Floating in the Abyss

I never thought I'd say this, but I kind of miss college.  Having a schedule of each day and a list of things to do and errands to run does not seem like something anyone would really miss, but I do.  I am currently stuck in limbo and, let me tell you, it's hell.  Don't get me wrong, it was nice to have the ability to sleep in every single day and do whatever the heck I feel like it, but that got old pretty quick.  You know what else gets old?  Having no money or income.  I have taken the role as dog-sitter for my aunt and uncle while they are back and forth from Florida for a few months, but that role is ending and that doesn't exactly scream "stable adult job."  I wouldn't call myself a serious spender but I do like to do what I want...which is usually something that costs money.  I am working on getting my nursing license, however me and my family are having a hard time forking over the ridiculous amount of money needed to take the licensing exam.  But I'm getting there.  Hopefully I will have the exam taken (and passed) by the end of March and then I can start my job hunt.  Which is a whole other terrifying task that I don't even want to think about at the moment.  Having an adult job sounds so wonderful, but first not only do you have to float in limbo for a bit and give lots of money to a company for a piece of paper that says you're legit, but then you get to sit in front of someone is a fancy suit and glasses (probably) while they judge you.  Ah!! Limbo is also a stressful place where you get lots of time to think about all the crap you have to deal with in the near future.  It's great.

On the up side, I will be vacationing in Florida with my family next month.  I'm so excited!! I know it's only Florida but I haven't been on a vacation in YEARS and I'm tired of this polar weather here in Illinois.  Can't wait to wander around the Keys with a drink in my hand and a spring in my step.  

I'm still not quite sure how I feel about having a career as a nurse.  I made it through school alright, but that was a limited amount of time.  And I knew summer break would always come.  I think I can find a position that I will enjoy and then I'll be able to tell everyone I was wrong about not being cut-out for a job as a nurse.  Or more likely, everyone else will be happy to tell me that I was wrong.  But either way, I'll take it. 

And now begins the rest of your life

Well, I am officially a college graduate.  I've been done with all my classes for over a week and had my graduation ceremony this past Sunday.  I have no clue what to do with myself now that I don't have to be at the hospital for clinicals or on campus for class. Not being in school and having no obligations is surprisingly boring!  I have somewhat been using my free time to explore Milwaukee a bit more before I move back home to Illinois.  I have a Milwaukee bucket list and it all needs to be taken care of within the next 3 days.  It's a shame that I'm finally realizing what a nice city this is in the few days before I leave.  But this is when I finally have time to do all the exploring and guess what...Milwaukee doesn't suck as much as I thought it did!  Who knew??

Next week will be my first week living back at home with my parents and my brother.  I am dreading it.  It's like I can see my freedom slipping away before my eyes and can't do anything about it.  They say that I won't have rules and restrictions and blah blah.  I hope not, I'm 22 for Christ's sake.  We'll see about that though.

I do get to start the exciting adventure of applying to take my licensure exam then studying my ass off for it.  I'm going to give myself a little break until the holidays are over, because holidays are insanity, but then it'll be time to crack down and make sure I pass that exam.  Then once I pass I get to job hunt, which I'm oh-so thrilled for.  Job interviews are terrifying.  Especially when the nursing career is still so new to me.  Hopefully it'll be okay though and everything will work out!

Merry Halloween!

So it's Halloween and here in the Midwest, it's snowing... That's what I call scary!  Therefore, I will be spending my Halloween night indoors with lots of candy, booze, and scary movies.  I'm kind of a wuss so I'll probably have nightmares, but that's half the fun.

For anyone going out, be safe and stay warm!  Happy Halloween!

Peace Be With You

I have never been a very religious person.  Sure when I was younger I was in Religious Ed and my family did go to church almost every Sunday, but I was never really invested or interested.  When I got older we stopped that, though, and became "Chreaster" people (the people who only go to church on Christmas and Easter) and even that stopped after a few years.  So basically I hadn't set foot in a church, for anything other than a wedding, in about 5 years.  But this past Sunday I changed that.

As you can tell from my last blog post, there's a lot of shit going on in my life right now.  Nothing, and I mean nothing, feels stable to me.  It's a feeling that's hard to explain and even harder to deal with.  My new-found interest in church and religion has a lot to do with this.  I am trying to find strength and stability wherever I can get it and from what I hear, church is good for that.  Also, after some lengthy conversations with my (now ex) boyfriend, I realized that I have no clue what I believe in or if I even have faith in anything at all.  My dad has told me that even if you don't have faith in God or religion, there are 3 other things that you need to have faith in: yourself, other people, and the idea that things will work out how they're supposed to.  When I reflected on these, I discovered that I don't have faith in any of those things either.  I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's also true.

Having faith in one's self is easier said than done in my opinion.  I have confidence in some aspects of my life (which I think can translate as having faith), but not others.  And, throughout my life, my confidence in certain areas has decreased due to events and circumstances.  I am not insecure, but I am not as confident and sure as I outwardly portray myself to be,  That is something that I am always hesitant to admit to people because I then feel weak, and if there's one thing I hate it's feeling weak.  I've been trying to have more faith in myself lately, believing that I can do something or get through things even when it feels like I can't.  It's difficult since my natural thing to do is believe that I'll fail, but I think I can make some progress if I try to change my mindset.

As far as having faith in other people, I haven't been given a lot of reason to believe in others.  My family is disconnected and judgmental (though they'd never admit that) and can be mean at times when I just need someone to tell me that things will be okay.  For example when I shared my feelings about wanting to go to church, only my mom and dad were semi-supportive.  I got snarky, rude comments and a lot of "why would you do that?" from the rest of them.  I was surprised and not surprised by the reactions.  I feel like maybe I put too much faith in the wrong people, the people who always end up hurting me or the people I love in some way.  So then I wonder, why put faith in anyone at all if they're all going to hurt me?  I think that is why I have this horrible way of thinking now.

Now to the last one, having faith in that everything will work out the way it's supposed to.  I will never have faith in this.  I used to believe that cheesy saying that everything happens for a reason, but as I've gotten older I've found that no one makes the decisions to decide how your life will go except you.  Letting things work out how they're "supposed to" is a bullshit excuse for being lazy and not going after what you want or being too afraid to.  If something happens in your life, good or bad, you decide how to handle it and how to let it affect your life.  You decide when to be strong and when to turn to other things or people for support and you decide what path you want to take.  Who's to say that something is "supposed" to be a certain way?  This is where some people would say that God is the one making those decisions, and this is where I show my lack of faith.  If things are the way they're meant to be in my life right now, I've done something very wrong.

Saying this makes me feel like a bad person, but I have a lot of doubts about God and prayer and the power of both.  I know that praying is supposed to be a way of having a conversation with God, however I wonder if anyone's actually listening.  Maybe God answers some prayers and not others, but I'm not good at recognizing if they're being answered or not.  I have prayed before.  When I was younger I used to pray every single night.  Lately I've been praying a lot more because I really need some help, but I haven't really gotten any.  Or maybe I have and just don't see it.  That's my problem is that I don't understand how some people can pray, and then when something random happens they see it as a sign and as an answer to their prayers.  It's completely subjective.  If God is going to answer my prayers, the only way I'm going to recognize it is if a light shines out of the sky and God appears and verbally gives me my answer.  As great as that would be, it's pretty unlikely.  So I thought that maybe going to church would teach me how to recognize God's way of communicating with us.  I could be surrounded by people who have stronger beliefs and more faith than I and I could learn from them.  I don't expect to learn everything and have all my questions answered right away, I know it will take time.  For the first time in my life, I'm willing to make that time for God.

By pursuing the strength and knowledge that I will hopefully receive by becoming more spiritual, I think my faith in many things will blossom and be restored.  Or that's what I'm hoping for anyway.  I am too cynical for someone so young and would like to change that.  I went to church and it was weird.  I felt good about being there but I wanted to cry the whole time (I have no clue why).  It was a special service for blessing animals so it was a bit different than a regular service would be, though it was awesome to share my pew with a few dogs and their owners.  I was raised Catholic, but decided to go to a Lutheran church that is across the street from my current apartment.  It was interesting to see what was similar and what was different from my church I went to growing up, I liked making the comparisons.  I have no clue if this place can give me what I'm looking for or help me to find faith and spirituality, but I'm looking forward to giving it a chance.  It's funny how it sometimes takes crappy circumstances to push us towards our religion and finding faith in God. I'm honestly not proud of the fact that I was leading such an incredibly secular life.  It has led me to have many questions, many doubts, and hardly any faith.  I know God won't solve my problems for me, but I'm hoping maybe he can give me the strength and direction that I need to face them head on.

Bitchfest 2014

I used to consider myself a pretty strong person.  I never cried much, I made it through a lot of stressful times without breaking down, and I held up other people along the way.  But as I'm getting older and the stress and anxiety is just piling on, I'm realizing that I can barely hold myself up let alone anyone else.  

This past Monday, my boyfriend broke up with me.  I was devastated and heartbroken and still am.  He is everything to me and I don't really know what to do now that he doesn't want to be with me at all.  He made me truly happy and now he barely speaks to me.  I don't really know how your feelings for someone just disappear within a matter of months, but it happened I guess.  I thought he would always be in my life, but I guess he had other ideas.  

My brother is depressed.  He has had some major meltdowns recently and I'm not really sure how to help him.  It sucks that I'm in Milwaukee and he's back in Illinois so we don't get to talk that much, but I wish I knew how he is feeling and how I could help.  I know he feels that my parents put a lot of pressure on him to do well in school and keep his priorities straight and all that.  I dealt with the same thing at his age.  But everyone handles things differently and it seems it was all too much for him.  

My mom doesn't want to be with my dad anymore.  This is an old issue.  They have been back and forth between good and almost divorcing for the last few years.  My dad keeps "changing" and becoming a good husband...for a few months.  Then when he's done with the charade, everything goes back to normal and everyone's miserable again.  My mom is very open with me about how she feels about my dad (which I'm sure some people find odd or wrong), and I honestly think that she could do better.  She should be happy.  I love both my parents very much but I have always thought that they are just not right for each other.  And I think they know that too.

I'll be graduating college in less than three months and the only thing I feel is super anxious about it.  I am excited that soon I will be done with school.  I hate school and I hate Wisconsin so there's really no reason for me to not be happy about leaving soon.  But I can't stand the thought of having to be a nurse when this is over.  As nursing school has progressed, I have found a few things here and there that I like about it.  But for the most part, it makes me miserable.  When I'm at the hospital, all I can think about is how this doesn't feel right and how I should be leaving this to the people who actually have a passion for it and how I can't wait to just go home.  I also am going to have to move back home to Illinois which is where ALL the drama is with my family.  At least when I'm here, I am only involved when someone gets me involved (like with a phone call or visit), but soon I will have no choice.  I try my best to keep to myself and stay out of everything, but despite my best efforts something always happens that somehow becomes my problem.  On top of all that, I have almost $150,000 in loans that I am going to have to start paying off in June.  I don't even want to think about that.

Honestly, all I want is my boyfriend right now.  When things were stressful, he would always listen and hold me and try his best to make me feel better.  It always worked.  And now, the one person who I tell everything to and the one person who I know can make me feel better is shutting me out.  So now this insane drama-filled bitchfest gets to go on my blog instead.  Enjoy.

A Drop In The Ocean

Being in a relationship is one of the most fun, exhilarating, and frustrating parts of life, I'm sure many people would agree.  You get to know someone so well that they just become your "person."  That one person whom you can trust and love unconditionally, who you can tell anything to and completely be yourself around, the one person who can always put a smile on your face and a song in your heart.  Cheesy, I know, but also very true.  For many people, women in particular, having the emotional stability of a good relationship is higher up on their priority list than many other things (or so I've read).  So what happens when everything in your relationship starts to crumble? What happens when your "person" starts becoming a stranger again?  These are questions that I am currently trying to deal with, and hating every second of it.

I know there's a lot of relationship crap on the internet.  How to get over a guy, how to revamp your sex life, how to get someone to notice you, how to know if he's the one...blah blah blah.  Obviously this post is not a "How To" for anything regarding relationships, because I have no clue what I'm doing myself.  I had fun figuring out, on my own, how to have a strong healthy relationship that made me and my boyfriend happy.  But, unfortunately for us all, you can never quite erase a person's past.  It always has a way of biting us in the ass and screwing with our future.  That's what is happening to us.  My boyfriend's past marriage is now making him question every aspect of our relationship.  He's thinking about trying to make things work with his ex-wife and starting over with her.  Now that'd be fine and dandy if it didn't mean the complete and total destruction of not only our relationship, but our friendship as well.  This is the longest relationship I've ever been in.  He has become a HUGE part of my life over the last 2 years or so and I'm terrified to lose the person who made me happier than I can explain.  Sure we've had our ups and downs, but we've never stopped loving, respecting, and caring for each other.  I thought long and hard about putting this on my blog, but I need some sort of outlet.  I talk to him about it sometimes, but mostly we just try to enjoy the time we have together and not add to the stress.  I talk to my friends and my therapist about it, but no one really understands how I'm feeling...mostly because I'm shitty at explaining.

Hope is a powerful thing for me.  It's something that keeps me going most of the time, but something that also gets me hurt very often.  I have had so much hope for my relationship for the last 2 years, as I'm sure everyone has in theirs or else what's the point.  But when your hopes start to get closer and closer to being crushed, there's not a whole lot that you can do except hope that your hopes can pull through.  I want everything to be okay with me and my boyfriend.  I want us to come back from this stronger than ever and have the awesome relationship that we've always had.  We still make each other happy, but I can tell he's never quite with me.  It's amazing how you can be laying in bed and so close to someone yet they can be so far away.  It's amazing and it's heartbreaking.  I know that he loves me and doesn't want to hurt me.  I know that I love him and will never give up.  But I also know that relationships cannot be fixed or maintained by internet articles and hopes.  

In the home stretch. Give me summer!

Well, this semester is finally coming to a close.  Only 2 more days of clinical left and 1 final exam in a few weeks.  I can't even express how ecstatic I am to only have to drive an hour to the hospital for clinicals 2 more times.  As my final spring semester comes to an end, I have realized that there are aspects of nursing that I do like, and certain departments where it's much more enjoyable.  If I have to be a Med/Surg floor nurse for the rest of my life, I will jump off a skyscraper.  That's definitely not for me.  However, the ER, ICU, and OR are the 3 departments where I truly enjoyed myself and I liked the variety that comes along with being a nurse in those areas.  This is also the first semester in over a year that I haven't been freaking out about finals and calculating exactly what percentage of an A I need on my finals to pass my classes.  I forgot how nice it is to not be under immense amounts of stress.

Next semester I get to try my hand at being a pediatric (student) nurse and a mental health (student) nurse.  I'm excited to work with kids, though I'd be happy to work with anyone under the age of 60, and I'm looking forward to a change.  Then, in December, I graduate.  Crazy.  College really does fly by and I've spent most of it stressing about grades and hating my major.  Quite a way to spend 4 years of my life.  Post-graduation I get the pleasure of attempting to pass the NCLEX and beginning to pay off the ridiculous amount of loans I've accumulated...yay?  Moving back to Illinois and being with my family and friends again will be wonderful and I'm even just looking forward to doing that over this summer.  If summer even happens.  It's been in the 40's here and gloomy as hell for the last few weeks and I'm starting to think Mother Nature is just kind of a temperamental bitch....just like some people I know.

Over the last 4 months, I have learned a few things about myself as a result of working at the hospital and just being in Milwaukee.  I've learned that I need to have a lot more confidence in myself and, being essentially on my own while taking care of patients, I have gained that confidence in myself and in my abilities.  I used to constantly second guess what I was doing and look to my instructor for guidance and answers.  Now I can do things myself, have better judgement as far as making decisions during patient care, and know my strengths and weaknesses.  Sometimes you need to be thrown into a situation that's completely new to you just to realize how strong you actually are and how much you are capable of, and that's what this semester has done for me.  I've also learned that it's difficult to be in a long distance relationship, but if both parties put in the effort to make it work, it will work.  I've gotten to see my boyfriend usually about once a week since January because we both make trips back and forth, even if it's just for the night.  It's definitely not ideal or easy, but it does make us stronger in my opinion.  You learn to make the most of the time you get together and communication becomes extremely important (though that's important to us even when we're in the same state).  This was also my first year living in a real apartment instead of the dorms, and having my car up in Wisconsin with me.  I've learned to do a lot more for myself and take care of things on my own, though sometimes I do need advice/assistance from people.  It's a big change from living in a dorm where everything is pretty much taken care of for you.  I love having an apartment and next semester I'm really hoping to live on my own.  Roommates suck.  It's said that college is where you're supposed to create your life and gain independence and this is the first year that I really feel like I've accomplished those things.

All I can say is I'm happy that in a few weeks I'll be free for the summer and it better start warming up!!!