away when he does nothing to make it happen. This is something he has to do on his own. I know this though he will regret it. I know he will miss me and how I loved him. And that he’ll look for me in everyone he comes across. I will too but in a different way. I’ll make sure the next person treats me the way I deserve to be treated. I’ll make sure they don’t lie to me, they don’t say one thing and do another. They don’t act ashamed of me and hide me away until I have barely a shred of self esteem left. I have my life together enough to walk away. I have a good job and it’s secure. I will take it one day at a time. No more trying to make it though this week or this month. I’ve already made it. I’ve made it every time.
Sorry this one is so long. Before I begin I want to pause, I usually do when I feel overwhelmed, and restate a few of my points. Of all the truths that now glare back at me from the September 1, 2020 journal entry, I know one of them was a big lie. Back then I was unaware, still thought I could make someone love me or see me when they saw me. From 2021-2023 I woke up in the middle of the night and often read back through my journal. Laughed over how much being, for years, a Critical Care Nurse had managed to completely overtake my entire identity.
That said I have an extremely good sense of when I need to pause and process something. My pauses are usually momentary, lasting minutes to hours, sometimes a day or two if I’m feeling really triggered. Please note that I do not get to practice the pause in the setting of an Intensive Care Unit, if I pause or hesitate, people could actually suffer or die. Therefore I feel rather confident in my decision making capabilities and I seize every opportunity to pause. At work it is my duty, my responsibility to ensure the safety of my assigned patients; outside of work it is my duty and responsibility to ensure my personal safety first.
When I’m at work I have the ability to process and unpack nearly anything that occurs, almost effortlessly and with an intense speed. This ability came with literal years of experience, roughly 5-10 of them, and now I’m coming up on 20 years spent in a career, which remember now is part of a noble tradition of healers and one that is based on service philosophy.
No matter the scenario I can usually debrief myself in a matter of minutes. If I am unable to achieve balance, say I find myself still crying when I pull into my driveway after my 40 minute ride home, only then do I admit that my shift did not go well. It’s simply not appropriate or helpful to cry while I’m making minute-to-minute life altering decisions. Also a general rule I do not consider my shifts, or any of my days, as good or bad, they’re all just days.
Only when my shift did not end well enough for me to rationalize how it went down, only then do I feel the need to make a call for support. Most of the time, I just want to eat a light snack and go to bed.
Now I have three choices:
Phone a nurse friend who will make me laugh, let me cry or understand any momentary rage I might be feeling. Most nurses will not pick up the phone if they are not in a headspace to take a call and we all know this about each other.
Phone one of my woo woo friends and unpack from a spiritual perspective or listen to and be enthralled by an interesting and usually synchronous tale. These friends usually have headspace galore, but sometimes not so much.
Phone one of my loved ones to simply hear their voice. This is always my last option, even though it usually does the trick, but it’s tricky because I seem to have lost my ability to fake anything at all once I leave the hospital. I may have also displaced my sense of humor too and pop off like a bomb if they crack the wrong joke.
If I can’t reach my loved one it’s okay, I leave a voicemail that sticks to the facts: I am on my way home from work, it’s been a day, I love you and I hope you’re doing well.
Big Trigger Warning Ahead (Death) :
I have been doing this job for so long that I process the death of a human being, which when viewed through my lens is a life coming to an either happy or unhappy ending. Okay I can live with that, but I do this in the time it takes me to wash a cold, naked corpse and pull the zipper closed on a body bag; which is about 15 minutes if the death is traumatic and unexpected, and less than 2 minutes if the death was expected and a withdrawal of life support was planned. Minutes after watching a loved one lose the love of their life and holding their hand? Thinking about if I will get to eat something before the next patient arrives?
Now that’s the part that’s questionable.
That’s the answer I want to give to anyone who continues to ask me how I do it. Those who shake their heads and say they could never do what I do. Shut up and be thankful your childhood was a lot nicer than mine.
Stop asking nurses how they do it unless you are fully prepared to hear their answer and I am mostly speaking to my mother here. Many still wrongfully assume nurses are angels, it’s fine I get it. In my case I seemed to be on some death mission, spent years of my life hell bent on proving what, I don’t even know anymore. I just know I’m not an angel. Every man I have ever spent time with who happens to have a military background, has seen mortal combat in action, knows exactly how I do it. That’s why I like those men and that’s one of the reasons they used to like me. Actually I could write a book on that topic if anyone would like to know how to get to hell.
My job, my mission personally is one I do by disconnecting from reality, also from my body, that was easy for me too, and by turning off my emotional responses and oh then at some point I learned to check all the way out and become someone else for 12 hours. It’s further evidenced by the fact that I learned to hold my loved ones at arm’s length, to distance myself from the overwhelming fear that I felt as a mother. To make matters worse, I chose to keep a job that showed me what actual fear and evil looks like, and it was far worse than any of my unimaginable nightmares. Because I love it, because I was so used to the drama and trauma; because the hospital is the one place where I shine the brightest. No one understands this not even my own mother?
Perhaps it’s easier to think I am a slutty sucker for a man in uniform, working through the daddy issues I have never had, just blissfully unaware I’m lost at sea in a bedroom somewhere.
Please think again if you think you know anyone other than yourself.
So read these declarations carefully and proceed with caution. This next part is absolute fact, never fiction. The professional work I do is not ever a joke; I do not ever intend to sound cold even though I usually do, I am not ever trying to be cute, and this life is real, it is dark territory here and I do not use fuck around and find out when it comes to words. Metaphorically. If I say literally it’s literally and if I say it’s an understatement it means there are no adequate words to describe the emotion. My vocabulary is tremendous by the way.
So way back when my youngest son’s elementary school teacher, a woman who’d lost her only child to a horrific tragedy, tells me she adores my son and asks me how I do my job,— I smile and say I don’t know, it’s truly a remarkable gift.
I do not ever divulge how I do it. See I have always been the one who couldn’t handle the truth that is mine.
Oh I’ve always known on some level how I do it, can’t seem to tell anyone how without causing a commotion, but I smile because my sweet boy is alive which is always enough for me. Just like his mother, he also seems to have this unnatural ability to sense subtle shifts in energy and connect with anyone. He used to run off and play with other kids on the beach for hours about 3 seconds after meeting them. My son also managed to make the teacher and his mother, two stiff and rather cold appearing women who rarely smiled, smile a lot that terrible year which was 2011.
By the way, he’s also a Life Path Number 11. Which I didn’t even know or care was my own master number until I sat down next to a woman at a restaurant this past January. I attended a dinner in celebration of a mutual friend, sat next to some light blonde version of myself who had been transplanted when her husband's job moved her family from Los Angeles. Two fish out of water, simply an observation, we just accepted we didn’t quite fit neatly in with the group. While the other moms talked about the best elementary schools I mentioned my own recent December birthday to the Pink Woman, —who then calculated, gasped and proclaimed I was a master number OMFG, 11, based on me having also mentioned I had just turned 48!!!
I mean you would have thought Pink Woman won the lottery. What the actual fuck?
In my book, there is no such thing as an accident, only collisions.
Although I form beautiful connections and often bond with the patients I care for, as well as their families over simply anything, I always know our time together will come to an end. One way or another the nurse to patient relationship is always closed ended, the limits and boundaries are clearly defined. The relationship I have with my patients is always a clinical one, it is always a therapeutic one, and I am emphatically not the patient either here or at home. At home I am a mother and here on Substack I am an author. Of course I know who I am, it’s just the phrase triggered me deeply…
Respectfully and with love, I’m sorry to whoever still thinks The Nurse is stupid, naive, hasn’t seen more death than most humans will ever see, a slut, a bitch, a vixen, ahem unaware? I would also like to send a big kiss: read that as a sucker punch, to every guy (not man) from my past who had the simple audacity to think my publication had anything to do with them. Thanks for the lessons though.
What happened between March and August of 2020 is literally indescribable.
I am so mindful because my job requires me to carefully watch and choose every word before it escapes my mouth. I guess somewhere along the path, my mind figured out the need to break my story down into tiny soft morsels because I am the one who has been choking on the absolute fucking truth of the whole!!
I am. Me. Not anyone else.
Maybe this is why The Wizard of Oz was always my favorite movie when I was a child. Only I’m not a child and frankly I haven’t been a child in forever. This is why I cried in the theater, let the tears pour down my cheeks after surviving, working through a pandemic. Overjoyed to take a train into a practically abandoned New York City in October of 2021; sit enthralled as beautiful Glinda floated down to the stage in her bubble and said the words,
It’s good to see me, isn’t it?
Years later, I have simply no regrets except for the time I lost with my children— time that would unknowingly be stolen from us when I answered my calling. The sad part is I’m a homebody, just wasn’t always mentally there in the house. I’m beyond sorry I had no idea what my choice would cost us, but I also think I wouldn’t be me if I quit when I wanted to.
I received some of the lost time back gifted to me through a stay-at-home order by way of pandemic. I owe only my children for not realizing what I wish to God I realized sooner. In case you haven’t noticed, Mommy’s been very busy breaking generational curses while you three were growing up.
This publication is for Alexandra, Chloe and Griffin, their younger versions. Thank you for loving me. I am grateful we are all together finally under one roof, even if it was a bumpy summer.
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When it comes to everyone else, the only sort of revenge I seek is none. Never have I sought retribution or an apology. Truly, I live my life: I chose this path, this truth, and I ultimately embraced the darkness because I sure as hell know how to transform darkness into light.
I don’t know about anyone else I know, but I am now free.
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That's some heavy stuff, Kristin, and not a job for everyone. You're very caring. Good writing.
Wow. Your ex sounds a lot like my wasband. We also split in fall 2020. Weird, but true. You sound like you've not only survived, but thrived and I'd like to believe I have as well. Your kids are lucky to have you as a mom. Keep writing and I know I'll keep reading.