| home | back | next |
words |
your heart skip a beat. and you close you eyes and
you devour the words as if they are food for your soul,
something thick and nourishing, like a creamy stew,
and your soul shivers.
i don't add people easily. i like my quiet little life.
earlier today i read something on my friends pages
that hurt my heart and i almost unfriended someone.
freedom of expression comes with a price of which i am
all too well aware, having had to pay the price myself.
but i don't think everyone realizes the cost of words,
not really. i do.
there is a great silence in me, deep and frightening. i
clamor and rage with words, trying to reach into the
silence and pull it out, but it never works. it is at the
center of me, or i am at the center of it. there are horrible
moments, not often, that i realize how much i've lost in
my life, how much i've carelessly and without thought thrown
away, as if these things, these precious, rare things, are
trash. and in these moments the silence overwhelms me.
i am alone.
it's not really that i want someone with me, it's that i want
to connect in important ways and i always seem to fail. on
the drive home tonight i apologized for my weaknesses. i am
vain when i have no right to be. i am petty and small. i
contribute nothing fine and noble. i try, i fail. i try again,
i fail again. i know i just need to leave myself alone, to just
let myself be, but that's so hard. i feel as if i'm always striving,
always on tiptoe, reaching above my grasp.
there are things i can't even try to put into words, vague,
shifting some things that stir inside me. i was telling someone
that what i'm doing now doesn't make me feel as if i'm
contributing much of anything to the world. being a nurse
is so important to me, such an honor, something i worked
so hard to be, and i feel as if all i do is pass out pills and
wait out the hours until i can collect my pay and come home.
i don't touch anyone in any kind of a therapeutic way anymore.
psych nursing is so hard to do well. mostly it's about
medications and keeping people from hurting themselves.
but for me it seems to be about judgment. i don't like that.
what gives me the right to think i can judge anyone's life?
so my life has had moments of unbearable pain. big deal.
so i've made it safely through those parts and come to rest
here. big deal. there is so much i don't know. there is so
much i am not. it's different when someone is physically
sick and you can ease their pain, ease their spirit. it's
different when just laying your hands on someone comforts
them. it's different and i miss it. i miss it so much. i can't stay
at this job much longer, it rots my soul.
i am becoming hard and uncaring and it frightens me.
i do care. i want to care. i have to care. when i try to
educate patients their eyes glaze over and all they want
is the pill that takes away the mental pain, the momentary
discomfort of feeling. that's it, i think. feelings are given to
us for a reason. to deny how you feel, to pop something in
your mouth so you don't have to feel what you're feeling
seems like a cheat somehow. and who am i to judge? what
right do i have to judge how people handle their feelings? i'm
good at helping to mend bodies, but i'm not good at understanding
how someone can let something that happened to them 20 years
ago rule their life. i'm not good at empathizing with out of control
emotions. and that's so stupid because i've had that, felt out
of control because of what i feel.
enough. sleep. peace. tomorrow becomes today a minute at a time.
denise