Broke

Where do you start from? If you have to try and unravel your head, do you start from the beginning? What if your mind is such a tangled mess, you can’t unravel it? Like watching your life back on tape but nothing is in order. You can’t fast forward or rewind back to certain bits because it’s too painful to watch. When you see the parts when you’re crumbling underneath the weight of your own guilt. The parts you wish you could take back but you can’t. You’re stuck with the mistakes forever and they’re a permanent reminder of what a shitty person you were.

I was in love once. A long time ago. I was happy. I felt loved. I felt like a person and not a body just floating in time, waiting to die. But people change. What we see, what we live, the experiences we see everyday shape us and ultimately determine what our futures are.

I thought about a lot things when I changed my career. But one thing I never considered was how I’d deal with death before I started nursing. Naive of me now, looking back. Given during most of training I was looking after people in their senior years, I assumed it was something that I’d learn to deal with. But you’re soon thrown into the deep end of immortality and there’s nothing that can ever really prepare you for it. I will always remember my first patient, how quick and final it was. One moment they’re taking a breath, and you can feel their pulse on your finger, faint and fading. And then, they’re gone. Someones aunt, mother, sister, friend. A heart that will cease to beat again. How do you compartmentalise that part of a job that has no happy ending?

Death is inevitable. We are all mortal. The one thing in life we can be certain of in the end is death. But not when. Try as we might to live a healthy life, there are somethings we can’t side-skip.

And this is where, everything starts to unravel. This is where everything starts to go wrong. When you want so badly to be a good person but what you’re doing, the job you put your heart and soul into, starts to destroy your heart and soul in turn. The demands of nursing when you’re not prepared are at the least inconvenient. At the most, they’re catastrophic. 12 and half hour shifts turn into 13 and half hour shifts because they’re aren’t enough staff, so you have to wait until cover arrives before you can go home. And you’d stay anyway, even if you could just walk away. Because your morals and ethics and your heart mean more than getting home on time. Nursing is the most rewarding but the toughest most mentally challenging job you can ever do. It can make or break you.

It broke me.

It took over 3 years and several kicks and punches in head to start the first break. The one that started the fracture. The constant battering that a mind can take is only so much. When you have to finally accept that you can’t cope anymore. That the job you do is making you ill. The job that you so badly wanted to succeed in after changing your life, and it’s making you ill. Disappointed doesn’t even describe it. You feel like a failure because the job you love and you work your arse off for, is slowly killing you inside. The crash calls that don’t wake up, the young mum waiting to let cancer kill her brain, slowly. The patient that comes in from a care home in such an inhumane state, you wonder how anyone could live with themselves to see someone so frail and fragile and leave them suffering when they should be making their last days as comfortable as possible. You see the best and the absolute worst in humans. It opens your eyes to the reality that sometimes people are just plain evil to one another. It grinds you down. Slowly you begin to question why we’re so fucking horrible to each other because we know the end result of life is death so why make life so horrendous in the lead up?

Every action has a consequence. After 3 and half years, it burnt me out. Failed. My career, destroyed as I destroyed myself slowly and unforgiving. It turns out, you can care too much. When you walk out of your ward, you don’t leave your patients behind. You carry them in your heart and your mind all the time. You try not to take them home in your mind but sometimes you can’t help it. When you’ve looked after someone for 2 months, you’ve gotten to know them, their lives, their history. Then one day, they’ve not there anymore. They passed away in the night. It’s so hard not to cry when you get home at the end of a long shift. You know the outcome of life is death but it still stings. You start to see life in a skewed vision. You try to detach yourself from it but changes you.

It changes your relationships. You’re not the same person you once were before you realised that sometimes life is shit! The person you once loved, the things you used to like doing, they don’t mean the same anymore. Your outlook isn’t the same rose tinted view anymore. And all you can do is try to move forward, day by day and try and look for the good in life you once saw.

It’s a long process.

Fast forward to 2016. 2 years later. You have to deal with 2 things. 1) your relationship is over. For so many reasons. 2) you have to deal with the fact your mums cancer is terminal.

No one tells you how to come to terms with that word. Terminal. No one ever really says it either. It’s implied and it’s really up to you to read between the lines of whatever you can remember you were told. The medical terms used by various consultants that you’re passed over to like a conveyor belt of health care. At least my nurse training came in handy for something.

Relationships fail all the time. It doesn’t diminish the pain and the regret you feel. Did you hurt them while they were hurting you? When you never felt good enough, when you realised that nothing you did would ever be good enough but then when it comes down to it, and you have to have the big ‘we need to talk’ and they never even realised they were hurting you. So you feel like the bad guy for walking away when they’re willing to try anything to keep you to stay. But you know, deep down, it’s over. And it has been for so long that neither of you can bring yourself to hurt the other. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

Then suddenly, after 10 years, you’re on your own again. Back to square one. No future, no one to come home to at the end of the day. Just blank. Like your heart.

Then it all goes foggy. And the second break happens. You can’t even see it coming. You put so much trust in someone you love, that when they deliberately try to ruin you, try to take advantage of everything you’ve ever given, you know that’s the end. Because if someone who supposedly loved you, would be so willing to lie and deceive you, what else is there to believe in? It totally destroys you. Your life is too painful to keep going. So you give up. So close to the end but still here.

Third break. Fast forward however long. Your mum that you’ve nursed for the last 5 months, finally leaves this earth. But not the way you want. Not the way she should have. After 4 years of operations, chemo, and finally unbearable agony, she didn’t even get the peaceful death so she desperately deserved. You didn’t get to tell how much you loved her. Those last words that you wanted her know, and you didn’t get to say them.

And now you’re broken. Now you’ve got to put yourself together and hope that you’re not so broken you’re irreparable. Because a broken, irreparable heart is of no use to anyone, especially me.

@specsygurl

The last post: pt II

I never know if this is the last thing I’ll ever post or not. Sometimes I wonder why I started writing this anyway. Because, if it’s meant to be a form of therapy, two and a bit years later, it’s clearly not working. If this was a therapist, it would have fired long ago and probably replaced with something else, equally as pointless. But this is my pointless blog and I’ll write shit to my heart(s)(broken) content because no one ever reads it but me anyway.

Where do I even begin?

My head is a mess. A scrambled fuzzy hazy numb mess. Half way through intensive grief counselling and I’m more of a mess now than I was, nearly 10 months or so ago when my mum passed away. I know they say, you have to relive and dredge up all your old shit to clear through it so you can move on but personally, I’d rather cautiously tip top around it and avoid it altogether but I guess it doesn’t work like that. So it means the shit I’ve been holding on to for fuck knows how many years, comes steaming to the surface to boil along with whatever shit just happens to currently be floating in my journey to the centre of my grief.

My longest relationship, failed because I wanted to be a mum, and he didn’t. After 10 years of umming and ahhing about motherhood, when I was ready, he wasn’t anymore. As much as it hurts, you can’t force someone to do something their heart isn’t in and kids is one of those. Not only did my dreams of motherhood disappear, my hopes of being Mrs xxx disappeared too. A kick in the gut and then another one when you’re down on the floor recoiled in pain. You think you know someone after being with them for so long but the reality is, sometimes you don’t know them at. It would never be that simple anyway. So move on. Forget what’s not happened and put it to the back of your mind. If only it were that easy.

It’s funny what comes up in therapy and why. What sticks with you. I thought I was there to deal with the grief for my mum, to stop all the nightmares and flashbacks that a violent death bring. The things you can’t talk about to your family because you don’t want them to know how your loved one really left this earth. Not even I want to think about it, so I really don’t want anyone else to. But there it is, every morning, every night when you close your eyes, then when you open them. That haunting image you can’t get out of your mind. And my oh my does it haunt. I don’t need other ghosts, I’ve already got one of my own, my own haunting memory of what I could or should’ve done. How I wanted to say goodbye and tell my mum I loved her and I couldn’t even do that. What a failure of a daughter. Guilt hangs heavy over my shoulders.

So counselling. I thought it would help with my ghost. My haunting. I never thought I’d bring up old relationships but really they’re probably ghosts too because every single time I meet anyone, I’m haunted and reminded of every shitty lie and failed promise anyone has ever made. And there’s been a few. The long distance relationship that promised we’d ‘marry’. The ‘oh when we do this together’ person, making empty promises that he never had any intention of doing. The man who wanted to take me to speed dating at his church. When we were on a fucking date! Whatever. But they’ll always by the one person, who I never ever knew what happened to. Even now. I don’t even know if he’s still alive. He just disappeared off the face of the earth. One day he was there, the next he’d gone. Maybe he’s one of my ghosts too. I still think of him. Still message him from time to time, just to let him know I’m hoping he’s safe somewhere. Maybe it’s time to lay that ghost to rest.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Grief is fucking exhausting. It makes your emotions multiplied 10 fold. If you’re happy, you’re ecstatic. If you’re sad, you’re a miserable sack of shit. There is no in between some days. It’s tiring when you need to be happy but you’re so down you can’t think of a reason why. Nothing makes sense, nothing has a reason. When you lose someone you love, all reason goes out the window. You know you have to carry on for everyone else, but knowing you’ll never see that person again is like a kick in the lungs over and over again. It stops you breathing. Stops you in your tracks, at times when you really don’t need it. When you’re out and your hear a song that reminds you, or a smell or you remember a time that made you happy and you realise, you won’t have any of those times again. It sinks in that little bit further, pushing you deeper and deeper into the ground so far, you can’t move. Grief will literally hit you like a lightening bolt. It stings. It hurts and it’s unforgiving.

It makes a mess of you. Makes you want to be alone but makes you want to be held at the same time. It makes you vulnerable yet puts up a barrier all at the same time. All your past comes back to haunt you and all you can think is, I’m going to get hurt again, and I don’t want that. It makes you feel so insecure and unsure of how others feel about you. You wonder if you can feel anything ever again.

And then you do. In the darkness appears a light and makes you feel like you again. But not the sad, lonely you. The you that liked to dance down the aisles in supermarkets, that liked to have fun doing absolutely anything you dared, the fearless person who didn’t give two shits about the opinions of anyone that didn’t matter. The crazy happy you that hadn’t been this happy in so long. The you that made you want to bring out the best in others because that’s how they make you feel, like the best version of yourself. But the scary thing is, you don’t know how long this light will stay bright for. You don’t even know why this light shines for you. This light that brings you back to life when your soul is dying. And you know it will never really belong to you. It’s precious, it’s a gift that can’t be kept. But you’d do anything to keep it around for as long as you can, knowing that when it goes out, you’ll probably fade with it too. It’s scary when someone comes along and you don’t even realise that they’re the reason you keep going for so long. But you know sooner or later, you have to let go and go it alone.

And your insecurities come rushing back. So you don’t want to get attached because you know, when that light disappears, it’s going to hurt like hell. The things we do to ourselves though to get through life. And it’s not just me. I know there are hundreds of thousands, millions even, of other people grieving. In mourning.

A dear colleague yesterday, someone I have much love respect for, asked me how I was. How I was doing. The mutual knowledge that we’d both lost someone we loved. I don’t know the details and I don’t need to. But it was a year to the day she lost her sister. A bond that you can never replace. As much as you can empathise you can never know what they’re going through. Everyone’s grief is different but we know how it feels to lose someone. That emptiness that we can only hope time will fill. As much we tried not to we shed a few tears. A few hugs later we knew we’ll both be in each other’s thoughts. Grief can bring people together in a way that you’d never imagine. A quiet comfort that you’re not the only one who’s mourning the loss of someone you loved. But it’s genuinely a feeling I’d never wish on anyone. I wouldn’t wish grief and loss on my worst enemy.

I’m going to my first public memorial for my mum on Sunday. The hospital where she passed away holds a service for all those that have died in their care. Part of me wants to go. Part of me wants to run away. But I’ll go. I don’t need or want anyone at my side. I’ll have my ghosts anyway. But I’ll look up at the sky and hope my mum is up there somewhere, eating quiche, and drinking tea, with her best friend and hopefully keeping a warm watchful eye on my colleagues sister, making sure she’s ok.

It’s funny what gets you through when you have days that you hope when you go to sleep you don’t wake up. Grief and depression. They’re fucking horrible. But we’re all just trying to wing it through life as best we can grief or not. So maybe I’ll keep writing. Maybe I won’t. But I have to keep living. Even when I don’t feel like I have anything to live for, there’s always a reason somewhere. My mum would be horrified, and as I much as I’d love to see her again, I can’t let her down.

@specsygurl