Socializing Aches

Do you know what I hate? When you're with a new group of people, or with a new group but know one good friend and your friend knows all the other people, or you're with old friends you havent seen in ten years, and you're all making conversation and then someone awkwardly says, "Julie, why are you so quiet?" Or someone will rudely say, "Julie, talk much??" or "Speak up, Julie, I haven't heard a peep out of you." Or someone will pull me into another room and try to be all nice and all like "Are you OK? Whats wrong? Why are you so quiet?"

When REALLY, what is there to say??! Don't people get it that some people, like me, like to just listen to everyone talking? I observe people. I listen to people. I watch them, study their interactions with eachother. I giggle at what others say, sometimes, I'll throw in a peep of conversation. But half the time, I'm with people I've never met and they are all talking about inside jokes or stuff they always talk about, and therefore, what am I supposed to say? Talk about the weather? I'm not a talker. I don't mean to be rude. I just like to listen. Also, I think so much about what I'm going to say that its too late to say it by the time I try. Or half the time there is no opening to say it, because everyone is talking so fast and you have to practically raise your hand to get a spot of words thrown in there. And then you get socially deducted when after all that time of trying to say something, you havent said anything and therefore are "too quiet".


0_0.

Of course, throw me with some good, close friends, and Usually I can't shut up. Or put me 1:1 with someone I'm extremely compatible with, and we could literally talk for hours. :-) I love those times.

I'm a person thats OK with silence. Just sitting, with someone, in silence. In a car ride, or waiting for something...or whatever. I hate *trying* to make small talk. I can do it, to be polite, but it Irks me. I am perfectly content just being with each other and not talking. If we have something to talk about, excellent, I would love to talk. But small talk? The weather? Eh. I'm big on nonverbal communication. I like to listen to people that way, even if they don't realize they are communicating that way. I also am very good at communicating non-verbally. Eyes, facial expressions, body language...gestures.


I've always wanted to learn sign language. It would be so much easier.


~ A Writer in a Nurse's Body.

f$#)$#(@#$!!

Oy.



:-(


OK, I officially cannot wait to go back to school. In fact, I'd like to get on a plane, fly to California, and start over. Except maybe I'd rather pick Washington--but that's beside the point. I want a clean slate.

Sun again.

The sun was really nice :).

Sun.

I'm going to go lie (lay?) in the sun. And take a nap. And read my book. Normally, those two last things might be hard to do at the same time, but I'll manage. I might even throw in my Ipod in there so that i cannot hear my mother. SOunds like a lovely afternoon. :-)

Sleep.

Sleep hasn't been very productive the last week.



I just keep tossing and turning, which is abnormal for me. But literally-I get into a comfy position and then (10 seconds later!) decide that it is definitely not going to work out, and turn to my other side. Its all about my head. Every time I put my head down it hurts recently, which is weird because it doesnt hurt when I'm doing something. My pillow has to be *just* right. Which rarely happens. Eventually I just fall asleep regardless of my comfortable-ness. And I've also been waking up at 5 AM very often and I'll get up, look out my window- (with my glasses on)- inspect my....lawn? trees? stars? and then decide that oh hey, It's 5 AM, continuing my sleep would be an excellent idea.


Thats about it. I dont even want to even talk about the state of confusion my heart is in right now. Heh--It's sort of on a....numb-break? Nothing is phasing me right now. I think I turned it off. Yep. I turned my heart off, so that It cannot be hurt. But that makes me not happy because I like it when my heart is on- I like to feel the heartbreak because It reflects in my writing, my painting...my exercise...Heartbreak is very powerful. But I can't just turn my heart back on. My subconscious self-defense system just shut everything down, after surviving the last couple weeks.


Back to school soon...I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. So many other friends are so happy about it. ANd don't get me wrong, I am ECSTATIC to be getting OUT of this house, and into my cozy single, where i can just be alone . QUIET! :-) I'm very much looking forward to it. But, I am having a very hard time finding the motivation to pack, (I think my heart being turned off has something to do with this whole lack of motivation whilly)-and Also, this is my last year in school. school for me means....still a kid? I guess? I am in the safety of my dorm room...the college.. All I have to do is work, do my homework, go to class, get good grades, eat, sleep, socialize (on occasion)....thats all. Its so simple. I just know as soon as May starts getting closer and closer, my stress level is going to go into Panic mode. Because next summer I have to take my NCLEX, and then, be a nurse. Which means I guess I really am an official adult. I'll be moving out. I'll have my own house...sort of. I'll have a JOB. It's very surreal and I cannot picture it. I hope my heart turns back on by then because i am definitely going to be needing it.


Gahh I'm sorry this is a long blog, but I just thought of something really happy. I took Ryan (3) and Ava (1) to the park to play. THey played alone most of the time alone, or together, until this adorable little girl comes over to RYan and very confidently says, "Hi! I'm Rachel! It is so nice to meet you!" And then went to stick her hand out and shook his hand. Ryan didnt know what to do- He was stunned! I didn't say anything- Just watched them interact, I was curious to see what Ryan would do. He said "My name is ryan." She responded with, "WOuld you like to be my playdate?" And he said, nodding, "Will you play on the dinosaur??" So, off they went, cute as a button, and played together for the next couple hours. It just absolutely made my day. I am beginning to really love Kids. Especially when you can see them go through developmental changes like that.

Au Revoir, ~A Writer in a Nurse's Body.

One day, when I'm old and retired and have nothing else to do, I'm going to write an autobiography.

Its title will be, "The Love Life of a Hypochondriac."

Its main focus is how FRIGGEN HARD It is to live life as a hypochondriac. Then it needed another twist, so I'll talk about how twisted my love life can be (is), and especially how my hypochondriac-ness extremely affects my love life.

*sigh*.

It is seriously hard living every day worried you might die. From a headache. Or a mysterious bump. Or a twitch in your eye. Or some mysterious poison someone might have put in your drink. Or a stomachache. ANYTHING. It seriously is a psychiatric condition. And I'm totally serious, It's how I feel. OK maybe I don't feel like I'm going to die every day, but every day (mostly every day-certainly every week), I come up with some catastrophic disease that I have. And it could kill me-eventually. Especially after going through my psych class-I have (I think) concluded at some point that I had every psychiatric condition....but I think, thats normal. No one is normal. THats the normal part. Ok now I do sound psychotic. No really, no one is normal. I think we all have a twinge of some psychiatric disorders, and some of us don't realize it. The depressed, the OCDers, the schizos, the bipolars....MPD's...all of them. Usually I'm lucky enough to breeze through each catastrophic (<<<am I spelling that right?) disease, for one week I have bipolar and the next I totally don't.

Lets just say I have NO clue why I'm going to be a nurse because half the time I think I'm dying because of a disease/infection my patient had that I had taken care of. I am very good at convincing myself of anything. Half the time I could create a headache, from thinking about getting a headache. If only I could cure myself that way. There have been many nights that I literally thought i was dying, and yet, Here I am--Alive. And well. (mostly). Doctors hate me. I can just tell when they are talking to me. All my tests come out negative. No one can find anything, because there is probably nothing there. Despite all my symptoms. I don't understand it.

THis will all be in my future book. So look forward to it. :-)

I'm such a spaz.

Quote

"sometimes I think the human heart is just a simple shelf. There's only so much you can pile onto it before something falls off an edge and you are left to pick up the pieces." - Jodi Piccoult

Finally a blog about nursing

So this is a nursing/ self discovery blog more so than an emotional/ personal blog, For once. I need to get over the emotional stuff and focus on more important things. So this past weekend at work, I've been doing a lot of thinking. A lot of it I already knew, some new discoveries too. We took TWO patients down to the ICU this past weekend, which is a lot of excitement for my floor. Breaks the monotony of bedpans all day. I hate to be a cruel SOB and it's awful to say, but I crave the excitement of adrenaline, code blue ( or any code really) or a mad rush to the ICU...even though that excitement for me means a terrible day for someone else, or even an end of a life at times. But I love it. Our first transfer was really exciting. The patient's vitals dropped very quickly and her O2 dropped into the 40's so they put her on a breathing machine, but still didn't help. So off we went to the ICU, bed and all. So in the elevator is the bed, a breathing machine, and IV, a heart monitor and a nurse, respitory therapist, and me. (and yes, it was a very small elevator to begin with). Every thing is very fast paced and you have to be ready to do anything to save your patient and i love that. I feel like I think better under extreme adrenaline- like my subconcious just knows what to do. When I have time to think about it, I second guess myself and double check and take forever. And usually am not right because I thought too much into it. But when emergency situations come about, I'm a totally different person. I'm smart, I'm proficient, I'm fast, im good at delegating tasks to others, I keep surprisingly calm, can multitask...I love when things get to that level. When I think about it, it circles back to how I've been my entire life. I excel beyond superior when I know I'm already ahead, (a strength), but fall extremely behind when I think I've done something wrong or have no chance of getting ahead (a weakness- something I need to work on). I need to find balance.

But anyway, our second ICU transfer was a lot more boring. Not even worth writing about really.

Ok point is, as much as I also want to do pediatric nursing (which, like my floor now can have exciting moments at times, will at majority not be exciting. This goes back to a vague post I left a couple weeks ago about how I should have joined army nurses. I read so many memoirs of nurses that have been through war, it intrigues me so much. They sometimes work under the shittiest conditions. They sometimes work for 3 days straight with only an hour here and there for sleep. They are constantly working under a constant threat that their camp could be attacked. Everything they do is an emergency, a life saving event... Nurses get to work right alongside doctors, instead of sitting at a desk trying to figure out doctor writing or getting yelled at by some doctor. (just writing from experience-not stereotype).
I like pushing myself to the limit. I like to test my boundaries. Even on my floor, after fighting with strong men all day or even if its just really busy overall, sometimes i have 15+ things on my critical list of things to do...but i love it. I love when it gets like that, even if i complain later that work was "so busy". I like to throw my hair up in to an extremely messy bun and get ready to run down the hall or get ready to do CPR or be a part of a psych situation, where im the one responsible for holding down some very, very strong people. There was once a time that I was the only one who knew exactly how to handle a particular psych patient we had, and I was not only the one talking him through his crisis, but also holding him down and to top it all off, telling the month old nurse what to do and reminding her how to give an injection because she was so nervous. I love that feeling. If I can't have army one day I really want to maybe do medivac nursing (helicopter), or ER nursing...but we'll see.

On another note, so so so many people have told me to go into psychnursing. I have this natural built in mechanism that when I'm in person with someone, I am very good at like picking up how someone is feeling, what they're thinking, why their doing what they're doing, and I'm good at picking up on emotions. I can easily (usually) predict peoples potential next actions, or understand why they did what they did or said. Also, and some consider this a weakness, I consider it a strength. I have this ability to sort of act as a chameleon. I can change how I act based on who I'm with. When I meet someone new, I know within about one minute "who" I'll be. I'm a different person with my friends than I am at work, I'm different with each individual friend, different with each group...different when I go on dates, different at school...sometimes I watch myself change, I hear myself speak, and I'm thinking-- what am I saying?? I totally don't even sound like me. It's very weird. It's a strength at times but also a weakness. I cannot do this with kids, which is why I often have a very hard time understanding toddlers and children. I don't know what they're thinking, what they might do...they flip emotions in a heartbeat... It makes me uncomfortable because I'm used to adults. So why am I going into pediatrics? Not a clue. It just feels right.
At work, I'm different with every single patient and I don't have to try and do it it just happens. I morph myself into who I think each person needs at that moment, and I remember it for each person. The only problem is, I can be 50 people, but who is just Julie? Who am I when I'm alone? I've thought about It and each time my answer is- depends where I am. B&n reading a book with tea? Walking? Doing housework? Homework? It is always different. When I'm alone is when I'm at my most secret, inner exposed self. I have no persona to hide behind I guess. Sometimes I want people-particular people, or strangers, I guess- to see this inner self yet at the same time I build such a complex wall around myself that it's almost impossible to tap through. Maybe I'm waiting for the person that can make the wall come crumbling down with just a finger, the person who can walk through the rubble to get to my heart and not walk away, ever again. Once you're in, you're in, with me. I'm big on metaphors, and with this metaphor, I feel like there have been two people to come to the entrance of this wall, so to speak. The first tried very hard to find the code in and did. That person took a piece of what they found inside, a piece of my heart and still has it. Number two is standing at the entrance right now and I feel is ready to turn the other way, deciding not to enter... I think I live every second waiting to turn around in the supermarket and see the person that I know can get in, and know it immediately. I wake up each day and I'm like, is today the day I'll meet that person? Will it be someone I get in a car accident with? The friend of a friend I met By chance? The person who stands behind me in line? Who knows. Is that love?
Meeting and knowing right away the person who you want to share you're deepest and darkest part about you with. Is that love?

Well looks like my nursing blog went personal. But it sort of related. :-)

Ta ta for now,

~ a writer in a nurse's body <3

Tossing and Turning

is way more fun. My body feels that it is more fun to continously keep rolling around in bed, than to sleep. I have to be up in....5 hours. so I can chase kids around til 2. I had way too much caffeine today. Stupid headaches.



I really might go outside and watch the stars. I wish we still had our swingset, as dorky as that sounds, I wish I could go sit on the swings and watch the stars. I just wish I had someone to do it with. I don't. I can't. I won't.


I need to find a way to reverse the effects of caffeine--fast. Geez, I took the Excedrin at like 5:00. Seriously. I'm already hyper without any help, and with caffeine not only do i have physical hand tremors but my mind is seriously like- wired- thoughts flying like crazy, keeping me awake. Thinking too much is very dangerous.

I am so frigggen HUNGRY. its 1 am. Why am I hungry? No clue. I have been such a bum-poop this week in terms of my weight loss regimen. i havent weighed myself in over a week but I can tell its not going well. And of course, the whole reason I wanted to lose weight this summer, is this saturday. THe worst week possible for me to be a total bum-poop. bahhh. I need to figure me out soon.


I think I need to get my ass back to school, I seriously cannot wait. I think that will help a LOT. Get out of this house, be on my own again....away from all this...heartbreak that surrounds me here. A day does not go by that I do not wish to go sit in my car and scream as loud as I can because no one can hear it. One of the few places that I can just be alone. There is one particular thing pressing on my heart right now and it is the most frustrating thing (actually thats a lie-I've been through tremendously worse.). but it is pretty heartbreaking still.

Ok-- attempt number....3 ....to shut my brain off and sleep. And stop thinking about food. Geez.

Determined

I am determined to make a blog post tomorrow.

I have a LOT on my mind. I'm just fantastically tired. Its bittersweet.




I wish I were in England, right now.





oh, and Potty training kids? Not. Fun.




OK I feel a little bit better. But I still have a lot on my mind. I should be sleeping.

Watching stars with you..

...I wish I were.





I can see Jupiter outside my window. I can even see it without my glasses, so you know it's bright. It makes me really happy, for some reason, I have no clue why. It just makes me feel so happy inside.

That reminds me--a week or so ago, when I was at the beach, we were waiting to get into a restaurant, and had to wait outside. It was one of the hottest evenings, and everyone was complaining about the heat. I went to go sit alone on a far away bench, and brought out my Suduko and sat there alone in peace, in the heat. A very good friend came up to me, sat beside me and watched me to my puzzle...and eventually said, "you don't mind sitting directly in the sun?" And I smiled and said, (almost laughing), "No, I don't mind. Because it's warm. It's a Happy warm." That made him smile, he thought it was interesting. "A Happy warm...that is very interesting. A Happy warm. I like that." And he walked away, leaving me wonder what he thought I meant by happy warm. It just felt....like...the sun was at a perfect temperature I guess. I guess it really is true that Vitamin D can make you feel better. Sun helps a lot....It just made me feel so warm and that everything would be alright.

I wish I were outside, lying on the grass, listening to some awesome music, watching the stars, waiting for a shooting star....thats where I want to be.

I should have.

I should have joined the army nurses. Its where I belong times a million thousand. One day...


I'll explain why. Later. On another post. soon. but just....I should have.