The battle of who could care less

It is always strange when one's brain is doing battle with itself.
The old thoughts, smooth and comfortable as silk, slipping through the troughs of my mind, while the new thoughts, rough and unburnished as coal, like an atherosclerotic plug, blocking the artery of thought.
I would go back on my meds, but I know how they affect my ability to think, and that is not a luxury I wish to sacrifice for an artificial boost.
I don't really need them, anyway. I will find the strength, somehow, to withstand, withstand and withstand. I don't know any longer whether that is a statement of fact, or whether I am merely attempting to convince myself of something that has never been true.
It makes me feel queasy to think of J, to think of how much hope and optimism she had for me; a kid she had known for a measly few months, but whom she was sure could conquer the world, if she'd only eat. I remember a day when a doctor walked into the ward, chattering excitedly about a short story or an article she'd just had published. J smiled at me, and told me that that could be me. I was, and am still, utterly perplexed and amazed by her unadulterated certainty; her unthinking, unquestioning, assuredness that I could make something of myself.
I wish only to somehow grasp a small portion of her hope, her faith in me, harness it and hone it; maybe then I could be someone.

Ideological rejections.

I am tired of having my white guilt played on. I have this unit at university at the moment, Diversity and Health, or something. Basically, its goal is to create a cohort of nurses capable of holistic care, but the way it is trying to achieve this is perplexing, to say the least. I have sat through many lectures that were 2 hours of 'why the white man sucks', essentially, and I recently sat through a 2 hour lecture of why science and scientifically-based medicine is wrong. I mean, I get that science isn't the only answer and it isn't even always the answer at all. But I don't agree that I'm going to be made a more competent nurse by having some 20 year old sociologist tell me that everything I've ever believed in is completely wrong, and that I somehow am to blame for the state of Aboriginal health because I 'carry the heritage of cultural imperialism'.
Ugh.
Apparently, science is biased. Apparently, by being white and heading towards a career in medicine, I am perpetuating colonisation. Apparently, I'm not culturally safe with my mindset of treating everyone equally, because apparently we can't do that. Apparently, I shouldn't go bush and attempt to treat people with my biased science-based medicine, because, despite the presence of LEPROSY, to do so would be to press my culture onto another, and we can't have that.
I like science. I like logic and algar plates and microscopes. I like medications.
I don't like the idea of watching a woman die because she insulted her Elders, and I don't want to be the privileged imperialist playing domination.
So you'll have to excuse me while I go back to my biased cytology.

Choices Maloices

Holy cheesecake.
My brain is everywhere. Due dates, information sessions, study groups, food...
I've been thinking about uni, and my course, again. I think I want to be doing a bachelor of applied science with a major in biochemistry, or something like that. I think maybe I want to be a doctor, like an MBBS doctor, maybe as well as a PhD doctor. But I don't know.
All I know is that I feel both pressured and compelled to finish my nursing degree first, and even though I really do love the idea of doing a BAppSc, if I did this nursing degree & got a good GPA, I could, provided I then passed the GAMSAT exam, get into the MBBS course without the BAppSc.
That's a lot of abbreviations.
But I don't know yet whether I'm going to fall in love with nursing or whether I want to be a medical doctor or a scientist of some description - or something else entirely.
All I know is that any which way, I need to keep my brain, and body, relatively healthy.
My mind is trying to cling on to the word 'healthy' like a life raft, but my thoughts are too turbulent for my own good. I mean, I'll be honest. I see a shitload of fat when I look in the mirror, and a lot of flaws beside. I can see the outline of what I used to be. How I used to be. And occasionally, what I'm heading back towards. And most days there is an excessively large part of my brain that tells me that I want to get back there. To x-amount of kilos. But then ... what's so good about bones, anyhow?
If I really think about it, given the choice, I don't actually think I'd change a lot about myself, physically. I may dislike myself most days, but I never want to lose sight of who I actually am. I think that that would be the worst thing I could ever do to myself.
I don't know. I'm not pretty and I don't have the perfect figure. I'm not exceptionally intelligent nor talented at anything in particular. I don't want to get married, I don't want children. I want to go to an island, a WARM island, and bask in the sun and drink cocktails. I want to explore Paris by bicycle. I want to eat gelato by the trevi fountain in Rome. I want to (medically) treat the children of the world... I want to go to a music festival in England and participate in La Tomatina in Spain. I want to shot vodka in a den bar in St Petersburg. I want a fat cat and a blue typewriter. I want to learn French, Russian, Serbian and German. Maybe Italian.
Today, I want to live.
And today I choose life.

Bit by Crumbling Bit

Small changes make the biggest difference.
I wear my glasses; I lose the headaches.
I initiate a conversation; I make a friend.
I learn a new term; I understand an entire concept.
I skip a meal; I spend the entire next day having to wrestle harder than ever with myself.

In essence, today was both bogus and great.
My brother signed himself out of hospital (where's the ITO when you need one?!) and is back on the drugs. Mum is heartbroken for the second or third time this week. And I hate myself just that little bit extra for not particularly caring.
But I had to stop caring about him a long time ago, or I'd be just like mum: with a shattered heart loosely held together until he next decides to do something stupid.
Lol. I think I just identified my first personal obstacle to providing care as a nurse: I lack compassion for drug addicts. Particularly those with young children. *cough*.
I feel that it's because I've been on the other side of drug addiction for most of my life; for as long as I can remember, the brother has been on one drug or another, or a cocktail of a thousand. And I've seen it not only destroy his brain and affect his personality and behaviour, but I've seen it destroy our mother. Little by little, over the years.
But anyway.
Sleepsleepsleep.

Insufficiencies and Admissions

I feel positively sick to my stomach. There's no real reason; I just feel as though I've been slapped in the face with my own insufficiencies and ineptitude. But there isn't really a cause of that feeling. It's not as though I have someone external constantly on at me, telling me I'm worthless and will never amount to anything. It's not as though there is someone else pointing out my every flaw. It's not actually as though anyone even really cares.

There's just me.

Me, and my thought process that I will never be enough, that is so far entrenched in my mind, it's irremovable. It's part of the normal regional flora now.

I just have no idea what I'm going to do with myself. And today's re-realisation, so to speak, that I'm never going to 'be good enough' for anything I'm even mildly interested in, has just got me in a world of confusion. It all boils down to that same 4. The 4 that won't particularly matter in the end; the 4 that has utterly broken me.

How can I possibly be a biochemist or a doctor or a neurosurgeon or a .. I don't know, even just a nurse, if I can't do better than a 4 in basic biology?

I can't believe how plagued I am by one result, even months later. It's absurd. The worst part is knowing how absurd I'm being and not being able to stop .. being absurd.

But in other news, one of my brothers has just been admitted to the psych ward in a hospital in Bunbury, over near Perth. Father of 2; drug-induced psychosis.

My god this family is brilliant...

Mr. A.

I think there is something irrevocably .. wrong, with my brain.

I must be wired incorrectly or something. Even when I try to be normal, I am, by nature, so far off the mark I may as well move to Alaska.

Most people I know value their cuddles and their kisses, feel empty without another person, love their sex and kind of, in the background, want to get married and the whole shebang.

I don't know whether it's just me, or just me today, or just ... I don't know. But eh. There is a guy at uni who saw me for like 5 minutes during a tutorial, got my number because he's in my group for a presentation on heart failure we're presenting later this semester, and has rarely ceased texting me since. And I mean rarely. It's irritating me quite a lot.

Anyway. Point. I don't have one, but eh. He keeps talking about cuddling and fucked if I know what else he's on about. I had to tell him tonight that I have no perceivable interest in him 'helping me' with cuddling or learning to share my bed. He actually thought something is wrong with me.

Maybe that says a lot about me. Maybe it doesn't.

Maybe there's something wrong with him.

Maybe this is all just my frustration at a lousy day, or maybe it's the overwhelming inability to comprehend what is happening when I am 20 days away from my 19th birthday, having never thought I would survive 18. Genuinely.

I don't like the idea of marriage. I don't not believe in it, but I don't believe in it, either. I can't stand the idea of carrying a person around inside my person for 9 months like a giant, growing, beating, fingernailed tumor. Yeah, I'm not fond of babies, and yeah it does make me feel like a fail of a human being. So let it be. I don't like the idea of being permanently responsible for a person, or persons. I don't like having someone text me all day long with 'soooo.. what's doing now?', 'send us a pic.Send us a pic.Send Us A Pic.' ... s. Innuendos, unless amusing, are also not my thing. Oh, and may I add, the very first night he said goodnight with 'love you Fleur =P'. I was very close to trying to send his phone a virus.

I need space. I need a lobotomy.

Or just to get a grip.

An exercise in futility

It seems like everything and nothing is happening all at the same time.

I am studying most nights, trying my best to understand what is going on, and yet I am getting no where. There are lectures and tutorials on all the time, and I go to them all, but I still feel like I have gained little ground. I'm not complaining that I don't understand the coursework, or at least I don't mean to be; it's more that I can feel the pressure of the upcoming placement getting more and more intense as it looms ever-nearer, yet I still feel as unprepared for it today as I did last year.

The CP1 class is doing little but to exacerbate my paranoia. And the abbreviations are going to kill me. MRSA, VRE, GIT, URT, UTI, STI, LRT, GOR, FBI - fucking bite me.

God I'm so whiney. And repetitive.

Bleh. I was watching tv tonight and caught the end of the 7pm Project. I still can't believe that for a 110-odd kilometre stretch, there are 2 doctors. And 1800 odd vacancies for doctors in rural Australia. This isn't even beginning to factor in the amount of nurses, midwives and allied health professionals that are needed.

I am seriously in awe of the doctor they had on the show; seeing 70 odd patients a day, delivering babies, he is doing the lot. He's a friggen superman, is what he is.

Aside from the whole people-not-wanting-to-go-bush thing, I think the main problem is that there are so many people who train up in one of the major cities and then go overseas. While I think it's a great idea to get out there and travel the world, and to help those in developing nations ... we have to help ourselves first, don't we?

One of the first things I was taught at university is that, as a nurse, the most important thing I can do is to take care of myself first. Because a sick nurse is a useless nurse. And I believe it to be similar with countries; what good is it if all of the nurses and doctors who train up in Australia go over to Africa to save the people there, if the deficit of trained medical personnel is going to leave Australia struggling as a country to maintain its quality of life?

I have no idea if this is coming out right and I'm too tired and too grouchy to really care. I just think that, while helping the developing countries is vital ... we need people to care about the people living in our country as well.

There are people living in our country who struggle for clean water, sanitary living conditions and nutrition. It's a very real part of Australia, it's not just something you find in India or Zimbabwe. And it shouldn't be ignored in favour of focusing on the rest of the world.

Bah. There are so many different kinds of professions that rural Australia is desperately devoid of, and I just wish I could somehow fill each and every role.

I feel so incredibly useless, sitting here and reading my books. Sure, I donate blood and whatever. That's a good start. But it somehow seems so futile when you consider just how much work needs to be done.

And it's so. bloody. frustrating.