Nothing in common

It surprised me when I checked my inbox and saw an email from you. Of you apologizing of all things for things unsaid. And I wondered who put you up to it. We've drifted, it's been years, we don't talk. And that about sums it up. You've moved on and I am, well, I've learned to just let go. I've stopped chasing after you awhile now because I don't know really, I just got tired of it. Cynical. We have nothing in common anymore. I'm certainly not the one you need in your life, I'm finally learning that I am no longer a little kid and you are moving into a life where you fit in with someone better. Someone who isn't your younger sister. I could try and chase after your coattails as long as I could, but I no longer wish to. I miss you, yeah. I miss getting emails and chats and silly jokes. But I no longer feel compelled to chase after you because I know that even at my pace I'll meet with you at the same stage sooner or later, but with less heartaches, with less bitterness. I've learned that you are your own person and you do not belong to me and I can't keep you with me forever. I've been seeing that we can never own people for our own selves because we can only share bits and pieces of each other. That I can't possess people because the moment I do they become possessions and no longer persons. And I'm sorry if you felt the need to coddle and hold my hand far longer than any other persons would allow just because I refused to let yours go, that I shackled you to my leg only letting you go so far before I dragged you back beside me again. This is me letting you go, unchaining you from my side and stepping back. It's past time that I stopped using my insecurities and my own self-bondage into blackmailing you into staying. Thank you for indulging me and coaxing me along life but I can manage on my own now, but thank you. And I won't begrudge you of running off into the sunset when I myself have realized freedom. I'm happy for you, and I always love you.

I do it for love

I do believe that I'm two months into my vacation, or what I usually call/shout for joy in my head as "Freeeedddooooommmm". Yes, exactly like that.

I've spent time in San Francisco to see relatives, and Yosemite, and well, a place other than Arizona. I've spent time in hospitals that had nothing to do with my clinicals but with people I personally know being there, and oh for an interview, followed by medical appointment to see if I'm TB-free or something, and an orientation for the volunteer work I applied for. I've been in other places, like the library fifteen minutes away by car, and restaurants and shops, and movie theaters, and other places, like the post office and the FedEx store, sometimes to apply for work and more often to simply be a patron. I've read books, some new, some old, some borrowed, and some bought. And then there were the days when I slept for hours and hours, and didn't the next day, and then took naps. I guess I've been having fun, no, no. I am having fun.

I'd have been in Canada to see my sister and my cousins, and their babies, but that wasn't what happened. Instead I'm currently in California, though not in daisy dukes or bikini tops. I don't have those in my luggage. And I'm not really here for vacation. I'm here to help my aunt around the house since she had a fracture on her leg and it's less painful to stay on the bed than on her feet. Although currently I'm more house-sitting than anything since she hasn't left the hospital since she got injured while working there.

Solitude wasn't really a problem until I ran out of books, could not get a decent Wi-Fi signal that didn't require a password, and couldn't use her car since I needed a remote for the community's gate to get back in. For days it was wake up, fix bed, bathroom, open computer, cook/eat, wash dishes, computer, cook/eat/dishes, throw trash out, and bathroom breaks in between. The first time I tried watching TV I just got sore, teary eyes. I wasn't used to watching TV for long hours since I started school. The radio was okay to tune into until it wasn't anymore. Oh, and the telephone rang all the time. Fun. My cellphone ran out of battery and the parentals brought my charger home since they thought it was their charger. This whole thing felt like being dumped in the Wonderland, but a silent and solitary type of Wonderland.

If I sound like I'm complaining, I'm not. Honestly, I'm more amused than any other emotion. I was reminded of being a high school student and alone in a house in a middle of a farm with a lone wooden bridge connecting it to the town that was in the middle of other small towns up north continents away from where I am now. I had no internet, no functioning computer, no telephone, barely a flicker of a cellphone signal, and barely a signal from the TV's satellite dish. I called it the Land of Nothingness. And it was fun. I could be alone with my books with no one to bother me whether I did the dishes or cooked a full meal.

I survived that and I'm surviving this because I find it fun to figure out ways to be resourceful, and in getting lost when I take walks, and figuring out how much weight I can carry when I walk back from the grocery store, and enjoying how much better cook I am, and how much obsessive I can be when I clean, and how vigilant I can be against spiders (HATE THEM), and ants (Admire them from outside the house), and just learning how to be okay with just being with myself again. I'm finding that I've grown so much more compared to when I was a high schooler, and that makes me smile. I hope five years from now, I can look back and still smile at the fact that I've grown wiser and better than when I was twenty-one.

Even as I say these words, I give you this promise.

I'm hardly the type of person who plans what to write. I just type or jot down and I don't stop until the words run out. I used to have just notebooks or pieces of paper scribbled with words, and phrases, or paragraphs, and poems. I love words. I think words can have so much impact and they don't often cost a dime (unless of course you go to the theatre, then you pay to see people spouting off words). People make their living off words; journalists, write stark or sensational news; authors, use words to draw us into their worlds; poets, are all a-rhyming; and so many various others, like screenwriters, ghostwriters, and the kind that writes the small print for the credit card companies and the banks, that I'm almost tempted to say, 'Yes, there is an App for that'.

I write on this blog stuff that mostly only make sense to me. Because I like writing for myself. I used to write letters and letters to my friends back in high school. All silly and ridiculous and serious the lot of them. I think words are lovely because they can be loverly, intimate; like they can curl up beside you and stay there for days, decades, and you would be able to still savor them even when they're just imprints on your shoulders. And then there're the kind that make you squirm, flinch away, because they sting even when the echoes are only heard from the depths of your soul. Because words are also unsafe. But there's so many kinds of words. Words of wisdom, words of anger, words of inquiry, words of passion, and words of doubt. Words and words of words.

I especially love the kind that leave you speechless. The kind that makes you pause, and just be there for you to really feel them. The words that touch you, the kind you can't unhear, whether they be right or wrong. Words that are like a balm that soothes. A lullaby that assures. Words that comfort when you need them.

I know she's bone tired; she hasn't been sleeping well. I hear him in the kitchen, making her coffee, tapping off the teaspoon. The weariness is in her voice when she asks quietly, "What would happen to me when you're no longer with me?" I hear him shift, his footfall loud on tiles as he walks to her. "Then I'll come back. I'll come back to you, my love".

Yes. He will. A reason why I love words is the emotions behind them as they are said. Even when you say the wrong ones, you redeem yourself as quickly as you say the right ones. Words of promise, of hope; I think they're the best kinds. Because they're the kinds you share with another, despite and because of how they shift lives. The kind of words that are looked forward to. The kind that means no more words need to be said. I long to say them. Out loud, and not just write them. But I'm saving the best for last, like the closing to a letter.

Sincerely,
Katrina

It's not only Alice who wishes for things to make sense

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with the golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
by William Butler Yeats, He Wishes for Cloths of Heaven

So far, all I do have are dreams, resumes, job applications that I have not heard back from, three more semesters to finish nursing school, all those years in between to build up me resume, volunteer work at school, at church, and at the hospital, and nightmares that appear to hold the majority of my common sense.

Don't you just hate it when your nightmares rise up against you and let you see the truth in it's bare form? I had one recently about how I was also a graduate and was in a job interview with the hospital that had given me my scholarship. The panel was asking me why they should hire me when my resume had nothing on it, and I could only stammer a feeble defense that they've already given me their money, that they've invested on me, so why shouldn't they just hire me. Ah, how I love how my brain interacts with the world. So I woke up with a deep inhale but still the fear remained and I carry it with me.

The world judges peoples by their resume, or their lack of one. And as I do not have the proof that I am qualified nor that I actually have these skills, I am not going to be hired. Such is life. I have this fear that I am lacking even as my loved ones assure me that I am more than enough as I am. And yet, again I look at the world as it looks at my non-existent job experience and I tremble. I have this fear that I will forever be at the mercy of my parents' estate. And I fear that one day they will look at me say, "Enough". I have this fear that I will never be able to reciprocate, never. And I have this fear that I will wake up alone in the world with no hope in the world. All because the world won't give me a chance when I have no former employer to back me up.

My mother despairs of me; "You have all these potential, your desire to work is there, but it's wasted". My high school professor once told me, "Kulang ka sa galit" (You lack anger). And I believe them. Everyone needs passion to live. A life without passion is not one I would call a life. I would say that you are going through the motions of life. I want a life of no regrets. But life forces us to grow up where the grown ups get to say what being a grown up is all about; owning your own home, your own car, your own spouse and kids, your own job, and your own debts. Sometimes I don't look forward to growing up and retiring when I'm sixty-five. It's a jumble of nightmares and daydreams for me, life and growing up.

For now, I'll be sending applications no matter if you're not hiring. I won't lose anything any way. But I'm hoping to gain a job. And hopefully by the time I graduate, three semesters from now, I won't be stammering any feeble answers to the panel, I won't be featured in a horrifying job interview nightmare, and my brain will keep the remaining sanity I have left intact. At least, there aren't any mad hatters or hookah-smoking caterpillars yet.

I think I'm ready now

Warning: This long post is long. If you want a summarized version, skip to the last paragraph down there☟. You have been warned.
April, where hast thou gone? Suddenly, it's May. I believe this is a déjà vu, haven't I written similar phrases previously? I think I've forgotten the last time I've written, the last time I just sat down and felt how my bones ached, the last time I exhaled and breathed in relief, but I remember how I've thought that time keeps flying by me.

In between the months of March and May was April; and she was a tempest. She found me and pressed me down, stared as I shook and cried on my knees. She grabbed my hair and through it all she saw all of me. It's not an easy lesson to learn; humility. It seeks you out and forces all of your being to stay and still, as it teaches you to soften the haughty angle of your nose and push down the tilt of your jaw, even as she gentles the way you grit your teeth.

I remember one Tuesday afternoon, I found myself horrified just standing there in front of my professor as I realized that I was breaking down. I could feel the tears stinging behind my eyes, even as I tried to reassure her and myself that I am fine, I am okay, No, thank you I don't need to talk. My eyes were round and bright I bet with the tears that were threatening to fall so I escaped with a hurried I'll see you next week. My hands were reaching up to my eyes to wipe and wipe and press down any more tears as I quickly rushed to the lobby and out the door. You're crying in public, how quaint.

A few minutes earlier from my bout of hysteria, was me failing a proficiency test by a point 2 percent. Six hours earlier was me receiving a test score of 79, the lowest test score I've had since grade school? When I was rebelling against the unfairness of my private school? I didn't fail that test but I've never gotten a test grade like that in Nursing school until now. I don't know if you can imagine how flummoxed I was about this. A classmate of mine got a 74 and said, "Oh, I missed passing by two points. Eh, it's not like I care". Two different people, two different reactions on the same test. Another who got 78, said, "Aww, I'm glad I passed". At this, my brain goes, there is something wrong with me.

And then I failed my proficiency test, so my brain goes, What just? I don't... What? I failed something and I... I need to fix this. I don't know how. So of course, I get to the parking lot just wanting to go home and kill myself figuratively and literally partially. But I had to face three people who passed the test with no dice in the parking lot so there's me trying to not just burst in undignified tears of defeat while attempting to be self-deprecating. I guess I managed that one okay since I get into my car with no more fussing, and I drove home crying and shouting and squeezing five dollars to a homeless lady's hand during a stop signal.

April sucked so much. It sucked. Because I broke down in public no less, because I'm never half-hearted even in falling down and crashing, and because I wanted to make all these excuses why I spectacularly failed; like how my mom has cancer and it's the awful-est thing ever, or how our class is the hardest and other people are having a hard time too, or how I have sacrificed my life and all that's in it so shouldn't that be enough? I wish I could blame these reasons and say Aha, you are the culprit, but no, sometimes God just wants me to tank multiple tests, break down in public, and cry myself in the freeway, to teach me lessons. Lessons like humility, that high scores come from God, not my brain or my awesomeness; like there's no such thing as perfection as we remain human, because God doesn't want perfection from me, that's not how He wants His glory. He wants effort and faith, and a readiness to serve and do, a heart that just wants to be what God wants it to be, and a spirit that is ready to grow.

The greatest lesson I learned as I cried in my car and paused as I watched a homeless lady walk back and forth the island is that no matter what age you are and no matter where you are in life, you need God. My needs may be small compared to the needs of the lady homeless on the streets but we both need a God that is bigger than both our needs. I cried for three hours more as I sat in the living room with my mom and my dad at home. I told them how stupid I felt, how hollow and unhappy I felt, how alone and bitter I felt about my life, nursing school, and the stuff in between. I've always handled things on my own until I couldn't anymore and they were there to sit with me and listen, and point out things I've only started to see in myself, and tell me that I'm not stupid, and I can change the things I feel unhappy and bitter about so I can be fulfilled and happy.

If I could only thank God for two things, it would be my parents, and my family. They were there with me as I picked at my old wounds and dug through layers and layers of my baggage. It wasn't easy to admit that I had bound myself up so that I was only to be perfect and happy in solitude; that I had imprisoned my imagination and my will so that I could be more like something I thought was what I should be. It hurt to be unraveled and broken, to spew out things that hurt and are hurtful, to find out how wrong I have been all these years, and how tightly bound and tethered I was by me. There is a relief in the peace that I am being re-molded and that I am safe in His hands. I think that even when April sucked, it didn't turn out all bad since hey, I get another year in life and I finished level two of nursing. Three more to go, an NCLEX, and a job interview, and I think I'll be okay. By God's grace. Amazingly, I don't think I'd trade this April for any other ones I've had.

I know, I know this is TL;DR (too long; didn't read), pardon me, I missed staying up late to just blog and read, and cruise the internet. The gist of my long narrative was the plight that was my April and how suck-y it was but I celebrated my twenty-first birthday with my loved ones and all is well, almost. That's it in a nutshell. Until next time, my lovelies, I hope you had a much more enjoyable April than I did. Or not, you can just be jealous of my super eventful and dramatic one! So, it's your turn to tell me how your April went? Or actually, the last four months that have gone by. : )