My favorite color is blue. When given the choice of similar items where one is any shade of blue versus any other shade of any other color, I usually pick blue. My favorite days are sunny ones with blue skies. My favorite places are usually places I can either sit and stare at turquoise water, or swim in it. When I bought myself a car a couple years ago, the only cars I considered purchasing were the blue ones. I would probably be okay if my entire wardrobe was blue, especially navy blue. Some people feel the most like themselves when they wear black, with the oft repeated sentiment that it matches their soul. Somehow, my soul is blue.
Oregon has made me reconsider. Walking through forests that glow with all different shades of green might do that to you, too. Green is everywhere here. It's in everything and it covers everything, from the fields of clover, to the trees covered in lichen, to the mossy rocks in the rivers. Green is the color of life, as cliche as that thought is. Even out of the death and decay of old, fallen trees, new, green growth sprouts. As I've hiked the trails here, it's no exaggeration to say that I've been awestruck with the feeling of green: vibrant, rejuvinating, hopeful, and alive.
I left Utah a few months ago feeling pretty terrible. The green of Oregon has been a much needed balm for my wounds. That was really the whole point of moving away from Utah, to get a little peace and perspective. I was so angry all the time there, and I just needed to do something- anything- different.
Don't get me wrong, I still feel lonely, angry, and bitter sometimes. Dating is still awful here; the only difference is that now it includes even more emotionally unavailable, non-monogamous, "420 friendly" commitment-phobes who don't know what they want out of their life, but are sure that what the world needs is more brands of organic, vegan beard oil... Oops, did I just let my bitterness show? I'm working on it, *I swear*.
Anyway, it's harder to feel hopeless when I'm hiking, watching squirrels run up and down their mossy playgrounds, and listening to the roar of giant waterfalls. It's a good reminder that there is more to life than seeking companionship of a significant other.
My contract at the hospital in Springfield ended a couple weeks ago. Next week I'm moving to Berkeley, California to start a new contract. I'll be there for 13 weeks. Of course there's the excitment of moving and starting a new job, but I already miss Oregon. I'll probably be back. I need more green in my life.
I feel the need to warn you that this isn't exactly the happiest post I've ever written. So to prepare you for what you might consider to be self-indulgent whining for however long it takes you to read this, here's a picture of a cute animal that I googled (it's called a quokka, aka the world's happiest animal):
It really is freaking adorable. You're welcome. Okay, ready?
I'm 37 years old, single, and unhappy about it. I post about it a lot on Facebook. Some of my earliest memories are of me being boy-crazy, including being like 3 or 4 years old and sneaking kisses with the neighbor boy my age while we were playing "House." Growing up, I had a plan that I was going to meet my future husband on my mission and be married by the time I was 25. My hopes of meeting someone were still high when I was 35, and I just KNEW that someday it would all become clear why I had to wait so long to find Mr. Perfect.
Then I met someone, fell completely in love with him within the first month, and proceeded to take another 13 months to not only figure out but also accept that we were irreconcilably incompatible. It didn't matter how much I loved him. I broke up with him, which felt (and still feels) like cutting out my own heart.
Since that breakup, I've lost hope that I will find someone to love that will also love me. Because I can't muster up a spark of hope, I feel like anything else I do is pointless. I'm jealous and angry that other people can find someone that loves and accepts them completely and I can't. I'm jealous and angry that other people have that person to be a witness to their life, and a partner in it, while I do everything by myself and go home to an empty apartment.
To cut to the chase, I feel purposeless, bitter, and sad. The loss of hope for companionship in my life has colored how I feel about everything else; or to be more accurate, has sucked all the color out of everything else, because everything seems kind of gray. I can't imagine how any amount of travel, education, job success, or service to others can fill the void in my life. I just feel mad all the time, and I'm so tired of blaming myself and trying to find the life lesson in my misery.
I'm not proud of how I feel, and honestly, I'm not my biggest fan right now.
*Cue the "shoulds"*
I should be grateful. I should thank my lucky stars that I'm not in a bad/toxic/abusive relationship. I should take advantage of my independence, travel more, etc. I should be able to celebrate other people's joy without it taking away from mine. I should recognize that so many people would love to be in my shoes right now. You don't have to tell me, my mind is swimming with the things I know I SHOULD do. I feel like I'm holding a winning hand of cards and pouting that I haven't won yet.
My goal is to somehow lose this anger, bitterness, and undercurrent of dissatisfaction. I don't think that I will lose the sadness, because I feel like I'm grieving the loss of something that was really important to me. But I really need to stop being hurt and mad all the time.
I want to be the kind of person that is happy on my own. Maybe I need to better evaluate why I want to be in a relationship so much and see if I can find whatever it is I'm looking for in other areas of my life. Maybe I need to develop and strengthen other types of relationships that I already have. Maybe I need to focus on a career. Maybe I just need a dog.
The truth is that I don't really know what to do from here. I don't know how to all of a sudden stop wanting the one thing that I've wanted since I was 4, when I chased the neighbor boy around the Fisher Price playground in his backyard to get him to kiss me and call me his wife. All I know is that I have to find a way to stop feeling bitter.
One of the decisions that I made recently in order to stop feeling like this is to move out of Utah. I took a travel contract in Springfield, Oregon, and I leave this week. After that, I'm planning on taking a few other contracts in other states. I know that moving somewhere new doesn't change who I am or my problems. The worst case scenario is that I will at least be distracted from how I'm feeling with a new place and new adventures. The best case scenario is that new experiences will give me better perpective and bring me a little peace.
A couple of important things I want to add:
Please don't worry about me. I recognize that I've have had some low-grade depression for the last year or so, but it is not severe or debilitating. I don't want anyone thinking that they need to stage an intervention for me. I go to therapy, and my therapist has helped me muddle through shittier parts of the last year. I'm mostly okay, just working through some newer, intense emotions that I've never really experienced before.
I know you all- my friends and family who read this- love me. I know I'm welcome in your lives. My heartbreak isn't from a lack of love from you guys.
Anyhoo, sorry if this is a bummer post. I'm sorry if I seem whiny and like I'm feeling sorry for myself. I don't want to be that way. I don't know why I sometimes feel the need to bear my soul to the internet, but here it is, nonetheless.
Here is a definitely not photoshopped picture of Springfield.
It's been a couple weeks since I graduated with my Bachelor of Science in Nursing. It's not a small feat for anyone to get a degree, but for me, it was a massive milestone that I have been working on since 2003. Getting my ASN was hard enough. Getting my BSN was hard on a level that I have never experienced.
The nursing program at UVU is competitive. Pretty much everyone who gets into the ASN program, at least in my cohort, is a type A perfectionist; I definitely am not, and I had to learn how to be. The courses are difficult, the professors have high expectations, and the schedule can be grueling (especially with work on top of it). On top of full-time classes and the hours upon hours of studying that accompany them, there are clinical hours every week, and some of them are night shifts. The four semesters of the ASN program feel like an uphill marathon. Even with the heavy workload, the schedule, and the intensity of what we were learning, I managed to pull off mostly A's in my classes, with a couple of A-'s. I chalk that up mostly to my wonderful friends in my study group and supportive professors.
The three semesters it took me to finish the BSN classes were hard for very different reasons. Around the time I started my BSN classes, I was noticing that I felt sick all the time. Then COVID hit. It turned my in-person classes into online classes. COVID got worse in New York, and my friend Amanda and I dropped everything and worked there for two months. We worked the night shift, and I was ALWAYs tired. Doing my assignments in New York felt impossible, and I failed one of my classes.
The next semester, I felt even worse. I constantly felt nauseated, had massive headaches, and inexplicable muscle pain. I maxed out on Tylenol and Ibuprofen every single day, and still had uncontrolled pain. I went to several doctors appointments during that semester and had a few tests, none of which yielded any answers. I was taking several classes, including the one that I had failed the previous semester. They were all online, and I felt like I was alone trying to learn some very complicated topics. Right at the end of the semester, I was diagnosed with ADD (inattentive type), which explains more about my life than I care to admit. With or without the diagnosis, going through that process of being diagnosed (talking with my therapist as well as my doctor) made me realize that all the ways that I had learned to be successful in school were not available to me with online classes. It explained much of the difficulty I was having. With the grace of some very understanding professors, I passed all my classes, despite my struggles in school and feeling ill all the time.
This last semester better in some ways because of the ADD diagnosis. I'm still learning how to best deal with ADD, because it affects other areas of my life besides school. I realized that I had to find new ways to be successful in school, including having more communication with the professors and finding very quiet places with minimal distractions to do my homework. I also started an elimination diet because I was desperate to feel better, and I was willing to try anything. The very, very good news is that the elimination diet worked for me- it turns out that cow's milk is the devil- and I started feeling better. However, there were a lot of big events happening to me and to some people I care about during the semester. I don't really want to go over what they were, but they took up a lot of my time, attention, and energy. As a result of the big events and resulting distraction, the last three weeks of the semester were the most stress-filled, sob-inducing weeks of my life. Despite wanting to hide away from everyone and everything, I was running on sheer panic of not being able to graduate. I basically had tears streaming down my face as I worked on all my assignments and projects. I have never been so sad or so stressed in my entire life. But in the end, on May 7th, I walked down that green carpet in the parking lot of UVU on a very windy afternoon and officially graduated.
I've been staring at the screen now for about fifteen minutes trying to think of what to say about all of this. Nursing school has been the best and hardest thing I've ever done. Being a nurse is an honor, not only because of opportunity to make a difference in people's lives every day, but also because I get to rub elbows with some of the smartest, kindest people. The past three years have been a wild roller coaster. Right now I'm torn between really loving my life and also being very sad about some parts of it, but the fact is, I'm really just one of the luckiest people alive.
I don't know what's next for me. There are so many things that I've been putting on the back burner for the last three years, and I'm ESTATIC about being able to get back to them. Writing, making some art, spending time with the important people in my life. I'm 36 years old and am now just figuring things out for myself. It took me 18 years to finish my degree... It always seems to take me longer to do things than other people, but rather than being hard on myself, I'm grateful for the path that led me here. I'm a better nurse now than I would have been when I was 18 and starting college, or at age 25 and fresh off my LDS mission. It's been a hard journey, but I think I'm better for it, and hopefully that will be reflected in my work and in other areas of my life.
The source of my cap decorations (and the title of this post) by Nathan Pyle:
I'm in an interesting English class this semester that is causing me to (voluntarily) dig into some topics that are sources of past hurts I've experienced in my life, and to come up with research topics about them. Today has kind of left me with some thoughts that I want to verbalize but don't really have an outlet for.
I've basically been fat my entire life. Some of my earliest memories involve being teased relentlessly by peers, having medical tests performed on me to figure out why I was so big for my age, taking medication to help me lose weight, and being put on diets as a child. Being overweight has been one of the most formative aspects of my life, and undoubtedly bled into all other aspects of my life, including personality, relationships, hobbies, and my career.
There's no question that increased weight contributes to many health issues. However, I have to question the medical community's biases of weight. Based on personal experience, I can say that medical professionals miss vital information when they write off all symptoms as results of weight. My ten pound tumor, which was the size of a basketball when it was removed, is evidence of this bias. Medical professionals whose opinion I sought simply told me to lose weight rather than performing thorough histories and exams, which would have shown them the massive tumor. Yes, my weight made the tumor slightly less obvious, and it's genuinely embarrassing to admit that a tumor that size went undiagnosed for so long because of it. However, the lack of thorough exams resulted in YEARS of pain and embarrassment. Luckily for me, the only long-term effects of the tumor are a big scar and my body being slightly asymmetrical. Another personal example is that when I had a blood clot in my leg a couple years ago, I worried that my doctor would again just attribute my health problems to my weight. Both the tumor and the blood clot were the result of genetics; not only does this kind of tumor run in my family, so does a blood clotting disorder. No amount of diet or exercise would have prevented either the tumor or the blood clot.
Perhaps just as damaging (emotionally and mentally if not physically), entertainment media is quick to make overweight people the butt of the joke. Recently I watched an episode of one of my new favorite shows with a scene that was kind of jarring to me. The main characters did something bad. Feeling guilty, they found the person who they hurt in order to apologize. The person came into the room and cried over what had been done. The main characters stopped feeling bad and were clearly uncomfortable because this grieving person, previously unknown to them, was fat. Person is sad because of sad thing, but their feelings are invalid because main characters are uncomfortable with person's size. That was it, that was the joke; cue the laughter.
Critics of the "body positivity" movement argue that being fat is a result of laziness and gluttony, and unhealthy behaviors are glorified. While I don't accept this attitude, I'm not excusing unhealthy lifestyles. I understand that physical and mental health are potentially improved with diet, exercise, and other related healthy behaviors. What I AM saying is this: there are biases against fat people that are damaging physically, mentally, and emotionally. The solutions to the problems that arise from these biases aren't very clear because they are accepted so widely and challenged so little. To drive this point, let me say this: I adopted and accepted negative attitudes about fatness from such a young age and so wholly that I believed it when people told me there was something wrong with me because of my size, that I did not deserve to be in a relationship or deserve love because of it, that I was lazy and selfish, that all my health problems were the result of my weight, that I should be embarrassed about myself, that I have to make my life and my personality small because I am so big, and that I could not and would not be successful. Those are only some of the messages that are so widely accepted. It's taken me years to challenge those beliefs, and I try every day to rewrite those stories that other people told me about myself.
Where does this bias come from? How did society move away from appreciating people with extra pounds and towards appreciation solely for thinness? Why are we so quick to attribute weight issues to an individual's character flaws, rather than accepting that the issue is complex and multifaceted, with solutions that are equally complex? How can we be better healthcare professionals for people with weight issues? Why is it so hard to believe that fat doesn't always mean unhealthy, just like skinny doesn't always mean healthy? I have so many questions.
I've been sitting on some big news for a couple of weeks and am really excited to finally let y'all know. I'M MOVING TO NEW YORK! Yes, that's for realsies. My friend Amanda is just as insane as I am and we're both going. We got jobs in Queens as travel nurses to help out in the emergency room of a hospital in an area very affected by COVID. I'm not moving there permanently, just for a couple of months.
This is me with my friend Amanda. We're different in most ways, but one similarity is that we are both up for crazy adventures.
It has taken me a very, very long time to find out what I'm passionate enough about to spend 40+ hours a week on it. Somewhere during my 2 years of studying for my ASN, I was thinking about my strengths and how to apply them to my career. I thought back on my life and realized that one of my strengths is that I feel very loyal to and protective of the people that I work/study alongside with. On top of that, I know that one of my strengths is taking action when I see a need. I feel like this was pretty evident during my time in the ASN program at UVU. I put in extra time working as the president of the Student Nurse Association at UVU because I felt like there were some gaps that I could help fill in taking care of the students in the program. I also put in time as a member of the board of the Utah SNA for the same reason. And lastly, if anyone knows anything about me from the last 10 years working in health care, they know that one of the things that I'm the MOST anxious to resolve in the nursing profession is having safe patient ratios. Besides being unsafe for the patients, having unsafe patient ratios takes a toll on nurses. Nursing burnout is NOT a real thing. I've heard it called moral injury, and I believe that in my core. Here's a video about "moral injury" if you want to know more about that: https://youtu.be/L_1PNZdHq6Q. If you don't believe me, you should start looking at suicide rates of health care professionals, which are significantly higher than in the rest of the population. It's honestly a tragedy. Sorry, let me get off my soap box. At my pinning ceremony (nursing graduation ceremony), I looked around at my classmates and felt so lucky that I got to spend 2 years with them. As much as I'm glad to be out of the ASN program and onto other things, I miss all of those funny, kind, generous, and WICKED SMART friends of mine. At the pinning ceremony, I promised myself that I would work hard to make nursing a better profession for them. When I started to hear about COVID, the thing that caught my attention the most was the fact that healthcare professionals are breaking under the pressure. An unrest started churning deep inside me. That unrest reached a boiling point, and I decided that I can't just sit here in Utah and wait for the pandemic to reach us. There are nurses who are drowning in work, who leave work broken every day and go right back the next day, because they are needed, and they are willing. I want to help people recover from COVID, but mostly I want to help my community of nurses. Those wonderful people who put so much into taking care of others need to be taken care of right now. So I'm going. I'll be there by the 20th!
It's no secret that I had gastric bypass a few years ago. My weight and my eating habits were out of control. Since then, my relationship with food has been nothing short of a roller coaster; some days I feel pretty good about it, and other days I feel like it's ruining my life.
What is much less known is that over the past couple of years, bad food habits have reared their ugly head and taken hold of my life once again. I've gained 40+ pounds since nursing school started. While I'm not at my starting weight of 385 (YIKES), the scale is climbing in that direction, and it's actually kind of terrifying. Gastric bypass changed my life for the better. Without it, I promise you I would not be a nurse right now. I don't ever want to go back to where I was.
I finally caved and went to go see my surgeon, David Watts, despite feeling like I've failed myself AND him (and everyone else). He's a nice guy, of course, and only wants me- and all of his patients- to succeed. He gave me a pep talk. "You've worked so hard and put so much into this to give up. It's not impossible. It will take longer, but you can do it." Together we made a plan: do a pouch reset (more on that in a sec), see the nurse over the weight loss program in 3 months, come back to see him in 6 months. If I'm not losing weight by then we will talk about more radical interventions. Additionally, if I'm still having a hard time with cravings or feeling hungry with the correct amount of food, he said that he is okay with me requesting an appetite suppressant medication called phentermine from my primary care doctor. However, it's not time to cross that bridge yet.
(As a side note, I just looked up the side effects of that medication, and those are also terrifying.)
I have a terrible memory, and I don't remember if I've written about what a pouch reset is before. I'm sorry if this is a repeat of previous posts. A pouch reset is just doing a shorter version of the pre-op diet: 1 day of clear liquid diet, 2-3 days of full liquids, 2-3 days of puree diet, 2-3 days of soft foods, and then back to regular foods. In addition to the restrictions on food choices, you also have to STRICTLY control portions (1- 1.5 cups for me), and eat it over 20-30 minutes. That last part is a lifelong thing, not just part of the pouch reset. It's one of the worst parts about the post-op diet. Imagine trying to eat a jello cup over 30 minutes, and that's your whole freaking meal.
With my list of approved foods in hand, I went to Winco today. Sugar free jello, broth, SF popsicles, Dasani SF water flavor enhancers for the clear diet day; SF pudding, cream soup, applesauce, protein shakes for the full liquid diet days; hummus, cottage cheese, yogurt, eggs for the puree days. I had flashbacks of the days right after my surgery that I choked down those foods for what seemed like endless weeks. By the end of the full liquid days, I couldn't even think about creamed soups without feeling nauseated. Every time I advanced to a new diet level I could have cried. Being so restricted on food was miserable. And today, there I was again, standing in the soup aisle, holding a damn can of cream of chicken soup, not able to hold back the tears as I wondered how I would be able start all over again. Other moments in Winco that caused me tears today: I couldn't find the @#$#@$! hummus, and WHY ARE THOSE COOKIES ON SALE?! I'm telling you, the grocery store is a battle zone for me. I know that I'm not alone in this; many people in my surgical weight loss support group have voiced the same thing.
I'm so discouraged. I don't want to do this, and I don't want to be this person who needs so much regulation over something that is a basic function of life. I find it wildly unfair that food is an addiction that I cannot quit cold-turkey (another thing I can't have right now, haha). If you were to tell a heroin addict that they needed to have JUST A LITTLE BIT of heroin every day, but not too much, that would sound insane. That's exactly how this makes me feel.
Please excuse my whining and feeling sorry for myself. I absolutely understand that this is such a first world problem. "Oh noooo, I have too much fooooooooooooood!" I'll get over my anger and resentment. I just have to feel it first. It might take a few days, but I'll get there.
I've kept off over 100 pounds since my surgery; I shouldn't forget the progress that I've made. Here are some pictures as a reminder to myself that I've come SO far.
BEFORE:
Yikes.
AFTER:
Dayuuummmm I look good in this pic.
Skinny face.
Holy crap, I'm a nurse! Like officially! That's too weird.
I don't know why it's showing up so weird, but I ran 6 miles today. That's definitely something I wouldn't have been able to do pre-surgery. I never even ran ONE mile pre-surgery.
Okay, going through those pictures is actually really helpful. It reminds me that my health is worth the hard work. I've said this before, but someone once told me, "Losing weight is hard, but so is being fat. Choose your hard." *Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigggggggggggghhhhhhh* Fine. I guess I have to choose the hard that doesn't include pastries.
You guys, this is hard. If you see me eating something that I shouldn't, please feel free to slap it out of my hands. (That reminds me, if you haven't seen the Slap Chef video, go do it now. In fact, here you go:)
Also, here is my new theme song. I heard it today and fell in love with it, because it's pretty accurate to how I feel about this situation.
Anyway, there you go. That's the story of how a can of soup made me cry. Don't worry, I will get back up again. Just let me get past the pureed food stage first.
I'm sitting here at my desk in my bedroom not wanting to do my homework, so I'm taking a break (before I even start, haha) to jot down some thoughts about some notes I have posted next to me. They're both from therapy. I hope that they make a difference to someone.
This quote is posted to my left.
This piece of paper has obviously been through the ringer. It's done a stint in my car, as a bookmark, and now as wall "art." If you can't read past the oil stain, whatever that yellow mark is, and other pen scribbles, it says, "Character is the ability to carry out a worthy decision after the emotion of making the decision has passed." I don't know who originally said this, but I wrote it down during a therapy session with my therapist Darren. Maybe he should be credited with the quote, but I don't know... Regardless, it's stuck with me when I don't want to train for races, or open up another textbook for school, or a hundred other things that are hard to do!
More inspiration is this copy of the inside cover of a book called "The Four Agreements."
My most recent therapist Kim gave it to me. These are SO much harder to apply in my life than Darren's advice. I struggle with the agreements "Don't make assumptions" and "Don't take anything personally" very deeply. I make assumptions about people's motives, and I take everything personally, including everything people say AND what people don't say (such a win-win situation for everyone, amirite?). I think I will make this my mantra for the next little while, and hopefully I will get better at it. You can see my notes at the bottom of the page: "Step back. 'This is not mine. This is your responsibility/ burden. I'm giving it back to you.'" I can see how I could use this in so many areas in my life. I'll work on it.
On a related note, another handwritten note on the back of that same page says, "Perfectionism is a symptom of being over-accountable." I've written and rewritten this paragraph about three or four times, which if that doesn't prove Kim's point about me being a perfectionist, I don't know what will. I've been pretty open on my other posts about my imperfections, but suffice it to say that trying to be perfect manifested itself by me taking on too much work, and it was taking a toll on my mental health.
Anyhoo... this is kind of a hot mess of a post, but it's been a long time since I've written anything and that's what was on my mind. Basically, therapy is awesome and I've learned some things that are helpful to me, and maybe they might be helpful to you.
