these days

Have been a little (a lot) crazy.
School is great. My teachers are fabulous, the curriculum is wonderful, my classmates, well, let's just say it's like being in a room full of you's, only you with a different background. It's great. I feel right at home. We are thrown right into it- assessing health, making nursing diagnoses, vital signs, etc etc... It really, truly feels like I am finally doing the right thing for once; like what I am doing is Important. It feels like purpose. I feel the beginnings of passion, a twinge in the beginning, something that will blossom and something that will be my fire.
But don't let me go on too long being positive for once... god forbid.
This shit is HARD. Right now I am taking 21 credits in a span of 12 weeks. After that, each quarter is something like 21 to 23 credits. In a year, I will have earned nearly 90 credits!? That is, if I make it. Since we started, not a professor has failed to mention that we very well might not make it, and that many of us will drop out before second and third quarter even begin. It is intense. In college, I never took more than 15 credits in a semester, and that was a 3.5 month semester, and THAT was a lot of work. THIS, this, is really going to shake the earth beneath my feet. It is one of the hardest, most intense accelerated nursing program in the country. When people find out I have a 9 month old, they look at me like I am nuts. I feel like I am nuts. I really don't know how I'm going to do this except one day at a time. Some days are so fucking hard and I wake up at 5 and have to get myself and tessa ready and fed, diapers changed, bags packed, homework ready, and she screams because I'm rushing and I feel like the worst mother in the world because at the end of the day, I just want to put her to bed because she's miserable from daycare. And the fucked up thing? It's going to be like this for a year. A year of waking up at 5 (sometimes earlier on clinical days) rushing out, rushing home, feeding tessa, bathing her, putting her down, barely able to play with her before her bedtime, and in my spare time what do I do? Homework, tons of it, dishes, laundry, cleaning.. cleaning changing table, cleaning the kitchen, cleaning bottles, cleaning diapers, cleaning the crust out of the creases of the highchair, I feel like fucking cinderella sometimes... And try to go to bed by 9 so I can not fall asleep in class or at clinical the next day. No social life, no friends, no fun. But that's not what I'm bitching about here... I am sad to willfully neglect my child, to be putting something else before her, to spend more energy on something other than her. I am sad that sometimes, sometimes I would just rather do homework than struggle to feed, change, and bathe my daughter when she is a miserable wreck after a long, stimulating day. I am sad that I have to do everything myself.
My first clinical today was at a nursing home in PA. My instructor gave us our orientation, showed us around, told us what we would be doing there. And we all talked for quite a while, about nursing, its importance, and the ethics.. how you have to remember that the person you are dealing with is somebody's daughter, son, mother, father, brother, whatever... you have to have perspective. She told us a story of the relationship between patients, their families, and the nurses and doctors caring for them-- how when she was 29 weeks pregnant, they found out there was too much amniotic fluid and the baby's lung had collapsed. She had to have a c-section 11 weeks early. The baby, named Liz, had a valve in her heart that was too narrow and the muscle wall became too thick and her lungs were filled with fluid... The baby couldn't thrive, she couldn't gain weight but she couldn't lose the extra fluid in her lungs at the same time, she had blood transfusions, she was pumped with drugs, she had the flu, she had heart surgery, she had sepsis and was pounded with antibiotics most adults couldn't handle, and the doctors at CHOP, one of the best fucking children's hospitals in the world, just could not figure out what was wrong and why she wasn't thriving, and eventually, she died. All in three months. This tiny, innocent baby, tabula rasa, just never had a chance.
And god mother fucking damn it, if that was me, I wouldn't be on this earth anymore. I would not be able to go on living. And that woman got pregnant again and had two more babies and is extraordinarily successful as a Nurse Practitioner, a nurse manager, a teacher, a mother, a wife... That is strength. That is courage, and if she could get through that and still walk this earth, what I struggle with is like comparing allergies to cancer. The things that we take for granted in life-- so many of us don't even deserve.
I have so much love in my life, I am such a lucky person, and yet I struggle to find happiness and accept my life and its terms, and I struggle with being strong enough to be a single mom and do this program... where is my perspective? Where is my gratitude? Do any of us really know how good we have it? There is so much pain, so much spontaneous tragedy in this world. Every second of every day, we should remember this and be thankful for what we have, and where we are; and concern ourselves less with the trivial: how do I look, what kind of jeans am I wearing, what kind of haircut should I get, does that boy like me, will I miss my favorite tv show, i can't believe he didn't call me my life fucking sucks. Look at yourself, look at me, look at the rest of the world, and how much harder and more awful and painful your life could be.
I don't know how to wrap this up. I don't know if I should keep writing this blog, it's theme has been much too depressing, at a time when I'm finally realizing how to find and to make my own happiness, how to be grateful, and how to live in the moment. Life is what you make of it, and it can be a self fulfilling prophecy. hold every moment in your hands and try to imagine it's weight in gold, realize it's value.