Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Today finally feels like the first day of fall.

I want to be this girl.
This is the girl who wore a ridiculously bright coat and walked everywhere in 10 euro boots. She spoke French effortlessly, ate whatever she wanted, and took naps in the park, curled up on her purple scarf. This is the girl who never carried an umbrella and rarely cared what her hair looked like because it got along so well with the wind and damp air. This girl spent hours and hours dancing to live music with her friends.

Today, I don't get to be that girl. The girl who I am today carries much more responsibility, hoping that someday it might be worth it. Today, I'm trying to forget that I used to be her, so I refuse to wear those boots or that coat, fearing that I'll slide back into her life, that leaving her again will hurt me more than it first did. So I wear sweatpants and I sit in class and pretend that I don't miss her. I pretend that this is enough for me for now. I pretend to forget her, just for this first day of fall.

Enjoying my life in spite of nursing school

Hi, adorable little blog. Sorry for neglecting you.

You see, it's just that I can't seem to focus at all. For example, in class this morning, my professor stated, "You'll need to know this for the test on Monday."

MONDAY? You mean, five days from now? We just had a test last Monday!

But yes, Monday. My next test is on Monday. Even though this weekend is Halloween, my favorite holiday. Yes, I'll be studying most of the weekend. But to keep my spirits up, I'm going to make pumpkins pancakes. And apple donuts. And maybe spiderweb cupcakes. And potentially some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. This is the holiday that I wait all year for and I'm not going to let nursing school steal it from me yet again.

Speaking of my favorite holiday, nursing school also doesn't allow me time or funds to make a Halloween costume. So I dove into my closet and came up with this:


That's my rockstar of a boyfriend dressed up as the kid from "Up", me dressed up as a gypsy, and my number one woman Sasha as Little Red Riding Hood.

If I can make it through this week, my plans are as follows:
- Study my brains out
- Replant my sunflowers because they're outgrowing the tiny little pot they're currently living in
- Carve pumpkins! And make pumpkin seeds
- Force the boyfriend to watch "Hocus Pocus", because he's never seen it, and I think that's a tragedy
- Find some free time on Friday or Saturday and use it to make delicious Halloween treats
- ASU football!
- Try and figure out how to celebrate Halloween without Mariam
- Study study study


Thursday, October 8, 2009

I love...

...when I'm wasting away my life at my computer and my gorgeous puppy jumps on top of me to remind me to wake up and stop being so boring.
...outside naps.
...lazy afternoons where all I do is read.
...snacks.
...laughing really hard when I least expect it.
...when my apartment is clean and looks like someone really cool lives here, as opposed to when I get really busy with school and it gets really dirty and looks like a hobo lives here.
...having knives in my kitchen. Especially one very pink knife.
...flowers in vases that live for over a week.
...planting sunflowers even though I'll probably overwater and kill them.

P.S. to my dad: I'm working my way back to blogging again. I love you more.

Monday, September 21, 2009

I have the best mom ever.

That is all.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Likes and Dislikes

Just real quick before my 9 pm bedtime:

Things I Don't Like:
- Mean people
- Waking up to my empty apartment at 4:30 am
- Not being able to play my guitar after who-knows-how-many years
- People who double park (WHO DOES THAT!?)
- Not being sure if what I'm studying now is what I want to do in the future

Things I Like:
- Making a good pie
- Leftover pad thai
- Sangria
- Buying presents for people I love
- Long showers
- My family
- Wearing long sleeves

Monday, March 2, 2009

Psych patients

I've spent this semester with some of the most interesting people I've ever met.

I've talked about Tupac and Biggie with a young man whose schizophrenic delusions were so intense that they caused him to attack his father and his therapist. When he grows up, he wants to work at Petco. Or design basketball shoes.

I've gushed about France with a young woman who was a stripper and a meth addict up until a month ago. We discussed Pavlovian conditioning and tattoos. Her smile lit up the room and when the women's shelter that she moved to came to my play, she ran up to the stage afterwards and told me that I was hilarious.

I've seen a pharmacist lament the fact that his drinking is destroying his family. "I've been through this before," he told me. "I was sober for seven years before this. I thought I could just have one drink and I'd be okay."

I've had casual conversations about the weather and American Idol with men who have killed entire families.

I'm not so different from all of these people. If my circumstances had changed ever so slightly, my decisions could have brought me to the same place. If the neurotransmitters in my brain had malfunctioned along the way, I could be the patient instead of the nurse. If my situation was so desperate that I had to kill in order to feed and protect my family, would I do it? If I had lost control of myself, my heart, and my choices, I could be any of these people.

I have worked with victims and criminals and sometimes the criminals look more like victims than the victims themselves.

I worked with a seventeen-year-old boy who was a sex offender. He had been molesting other children since he was nine years old. He himself had been a victim from the age of four. He had big hair and a gap-toothed smile and looked much younger than he was. I saw him lose control of himself once and it was absolutely terrifying. There was no light in his eyes. My physiological response was to flee; my body did not want to be anywhere near this source of danger. Two days later, when he was a little boy once again, we played Wii baseball and he told me about his two-month-old niece.

I wish I could believe that people like him are soulless monsters. I wish I could believe that something deep inside of him was pure evil. But when I look at him and see that someone else had ruined him before his life had a chance to truly begin, all I can do is let my heart break for him.

When I was in Namibia, it was sometimes difficult to breathe because I felt as if all the pain from the women with whom I was working was pressing in on me. I was incredibly angry toward the men who had abused these women. These women were stunningly beautiful and physically powerful. How could someone break them?

Looking back now, I realize that those men didn't know anything else. They have seen their fathers abuse their mothers in the same way. It is something that they have seen daily, as far back as their memories reach. In "Fistula", a poem by Eve Ensler dealing with the subject of rape as a tactic of war, she asks, "Was it because they were men? Was it because they had never learned to be men?"

People are just people. I wish I could believe that some are pure evil and some are fully good. I wish I could believe in monsters. I wish I could blame people for their mental illnesses. I wish I could hate them for their actions. Life was much easier when I could, but I just don't have it in me anymore.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

New Year's Resolutions

Rewind to four years ago: One of my best friends asks me what my New Year's resolutions are.

I, being mouthy, respond that I don't BELIEVE in New Year's resolutions. I believe that people should change things THE VERY SECOND that they decide they want to change them.

Okay, seventeen-year-old self, please calm down.

Here are the New Year's resolutions that I'm not to embarrassed to admit to:

- Laugh more.
- Sleep more.
- Write more, more often, and more honestly.
- Start running again so that I don't get lazy and stressed out.
- Spend my free time with people who put my heart at peace.
- Focus on my classes. Do all of my reading.
- Live in the moment.
- Stop running my mouth so much.
- Be better about returning phone calls.
- Don't leave my computer running all the time, because that's bad for the planet and I love Mother Earth.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!