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.

Mildly Mysophobic (y)

Time seems to be escaping me as of late.

It is the second week of this semester and I can barely remember the first - I can barely recall actually 'doing' the first semester.

It's apparently my birthday soon. That means it's almost time for my placement. I am not ready to professionally care for someone, or someones.

The more study I do, the more paranoid I get. I'm terrified I'm going to say hello to a patient, sneeze and kill them.

Or infect them with my pen, is the latest paranoia CP1 has given me.

Or fuck up the math and OD them on blood thinners or I-don't-know-what.

I know I'm going to be supervised, and I know the chances of my actually killing someone is slim, but that doesn't particularly assuage my fears.

Always lovely to hear is that the $50 criminal history check we were told we needed last week is no longer needed. Yeah, that's cool. Not like I have anything better to waste $50 on, after all.

But on a happier note, it turns out that my 118 tutor has a background of remote nursing and has an invested interest in indigenous health issues. I fairly nearly fell in love.

Apparently tomorrow in the first prac, we're going to be washing our hands and playing with glow-in-the-dark stuff that'll show up the bacteria on our hands. I'm pretty pumped to draw a glow-in-the-dark moustache on my face.

I think, today at least, maybe I am okay.

Day 2

My second day back at uni turned out a lot better than the first. Yesterday I was just non-stop freaking out the entire bloody time, it was awful. But today, I was calmer, probably more tired, and better able to deal with what was being thrown at me. Even if I sat through a two hour lecture without a friggen clue as to what the point of it all was.

Didn't help I had the wrong notes.

I've got blisters popping up all over my hand from writing too much, I guess, they're painful and annoying and I wish they'd turn into calluses already. Also have punctuate leukonychia on a couple of nails, which is odd.

Bleh.

I was a bit bummed in today's bioscience class, though. This semester, the lecturer is apparently planning to basically dumb everything down so we deal with as little science as possible, and just learn the basic things that are absolutely necessary for us to know.

It's a bit lame, really.

But I did have to laugh/groan when she was standing there trying to explain exactly what adenosine triphosphate entails. She's all, this part here is what we call adenosine, and connected to this are these three groups here, and each one of these is what we call phosphorus, and so there's three groups of phosphorous attached to the adenosine, so we call it adenosine TRIphosphate. Because there's three.

Like we didn't just spend an entire semester dealing with it.

Though, speaking of my course, I did giggle a lot in my head this morning when I realised for the zillionth time how ironic it is for me to undertaking a degree in nursing when I currently dislike people as a whole.

I'm tired of people expressing their opinions, then getting defensive when others disagree, and telling them that they were merely expressing their opinion as is their right, so if you don't like it that's your opinion and you should keep it to yourself.

Going by that latter statement, everybody should keep their opinions to themselves, not just those who disagree with a poorly worded statement.

And if everybody kept their opinions to themselves .. well, there'd be a lot more peace, but the world would be a very quiet place.

Conversation is built on opinion and perceptions.

Were we to keep every opinion to ourselves, nothing would ever be said.

'I felt like a racehorse in a world without race-tracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business shirt, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone.
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig-tree in the story.
From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and off-beat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.
I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig-tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.'

- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Leaping and soaring, away shall I fly; away, away, away..

What's the point?
There is no point.
Does this mean we shouldn't try?
Well no, it just means we shouldn't expect much.
Doesn't that mean that it's pointless?
Yes it does, shall we repeat the conversation?
No, it's okay. There's no point.

My, oh my. I wish my mind would stop conversing with itself. It's annoying, especially when it's not particularly enthralling. I wish I could escape it, but there is no way to escape your head.
So instead, I empty it, into this, for no real reason. But an empty mind is far better than an overwhelmingly full mind.
I have nothing particularly interesting to say tonight.
I met a girl online, or rather, she found my email address off a site and contacted me. It's strange, because she is (almost) where I was 4 years ago. She is on the precipice of something horrific, and she hardly knows it. I'm trying to tell her, RUN WHILE YOU CAN, but then I remember how I received those same warnings and brushed them off completely. Is trying to tell her to get help while it's not serious then a futile idea? I'd like to think not, but I really don't know.
She's at the 'I think I have an eating disorder, but I'm not anorexic' stage. The stage where it kind of starts to twig that hey, I may have a problem here, but aw nah, it's not serious. Fuck. It.
I think there is a certain delusion associated with having an eating disorder. I know that I have it, and K- does, too. You know exactly what you're getting yourself into because it's one of the few things left you can physically focus on. Your mind is so full of numbers and facts, repetitive thoughts, a voice constantly droning on at you all day and night; all you can think about is food. Food food food. And weight. And eating disorders. You read everything you can find, you devour the information instead of calories. You realise that you're going to be deficient in everything; that your hair is going to fall out and it will sadden you greatly; that your breath will smell odd if you go into ketosis; that you are going to be cold. And I don't mean, oh it's a little chilly in here, isn't it? I mean fucking freezing, a perpetual state of utter frozenness, impossible to thaw, that sits in your bones. And you know that your concentration will shatter, your memory is going to be shot to hell. You know that there will be days in which you will be too weak to lift your head off the pillow, and yet you will still struggle to fit in those essential exercises. You know that your electrolytes are going to get completely out of whack, that your heart muscle will weaken and your brain will eat itself; you KNOW that it will fucking kill you. But there is always always ALWAYS that voice that tells you, 'You won't die. You're not that bad. Shut the fuck up and give me 20'. And you believe it. You believe, in spite of the facts, that you will not die and you will somehow be able to defy biology itself and become infinitely smaller.
And it will be grand.
Even if it is fucking stupid.
I don't know why I wrote all that, but I'm too lazy to start again.
I don't think I even have a point tonight, other than that minds are dangerous places and right now, I'd give both my kidneys to be able to escape my head.
The brain is amazing. Thought is incredible.
My brain and my thoughts just seem to not like me very much.
What a bizarre notion.

Ahh, sun ^o^

Inexplicable happiness.

Carefree laughs.

Generous smiles.

Relaxed muscles.

This moment, right here, is perfect. It won't last, but while it does ... I am in a state of bliss.

There is no reason; nothing has changed, nothing has happened to lift me right up and make me laugh at the screen of my laptop, sitting in the grounds of the university.

I just am.

Friends, sun - WARMTH - and my favourite songs playing.

No stress, no worries, no counting.

I just wish the wind would leave me be. It's killing my warmth-induced buzz.

Fuck It.

This is potentially the hardest post for me to write, yet I feel it needs to be said.

People need to become more aware that mental illness is really quite common, and that it isn't something to be shunned or ignored.

My issues are ones shared by so many others, and they need to be addressed. This blog isn't going to do that, but hey, it's a pin head of a start.

And, well, if you think of me differently because of this post, that's on you. This is me. I make no apologies for who I'm meant to be.

Over the last few years a lot of shit has happened, and I'm still trying to come to terms with a lot of it.

I guess the only place to start is at the beginning, which is hard when it's not clearly defined, so bear with me if this doesn't make complete sense.

By the start of grade 12, my mother had separated from my step father, Phil, and was filing for divorce. This was hard for a lot of reasons, the least of which that it was a rather messy break up, and he'd been my only father figure since I was 2; but nevertheless, I managed to juggle emotionally supporting my mother, living in a small house with far too many people, part time work and my school work.

At the very end of grade 12, I, rather unthinkingly, wrote my reflectional speech about what it had been like to have had an eating disorder for the past year a half. (Needless to say, I was encouraged to present this at lunchtime with only the teacher and a friend present).

Obviously, that started a chain reaction of events like a firecracker. Ms Carlin went to Mr Pokarier and Ms Itsikson, who in turn called in the district guidance counsellor, Barbara something-or-other. She sent me to a doctor to get a check up, helped me to break the news to my mother and referred me to the Child and Youth Mental Health Service (CYMHS). I went there once and met my to-be counsellor, who told me to find a different doctor and sent me to Logan Hospital for a complete physical examination. (As confused as I was yet?). So I went, and met with a doctor who actually turned out to be a psychiatrist, who did the examination, found nothing physically wrong with me other than my weight, and interviewed me.

That was when I got my first diagnosis: Anorexia nervosa.

She decided it would be best to admit me to the adolescent mental health ward in the hospital. She wanted to do it all that afternoon, but I begged off until Monday afternoon, to give me time to do my last few pieces of assessment, determined that my grades should not be determined by approximations and past results.

Monday comes, I am absolutely sick to my stomach with nerves, and go to Ms Itsikson to ask for leniency for the assessment, which she grants immediately, almost relievedly.

I say goodbye to the few friends who knew, went home to pack my bag, and returned to the hospital where I was taken to the ward.

Anyway, one week later, they've gotten 2kg on me, enough to allow me out for the formal. So mum and my sister turn up, but both have incredibly red eyes. I eye them warily, glance at my case manager who quickly ensures that I have my supplements and ushers us out the door. I get into the car, no one is telling me what's going on and why they're both crying, and then my mum's mobile rings. My sister answers and then says to my mum, 'It's the police. They want to know what to do with the car'. I stare at them, completely bewildered and concerned. So my mum looks at me in the rear view mirror of the car, and says to me: 'Fleur, Phil's dead'.

Cue utter shock.

He had killed himself the night before; carbon monoxide poisoning.

Turns out my case manager knew before I did.

A few panic attacks and a bit of crying later, I'm back in hospital.

Not long after, they caught on to the fact that the previously lowered moods had significantly worsened, surprise surprise, and that my anxieties were not decreasing, and so began to medicate me.

A few months later when they realise that this is more than grief, they give me my second diagnosis: Major depression.

After 3 months, I'm significantly heavier, on prozac to help the depression and anxiety, and released, completely unprepared, back into the world.

I go home, completely fall apart, get readmitted far too many times for anyone's good until they lower the readmission weight by 15kg and I move to the Gold Coast. I go to a new doctor who proceeds to mess around with my medication until I no longer know whether I'm coming or going, but his scales seemed to like to stay around the same number for a couple of months, which turned out to be good enough for the psychiatrist who saw me twice in the whole six months, both times in the space of a week. So I was let off the involuntary treatment order and immediately ceased all therapy, having found it more detrimental than helpful.

And anyway, here I am. Just a confused kid with too many diagnoses and not enough solutions.

I get that hardly anyone is going to read this, and even fewer will even care. But that's okay. This isn't a cry for attention, and I don't want pity. I just feel that the time has come where I am strong enough to tell my story, even if only in this weak little way, to five people at most.

But it feels good to have this out there, to have owned up to myself at last.

Self-absorbed lunacy

I am reverting. I can feel it. I can see it.

But I don't care.

Today was pretty awful, not that I particularly care to dwell. There is always tomorrow.

Until there isn't.

I was watching Medical Emergency today; there was a guy with chemical burns basically all over his body, and his mouth was affected as well, which of course means that respiratory problems are of major concern. There was a woman who'd been in a rather large train accident and had, I think it was maybe 11, bones in her face completely broken and needed surgery. There was a construction worker who had somehow shot a nail sideways clean through all 5 of his toes, was petrified of needles and needed like 6 lots of local before they could pull the nail out. There was a guy with something or other wrong with a disc in his back who was in hellish levels of pain and needed morphine on top of penthrox. It was the first time I've ever seen penthrox; I'm still kind of intrigued that you can now inhale analgesics. Anyway, my point was that, yeah today sucked for me, but my day was nothing on theirs.

And maybe I should just stop being so restraining of myself. In all of this mess, there is one thing that I know that I want, and there is no one but myself that would ever even think to encourage me in the slightest. But maybe I should just stop this twilight zone bullshit and go for it.

And do it properly.

Well, okay, maybe that wasn't entirely true. There are two things I know that I want more than anything. The other one being that, were it not for my knowing that to defer this degree any more would be to forfeit any notion of ever finishing it, I would be packing my bags and moving to France right now.

Even if my French is on par with a 3 year old, tops.

So, I have less than a week left before I go back to uni. I want to go back, and I am dreading it. I am dreading trying so effing hard that my brain just about explodes, again, and only getting a 4 to show for my efforts. I am dreading sitting in lectures and feeling so.damn.stupid., again. I am dreading that overwhelming feeling of sitting in a full lecture theatre and feeling so lost and so alone, even surrounded by so many people. I am dreading the placement and feeling the full extent of my self-doubt and petrification. I am dreading the frustrations, the fears, the emotions and the lack thereof. But I am looking forward to getting out of the house, and I am looking forward to completing the next stage of this ... thing, even if I get to the end and find I have spent three years+ on a pointless endeavour.

I need to prove to myself that I can do this. That I can persist until I win. That I can do as well as I keep saying I can.

I think it's time to stop making excuses, stop beating myself up over what I could have done, and just do. And do it until there are no realistic could have's left.

I don't even know what I'm saying anymore.

Futurama is the only kind of Future I want to know about

The future is confusing.

It's not tangible, it's not foreseeable, it's not predictable, hell, it's not even comprehensible.

I am studying a course, and having thought about it, I am studying it mostly for the toys I get to play with at the end of the day. Provided all the nursing tasks haven't been appropriated by other health professionals.

Were it not for the crippling self-doubt, I know I would be studying something else. And I would have less of an idea of what to do with the resultant degree.

But I keep doing this; this first semester is forever tripping me up. I didn't make it through the whole first semester of the first course, I gave up half way through the first semester of the second course but completed the semester nonetheless, and I have now finished and passed the first semester of the third course, yet I feel oddly compelled to throw it away and start afresh with a new course.

I won't, but a large part of me wishes I would.

It's strange though, because in a way it feels as though my time is dwindling. Whilst everyone else around me appears to be blossoming, I feel as though I am wilting. It has never even seemed conceivable that I would make it to 25, much less past it, yet I am now about to turn 19, without a clue as to anything.

I dunno, maybe E- is right. Maybe I should just try more to live in the present. I never seem to be where I am. My head is perennially dwelling in the past or trying to somehow grasp the future and mold it in my hands to become something for which I can plan and make adjustments, comprehend and circumnavigate. It is, of course, a fool's objective.

Maybe A- was right in holding the mindfulness sessions every morning. At least they were 5 minutes in which I was truly present. Ah, the look on his face if he ever knew I even so much as thought that..

But I mean, it's all pretty pointless. I can't plan for the future outside of the next few seconds any more than anyone else, at least not with any degree of certainty that the events would progress exactly as I desired. So maybe I need to not give up, but to loosen up. Roll with what's happening now and worry about the rest later. Continue with my course and worry about the careers and the finances later.

On a more exciting note, I finally got a copy of mass effect today. I was playing it all afternoon; I'm hooked already. So awesome.

So yay video games, boo beating myself up over a 4, and hurrah for progress.

Even if it only lasts another 5 minutes.

Residue

I just want to say first up that Karli, if you read this -- you amaze and mystify me.

Tonight, I am in a twilight zone. I don't know whether today has been exceptionally good or horrifically bad, but maybe I should just take it as it was: another day, with its share of highs and lows.

I spent the first half of the day playing lab rat; it was actually a lot more fun than I make it sound. I met another nurse, who introduced me to the tube used to collect a salivary sample. Hawo, Mr. Tube. Anyway, I now have four fun little marks on my back from where the tester 'marked her spot' so she knew where to look tomorrow when they do their little biopsy. Participating in this study is proving to be really interesting.

I watched a documentary like last night or something about speech; my god it was fascinating. With the birds and what appears to be an actually innate call, and the video x-ray machines, the neurologists and the speech pathologists, and the mutation of the chromosomes.... this is what I was designed for.

Yeah, she's really coherent tonight. You would understand if you watched it.

Toy Story 3 was just incredible. I really want to go see it again in 3D, just because.

Bleh. L- keeps voicing concerns about being readmitted to the psych ward, which is reawakening my own concerns. I'm not even close to what I would have to be before they readmitted me, which is reassuring, but the threat still lingers and niggles away at my brain. L- isn't close, either, and it would be highly unlikely for them to actually readmit her, but I mean ... what is this? Why has a place that in all theory should have HELPED us left us emotionally scarred?

It's a hospital. It's a place where people are meant to get better. People aren't meant to be discharged with a new found panic attack-inducing fear of being readmitted. I mean, they're not supposed to like the idea ... but to have a reaction this extreme?

And it's not just me. It's L-, and it's K-, probably B- and C- as well. For god's sake, it's been almost two years and K- and I are still having nightmares.

Tad extreme, no?

But on the other hand, for now, we are all free. And that's worth a lot when I think back to the days of being cooped up within the same six rooms for weeks on end.

Bleh. Help schmelp.

Mulling of the mind

Job hunting; it begins.

The same questions never cease to stump me. Why here? Why you? Why are you so interesting that we'd drop our pants in public to have you work for us?

I wish they'd really ask me that last question.

I'm not special, that's my problem. They have no reason to want to hire me, and I have no real desire to work for them, it's simply a matter of me being sufficient to fulfill their needs at the lowest possible cost to them, and the highest possible rate for me.

It feels like such an asinine position to be in.

On the positive side of everything, I've made a new friend and I'm seeing an old friend today.

On the negative, the new friend is an old friend of the boyfriend of an ex-friend (odd title, eh), I am completely unable to take on tafe at the same time as university this semester, and I'm back to applying for jobs at Macca's. Go team.

I suppose it's not all bad. I'm kind of resigned to the idea of having to stay at home longer than I'd hoped; not taking on tafe means I won't have to worry about conflicting placement schedules and I can keep my focus on my nursing studies; I'm still in the middle of applying to volunteer for the Red Cross ... and I don't have cancer. That's a definite plus.

I had forgotten how poorly I deal with holidays. It took me like 3 or 4 days to get over the post-exam stupor, but now that I have ... well, one day free to myself and the unit is clean and my bedroom is back to its a-type organisation. I actually recommenced writing up my notes last night because I had nothing better to do (granted, my brother was hogging the internet and tv at the same time). Yeah, post-exam study.

Boo-yah.

I can finish my allocations next week, so hopefully they'll start releasing information and whatnot soonly so I can start organising my stuff for next semester.

God. How I'm going to survive post-university is beyond me.

Holidayyys :D

Freedom.

It is mine for a month.

Now to determine what to do with it...

Team Poor

My head is pounding.

My stomach is churning.

My mind is spinning and my body is aching from the tensed muscles.

Welcome back, Señor Stress. You have not been missed.

My exam is on Saturday. I figured out that to have covered everything in time, I'd have to be covering at least 3 body systems a day, when I'm averaging at like 1.3. So, yes, and now I'm wasting further time by doing this to let off some steam. Go team.

Well, I realised that I was wrong about the fee for the tafe course. It's a long story, but in essence I'd have to pay over $1000. So there goes that idea. But, it's okay. Now I don't have to worry as much about finding the money for my uniform, fun little nursey tools, my first aid certificate, rent, food.... and so on.

So we pick ourselves up, we dust ourselves off, we convince ourselves we don't care anyway, and we go on.

Oh, it also turns out that I've managed to add dysthymia to my collection of diagnoses. Again: Go team. The doctor wants me back on my meds, but I can't afford them. I forget how much it is, but at 2 tablets a day, they go pretty fast. I already can't afford to do anything, without trying to accommodate for filling prescriptions every other time I get paid.

I'm actually mildly surprised that he didn't force a referral on me like he did a couple of months ago. Not that I actually wound up seeing that psychologist, but that's neither here nor there.

Bleh I'm all whiney today, it's annoying me. So anyway, back to my discovery of the workings of the pancreas and marveling at histological pictures of chondrocytes. Oh hells yeah..

Shattered.

clashclash

Flashbacks will destroy me.

The reality of it all is still beyond me. That I went through that. That I'm still going through that. That it will never leave me. Ever.

It's a difficult concept to grasp, but more difficult to live.

I have been finding myself talking about it, so close to openly, and it's terrifying. I haven't talked to anyone about it since my last psychologist. The hardest thing is that I can still not openly admit to it. I dance around saying it, in every conversation, regardless of whether I'm talking about it as a general issue or as a personal experience.

How can I openly confess to it when I cannot admit it to myself?

Sometimes I think that perhaps I should open up, own it. It's not something I'm ashamed of, nor something I'm proud of. It isn't so much actually expressing it, as it is the stigma, the reaction, the permanence of the label, that I am afraid of. And I know that I shouldn't be, I shouldn't have to be afraid to say it out loud.

The other issue is the physical repercussions. The watching. The monitoring. The questions. The eyes. The immense sadness in my mother's eyes is an image I am still unable to forget, and I never want to be the cause of that look again.

Tonight... I tried. I had to. But then I went too far, and the same anxieties are engulfing me, tearing me apart on a microscopic level.

They told me to work past these, but how is that even possible? How can you possibly 'just say no' when every fibre of your being is screaming at you to do something? Or not do something.

Today, I remembered something. I remembered the passion I once had. I remembered my old dream of becoming the leading paediatrician and eradicating the measles and malaria completely; of reducing the amount of childhood deaths relating to diarrheal and respiratory infections; of introducing childhood immunisation to all countries in the world; of somehow feeding the world to reduce drug use, malnutrition and all of its inherent complications; of saving the fucking world.

God... I don't half dream big. But then, where would the world be if it weren't for those with big dreams and high ambitions?

I watched a movie tonight on SBS called Grbavica. I didn't actually realise until I looked it up that it was set in modern-day Bosnia, I kind of thought it was Serbia... because my geography is clearly lacking. The point being, it was ..amazing. I don't want to write a synopsis, but it is an incredible portrayal of humanity surviving things as devastating as the Balkan War (I think?). My brother even liked it, and he normally just sits there complaining about historical inaccuracies.

Hmm but anyway, I hear that the Red Cross has been calling people that I listed as referees when I applied a while ago to volunteer for them. I didn't actually realise that they were still interested in taking me on as a volunteer, but I guess if they like what my mother and a friend had to say about me, I'll find out what they have in store for me. I'm pretty keen to do some volunteer work, so it's actually pretty fantastic that they're doing a reference check for me now. There are a lot of organisations I'd love to volunteer for, especially the Starlight Foundation, but the Red Cross is still an amazing opportunity, so fingers crossed.

I think I will have to call the tafe tomorrow to see what's what in regards to the aged care/community health care certificate course. I'd really rather do that this coming semester, rather than first semester next year, though I probably should've done it either this time last year or earlier this year, since there is now the potential for the aged care placement to clash with my nursing exams or placement. I dislike clashes. Exponentially.

I think I'll shut up now. I'm fairly sure I ran out of interesting things to mull over in this blog about ten minutes ago..

Insufferable Ignorance

People ... mystify me.

It's like everyone's playing a game of whose-life-sucks-worse all the time, and they can't accept that maybe, just maybe, someone out there is actually suffering more than them -- or at all.

I'm not pretending to be innocent of this. I know that I am self-involved more often that not. But at least I am able to acknowledge that, hey, that guy has it worse than me, and something should be done about it. I don't try to demean him, or belittle his suffering. And I certainly don't tell him to 'just get the fuck over it'.

I swear to god, if I hear that phrase again, someone is going to lose their head. Literally.

I'm tired of the labels. Everyone is this or that according to someone, regardless of whether they've even met. Thin girls are anorexic. Women in their 40s are hacks. Elderly people are incontinent, hearing-impaired, they have dementia. Asians and Muslims are apparently the root of all evil.

Xenophobia can kiss my ass.

There is a group on facebook now called 'YOUR religion is ruining OUR planet'. Isn't it a little fucking stupid, to say the least, to blame *all* religion for everything going wrong in the world? I'm fairly sure that the Muslims didn't cause global warming. And Christian fundamentalists didn't make the volcano erupt in Iceland. Buddhists didn't create the hole in the ozone layer, and Pagans don't 'bewitch' the Japanese to go whaling.

What's so wrong with believing in something, anyway? Ja, I get that extremists do some pretty fucked up things, but aren't they ultimately a minority?

To blame everything on the extremists, to claim that an entire religion is comprised solely of extremists -- isn't that a little like tasting chocolate icecream and then declaring that all icecream is chocolate flavoured? Such a bad analogy, but it works. Have you *been* to Baskin & Robbins?

Ugh I'm not even going to touch on the sheer ignorance of mental health tonight.

Vent over for now.

And time for sleep and beautiful dreams of biological terms and diagrams.

Sweet dreams!

Un nuovo inizio o vecchio?

Well I deleted all of my old posts ... I'm not entirely sure why, though maybe it's because I just wanted to start again with a blog. I have another one that I'm still using, but that's a different ... version.

I still can't seem to shake the insomnia. I kind of prefer to think of it as my being perfectly attuned to some other part of the world. I have no idea which part, but ..somewhere.

I can't believe that I've almost finished my first semester of nursing. It seems strange, being at this stage, and looking through my notes and being able to pinpoint the exact stage at which I gave up last year. I would like to think I was forced to give up, but it really was my fault alone, and I refuse to 'blame it all on the mental illness'.

That's such a crock.

Though speaking of all that, I haven't heard from Corey in ages. I'm absurdly worried.

I heard through the grapevine that a girl I know from high school is taking up nursing with the idea of becoming a mental health nurse. Damn, that sounds so cool in theory. I just hope she turns out nothing like the nurses I knew. I hope she can make a difference.

It's impossible to describe the momentum of the flood of memories that engulfed me when I read those words.

The nurses.

The NGT.

The bolusing.

The piano.

The ECGs ... the occasion when another patient walked in & the nurse spacked off at him.

Cate; Lissa; Corey; Mason; Belinda.

Vicky, behind the laundry bins. Vicky, emerging from the bathrooms. Vicky, lurking in the shadows of the hall. Vicky with that absurd Tigger toy, covered in bandages. Vicky, and the chess pieces....Vicky.

It's a strangely hollowing thing to have to genuinely hope that such a close friend is still alive.

I still kick myself every day for not having gotten her mobile number or email address. I can't even remember her fucking last name.

On a slightly less sombre note, though, I have officially commenced study for the end-of-semester biology exam. It feels good to be getting my notes and thoughts organised into a logical pattern, in a good sized note book, with oodles of highlighters scattered over the surface of my desk.

Oh. Yeah. Mother & I went shopping today. She bought me a 24-pack of highlighters for $2.49 and a retractable one for .49c. Yah. Then I bought the groceries for $100.

Equality; I love it.

I've applied to do a Cert-III in aged care at Tafe this upcoming semester; I'm just waiting for them to call me back about it. I realise I must be insane to be voluntarily planning to undertake study at Tafe at the same time as university, but, really, there's only so much of this applying for jobs that I don't actually want in the first place and then being rejected by them bullshit dance that I can take. I'd rather do two courses simultaneously, stress myself out completely for a semester, with an end result of improved chances of being hired, and at a place I would actually want to work. There are a heap of advertisements all the time for AINs and EENs, so it'd be worth it. It's really just a matter of whether I can afford it.

I wish I had something intelligent to say, rather than just whining about every triviality that is bothering me this exact minute. But I don't, not really.

I only have this to say: I wish that people would stop promising to 'always be there'. No one can honour that promise.

It takes one miniscule, seemingly irrelevant, detail, and you've vanished.

Always there, huh?

Yah? So where are you now? Screw that, where were you a week ago, a month ago?

Where the fuck are you?