Hello again,

It has been a hot minute since I’ve posted on here but thats not a huge surprise to anyone. This post is going to be much less of an update but rather a way to let myself get some feelings out in the open and hopefully allow myself to feel them without internalizing them.

So. Here we go. Prepare for a wild ride.

I am 3 months out of orientation as a nurse in a level one trauma center. While it is by far nowhere near the easiest thing I have ever done, I do feel like I am starting to hit my stride a little bit. I am definitely starting to build confidence with the much sicker patients and starting to prioritize my tasks for my patients much quicker than I had been able to previously. I am feeling good about my competence as a nurse and I hope that it continues. In this process, I have been found as a “black cloud”, a proverbial shit-magnet if you will, and I am not going to lie, its been a strain on my emotions because I am still learning how to process each feelings as one of the main people responsible for a dying human’s care. Boy, its incredibly tough to watch someone lose their life but watching spouses and children come into the room and try to reconcile that their loved one is no longer with us is heart breaking. I am learning how to compartmentalize a lot better which is becoming more helpful and I will ultimately be okay as I get more and more experience. However, I do think taking the time to point out these feelings of grief for complete strangers is an important part of developing a healthy relationship with death instead of pushing it deep down and drowning it with coping mechanisms. I do have a plan to find a therapist to help with this because, in all honesty, everyone should go to therapy, especially in healthcare.

Over the last couple of months, I have seen things that made tears start to well up in my eyes, become irrationally angry, or have left me with feeling of apathy/nothingness. There have also been patients that I have had that have made me incredibly happy and I want to share that as a positive because those are the ones that I like remembering. The other, more somber or anger-inducing one’s, however, are often the ones that rattle around in the old tin can that floats between my ears.

Next step is therapy, but it feels good to put it on “paper”.

This was stream-of-consciousness writing and I am not going to edit it.

I will write again soon,

Jonathan