absence [sometimes] makes the heart grow fonder

Long distance relationships are hard.

Period.

They're hard and complicated and confusing.

And it sucks.

Worst part is is that they make this girl mean. I get so overwhelmed with the annoyances of cell phone reception, constant instant message conversations, just the overall absence. And instead of becoming kinder and more sentimental, I hear myself becoming bitter, cynical, and down right mean.

We're only apart during the summer, and I do realize that we see each other often during those four months. But no matter how close together our visits and trips are, those days during the week wear on me and on our relationship. I hate it.

It becomes so confusing and makes me second guess myself. August can't come soon enough. I might lose it if we have another pointless disagreement over something that I created due to my frustration.

It's stupid. I'm sorry.

a picture's worth a thousand words

I realize its been forever since I have written. It's not that I have forgotten about my blog or that I don't want to write. I do want to write. I've been opening a draft off and on these past few weeks. But nothing really came to me. And I didn't want to start the downward spiral of blogging pointless, nonsensical occurrences from my day to day.

I saw My Sister's Keeper on July 6th with Margie and Kayla Quarterman, Alyson, Brittany, and Karisa Horrall, and my Momma. I haven't read the book, but I did enjoy the movie. It got me thinking about all kinds of things.

During the movie the daughter with leukemia looks through a scrapbook of sorts that she's been putting together for awhile it appears. It reminded me of similar items in movies like The Notebook, Up!, etc., where a character is sick or dying or knows their time on earth will be short. These people in these situations always feel the need to make books full of memories with pictures, quotes, stories of times spent with their family and friends. The have this great desire to do so because they know their end is coming.

But what about the rest of us? Those of us who aren't sick, who just go about our days like they're no big deal. I find myself realizing that I'm not as grateful for each day I have as I should be. I'm healthy and I'm not in need of anything and yet I don't take the time to fully enjoy these days I have. It seems as though people who aren't healthy or are in pain are better as enjoying and appreciating their days than I am.

Why don't I feel this desire to remember and document all the little things that my life brings to me? Why don't I seem to have this deep appreciation of life and the things God has given me?

And perhaps the biggest why would be why have my last two posts been basically about the same thing? Perhaps I rushed it. Forced a blog post too soon.

Life is fleeting.

I keep sitting down to blog and then finding an excuse to not do it. And in doing that I've let my list of potential topics build up. So, this post is going to be a little eclectic, but I think I can pretty much tie it all back to the title.

I've experienced a lot of losses lately. Literally and figuratively. Big and small. I've made choices about what I'm doing with my life and I've decided on things I don't want to do with it. I alluded briefly in a previous post about some frustration and confusion that came up this year regarding things such as relationships, friendships, and even where I was going to be living next year at school. I let myself get very bitter. But as I've been realizing more and more lately that this life is so fragile, it has occurred to me that there is no room for bitterness in our time here on earth. People suck sometimes, and life sucks even more often but that doesn't mean that we have to let ourselves get pulled down into all that. In this world not of.

Finding that balance of existing here but living for the future and for God is something that I've had such a hard time with during my time at Anderson. I felt like I was doing everything right for the longest time until I turned around one day and realized how far I'd slipped from the good little homeschool girl I'd been in high school. That was kind of a tangent. I learned this year that I needed to realign myself and distance myself from a few things a bit.

I was reminded yet again of the fact that none of us know how long we have in this body, life, world this past weekend. Thomas invited me to go to Norris Lake in Tennessee with his family for Memorial Day weekend. We got to the lake on Friday and we spent the evening with his parents Tom and Vickie. The next morning Jane(sister), Mike(Jane's boyfriend), Joe(brother), Drew and Alec(Joe's friends) arrived. Saturday was a fun day of tubing, swimming, laughing, boat riding. Sunday morning we headed back out in the boat again and everyone took turns skiing and wake boarding.

Around 1pm Thomas decides he wants to ski. So, he does for awhile but he gets bored and wants to move on to wake boarding. Which he has done before but he decided this time to try some jumps and the like. Everything is going along just fine until around 2pm he tries to go for some "big air" you might say. He goes up, he comes down. He catches the edge of the board and his body falls quickly down face first on the water. Now, this might not seem like a big deal, but if you have ever skied/wake boarded/knee boarded/various other board types you know that the water right behind a moving boat can feel pretty darn hard. We see what looks like him wave from the boat and we all discuss how bad that fall must've hurt as Tom turned us around to go get him. Jane was in the front of the boat and she could see Thomas laying on his back with his eyes closed before the rest of us. She starts yelling at him to get up and stop faking it. The rest of us can see him now and we start saying the same things. Then we realize that his eyes are rolled back in his head and his body was shaking. He was having a seizure. A seizure.

Now, yes, I'm a nursing major and I have had "clinicals" (if you can call them that) but I had never seen that before in my life. He was limp but every muscle was shaking. It was one of the scariest things I've ever seen in my life. I can still see him laying there. Ah, I have to stop thinking about it, it's freaking me out all over again.

His mom was the first one to react [she's a nurse, ;)]. She yells his name one final time then dives in the water. Mike jumps in next and the boat is slowly drifting from the three of them. When Mike gets to Vickie she's still trying to get Thomas to wake up. I'm basically standing lifeless on the boat. My knees felt weak and it all kind of seemed like something I was watching not something that was actually happening to me. Tom starts yelling at us to throw things to them in the water so they can use them to float. A couple lifejackets and a floating seat (courtesy of Joe) get tossed in. Tom tells Joe to take the wheel and he dives in, too. About this time I see Thomas sit up in the water with this look of utter confusion and anger on his face. His mom is asking him his name, where we are, what year it is. Mike has finally gotten the wake board unhooked from his feet and the three of them start pulling him back to the boat. The rest of us are standing with towels ready for them.

Thomas pulls himself up into the boat and stands precariously on the back deck. I tell him to sit down. He says no I gotta get these gloves and jacket off. My voice gets sterner and I say sit down Thomas, you can do those things sitting down. His mom echoes my direction. He sits down next to me. His eyes look a little distant. He mom starts doing a mini-neuro check on him. Asking him questions, testing his strength. At this point I know he's going to be okay. We take him to the local hospital for a scan and they find no bleeding or any problems.

I'm not trying to be morbid and say that I thought he was going to die. But it's definitely another wake-up call after losing Tony and Pappaw so close to each other. Pappaw was old and he had been sick for awhile, Tony was still so young, and then Thomas. He's only 21. But seeing him there in the water was another reminder of the briefness of life.

I don't wanna get bogged down in the gunk of this life. I don't want to miss opportunities to enjoy life and to grow because I was sitting in my room stewing over the latest "wrong" that had been done to me.

Life is too short. Our time is too precious.

"It's your nickel, BonBon"

Today I thought about all the funny little things my Pappaw used to say to me. He was quite a character. I don't ever want to forget his voice and the way he would answer the phone when I called him. I will miss all his stories of the "good ole days" of gambling and cain-raising and running the restaurant. The way he said BonBon and always like to tell people the story of my birth and how sick I was and him calling people to pray for me. How he would tell ANY healthcare worker we came across, "This is my granddaughter. She's a nurse." and I would have to clarify I was only a student and still had x number of years left. I don't want to forget the way he smelled of Stetson and how his whiskers would scratch me when I'd lean in to hug him. He is also the one who showed me how outlining the picture with the same color before coloring it in looks really pretty. I always thought that was the coolest thing. Also, all the days I spent in his pool room in Lawrenceville with all those old men who had names like Blondie, Skip, you get the idea. Playing cards and pool and gambling as a little 6 year old girl. Me, sitting on the counter eating a Drumstick while he stood next to me drinking a Diet Rite. Always having a wad of money in his front shirt pocket, honking the horn when he would get to our house as a sign that we should come out to see him. Those funny black shoes he had and how I would help him tie them. Alllll of his baseball hats. The man loved hats.

I loved getting the phone call from my mom the day Pappaw got saved a couple years back. Years and years of prayers and close-calls with death finally answered.

We won't get to hear him tell us the same things over and over like "Double cheeseburger from Wendy's. Plain. I want it Plain. Pickles and onions on the side. And tell them it's for a senior." or "I'll have a water with lotsa ice. Lots of ice. And she wants an iced tea with no lemon and lotsa ice. No lemon." Mustard on everything, gravy on nothing. Absolutely no pizza, turkey, or macaroni. Only all beef hotdogs, and very select pieces of chicken cause they're such a dirty bird. Ham, and lots of it, burnt to a crisp.

I'm sad about the fact that I didn't hurry home after finals like I usually do. I stuck around to go out for Donnie's birthday and to take my time packing. I would have been able to see him again. The last time I saw him was Easter. And I tried to call him a few times recently on the phone but he had a hard time with cell phones, so I gave up. I miss him. I don't think I've realized I won't see him again. Six other times he quit breathing on us. And six other times he came back to us. But this time was different, and this time he was alone.

I might add more to this one later, I know there's more I could say. 21 years of memories.

I love you, Pappaw. 4/15/28-5/8/09

Clarity

I've known I wanted to pursue a career in the medical field for a long time. When I was much younger I used to always tell people I was going to be a doctor. The older I got the more I realized that spending so many years in school might not be my kind of thing. So, I decided I should start telling people I wanted to be a nurse. And, now as I finish my junior year at Anderson, that is exactly what I'm about to become. This makes me very excited.

Now the question becomes not what will I be when I grow up, but rather what will I be when I get out. I started college knowing I wanted to be a nurse. I figured that as I began to learn more and grow in my knowledge about the profession the choice of specializing or doing a certain type of nursing would become so much easier. I was wrong.

With every new aspect of a disease or disorder I learn, and every clinical experience I go on, I find myself being more and more confused. Each group breaks my heart in a different way. I never thought I would find myself thinking that psychiatric or geriatric nursing was for me. But after visiting the Anderson Center (a facility for people with mental disorders in town) I find myself feeling so much sadness, empathy, and love for them. They can't help their conditions, and for some there will never be a cure to bring them out of it. I can't help but think how frustrating it must be to be stuck in a mindset like that, or to get lost inside your own head.

Then, helping old people. I always swore I would never want to wipe an old butt. Not my cup of tea. I'm an Earl Grey, or White Berry Blossom kind of girl. But the more time I spend around them, again the more they break my heart. They are so helpless most of the time. They experience confusion and some of them don't have family who are willing to participate in their health care.

Yesterday we had the opportunity to learn about flight nursing. We actually got to sit INSIDE the helicopter. Emergency and critical care nursing is always where I saw myself, so I was ecstatic to have the chance to look around the helicopter that is used in those situations. The fast paced, high risk nature of it always peaked my interests. The flight nurses we talked to explained to us all the different certifications that are needed and how the CFRN test they took was literally the hardest thing they've ever done. That was encouraging. haha

My other passion has always been for neo-natal intensive care. I've always wanted to work for there at some point, too. Poor, little babies who just need someone to love on them, that's my kind of place! :)

Senior year is coming sooo soon, and that means that me living and working in the real world follows close at hand. And here I sit completely and utterly confused. A little prayer would be greatly welcomed! :)

and all at once i realize

Okay, I've made my decision...

As I sit here not working on my powerpoint for Race and Ethnicity class about Asian American cultural influences on modern American society I've come to the realization that I might as well tell people this blog exists. So what if they think what I'm writing it dumb, or maybe it offends a few people a little. But it's what I think, and I shouldn't be ashamed of my thoughts.

I'm texting the url to a few select folks as soon as I hit post...

the time has come the walrus said...

That little poem from Harriet the Spy always comes to my mind when I think of something ending. Harriet sitting on the stairs crying as she hears her parents firing Gully. And then they recite it together...

The time has come the walrus said

To talk of many things

Of ships and seas and ceiling wax

Of cabbages and kings

Of why the sea is boiling hot

And whether pigs have wings

Another time of ending has come for me. Another chapter in my life is closing but as usual I'm not quite sure I'm ready to say goodbye.

This past year I had the honor and challenge of being the president of L'amifidel, a social club here on campus. It was not the easiest thing I've ever done. I don't think I was fully prepared for how much work or how emotionally trying it would be. Having to overcome criticism and constant complaints from various girls in the club was very discouraging at times. I started the year back in September so excited and with so many ambitions for our year as a club. RUSH went amazingly well, we actually had the largest RUSH class overall. I was pumped. I knew that I was going to be able to do great things with such a large number of girls.

Things went well, and I guess I am really good at being oblivious to people talking about me (I hinted at that in my previous posts regarding friendships). As the year progressed, I started becoming aware of frustrations girls were having about club and of course, being the worrier I am, I blamed myself. I know that it's not possible to always please everyone. Especially a group of 50+ females. I talked with our sponsor, Audrey, and my vice-president, Kendria and they helped me work through the issue and I started to regain my positive attitude toward club.

Well, now that my "reign" is coming to a close, I realize there are so many more things I want to do. I am also look back over the year and thinking about all the things I could've done differently and in my mind "better". Hindsight is always 20/20. I'm not ready to let it end. These past couple of weeks next year's president, who happens to be Kendria, has started doing a few "presidential" type things, and I've started to get jealous. I am so excited that she is going to be the president, I couldn't have picked a better girl for the job next year. But this little piece of me is still hanging on to it, wanting a chance to do it again next year. Wanting to be able to show everyone that I have so much more to give. I will be involved as an officer again, this time as historian. I chose to run for that one because I wanted involvement without having a lot of work cause I know that nursing stuff will be really trying next year. That's also why I am so shocked or maybe reluctant to admit how I'm feeling about not being more involved next year. I know that I won't be able to give my all to either of the tasks if I try to do both.

So, a bittersweet ending to a roller-coaster year. I look forward to next year with eager anticipation and I will be praying for all our new officers and for the potential rushees we will have. Our club is still in a precarious time of growth. And I'm ready to be a part of it again for a third and final year.

The time has come the walrus said...

I'm Over It

Proverbs 18- I just found that in this time of frustration. And it helped me.

I just laid in the floor of the shower and cried for awhile. I was sad and upset with myself. But then I just got so angry. I hate how we as human beings have such a hard time doing something for other people. Even little day to day things that would take nothing from us, we just can't seem to do because of some reason or another.

It's hitting close to home lately, it seems. I see it in my friends. Everyone just looks out for themselves and their own happiness with no regard to what their actions might do to those around them who they claim to care about. I guess I was always taught to think before I speak and definitely before I act. We've been learning about different leadership and group styles in psych nursing and one that fits here would be the utilitarian style. The greatest good, for the most people. Maybe thats a naive way to live life, but I don't care. Or maybe I should care, since it seems other people don't follow suit on that particular point.

Investing upwards of 4 years in various friendships to then have these people talk about me behind my back and fake a smile when they see me in the valley is frustrated. It pisses me off! I just don't see a point in really trying to mend these relationships when those on the other end continually hurt me like they do. I really hate that I'm writing all this in this way on here. It seems lame to me, and immature.

Mostly, like I said earlier, I'm over this selfish factor that lives within all of us. It makes me so angry. My friend Zak was telling me on Saturday about how C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity that humans aren't capable of doing anything that isn't out of selfishness. We talked about how even people who appear to be so giving and humanitarian sometimes only do these things for the recognition and approval. It seems so much more meaningful to me to hear about someone who helped out quietly, without having to tell everyone about it. Jesus performed His miracles and helped those in need at any time and in many different settings. He didn't wait until everyone was watching to make sure He had a packed house to see His tremendous deeds.

Meg said she needed to call my mom and tell her I need her.

...Maybe she was right.

I'm Bad at Crying

This is an entry I originally wrote in my journal on 3/22/2009. I wanted to share it at the time in a blog. I, however, had not made the decision to start one. But, now that I do have one, here it is:

3/22/2009

I've had to grieve over losing people before in my life. Grandpa Bob in middle school, Nick Later in summer 2007. Those two stick out in my mind. But every time it comes, it hits me so unaware. I see myself as strong-willed and like to think I'm independent. This combined with my incurable stubbornness, gets me in so much trouble. I'm also always keeping everything in. I store up sadness, frustration, bitterness for sometimes months at a time. I like to think "I can take it!", like nothing can hurt me.

Until I break.

And when I do, watch out.

Tony Quarterman died last Friday. I was on spring break and couldn't be at the funeral or present to be with Kayla, Margie, and Bryan in those crucial days right after. I had to keep it all bottled up during a week of fun with the girls. I hated it. I dealt with rude comments from some of the girls about my relationship with Thomas again. I hate how much behind the back talking is done among us lately. All those little things added to what I was really dealing with. The loss of an amazing, funny man I'd known my whole life who was taken at what appears to human eyes as far too early. Bryan is getting married in May, Kayla hasn't graduate from college yet. I know God's plan is perfect. But it just is so hard to think how they must be feeling

So me, "the bottler", busted today. I've cried. I've been thinking things over in my head. I just gotta deal. School's happening whether I like it or not. I'm also a dweller. Bottler, dweller, basketcase. I'm anticipating this stressful week ahead and making it out to be much worse than it really probably will be. And all I really wanna do is eat some chips and dip with the Quartermans. Talk with them. Then lay on the couch and watch movies with Mom. THIS week needs to be spring break.

I also need something to get me on a better track with God. And an intervention with these girls I call my friends. I don't know. God is bigger. I gotta remember that. He's bigger and better. He knows what's right and all things work for good if I trust Him and allow His will in my life. Writing this felt good. Maybe I should blog after all? Break my own rule...

-bottler, dweller, non-blogger...

~Maybe at least a Facebook note? Although letting the world see this big part of me would go against the bottler within me. Maybe that's good? Thinking about it so much proves the dweller side of me...

For Starters

I've wrestled with the idea of starting a blog for sometime now. I'm not a very open person. The thought that people might see me as inadequate or a failure terrifies me. I guess I just don't know how to be okay with the fact that I am a human being and with that comes a lot of screw ups.

I have recently been trying to confront some of my flaws or peculiarities. Some of these instances I hope to be able to share through this blog later on. But one of my biggest ones is that which I stated earlier about being vulnerable. I have been challenged by some of my friends and I have decided to rise to the occasion.

I'm not going to make any claims about blogging everyday or making sure to update with every interesting event that takes place in my small world, but I can say that when I do write I will be writing about the things that really matter to me. I've used my various journals in my life as my release. I write in them when I'm about to bust with emotion; whether it be happiness, anger, confusion. I liked the feeling of security I had with the journal. "For My Eyes Only"

A blog is not for my eyes only...It's for the world wide webs eyes. Emphasis on the world wide.

So, with some Death Cab playing in my iTunes on shuffle, here goes nothing...