Living Together

Last Tuesday we moved all the boxes that were mine, and merged them with the things that were James` in his apartment. Now it is our apartment

People or Delusions

I recently came into a piece of knowledge that shook my world gently and has left me pondering.

The piece of knowledge was this: two years into my three year first relationship, my partner went out with our friends on a night when I had to stay in to study for midterms, got drunk, and made out with another girl.

I've met this girl. She's nice enough, a little promiscuous but I don't find that a bad thing. It was his choice whether to make out with her or not.

No one told me. These were my friends, my lover and not a single person thought I should know. Receiving this knowledge was like I was standing in the room at touch the universe in the basement of the Museum of Man and Nature and shifted ever so slightly to the side so that the kaleidoscope of reflections changed colours and showed me something new, something I had not noticed before.

It certainly changes my feelings on when him and I were over, and I did the same. I told him. I let him know immediately, and it destroyed the frail bonds of our love, and beat relentlessly on our strong friendship.

I was poring over this situation to Jenwa and Lexy, when Lexy said something terribly profound: "Do you think we date people, or just delusions". It has stuck in my head. Since this new knowledge, my former partner has come into a new focus. I saw him before, I truly did. But now I see other things. I see what others have seen when they described him to me. Emotionally, sexually, mentally: things began to lose their elusive quality from that time, and finally make sense in a way they never had before.

Does any of this amount to anything? Not really. We stayed together another year and some after that indiscretion of his. We had fun times and bad times and I loved him and enjoyed myself. Had I known, I absolutely would have left him.

There is no purpose in being angry about the past. But it certainly makes me re-examine the present.

We see what we want to see in our partners. Couples seem to mold together, in perfect harmony, when really it is the illusions that fit so well.

I crave reality. I want to know my partner: perversions, thoughts, actions and all.

Is that too much to ask...am I being naive again, only in a reinvented sense?

I would like to give assurances that I know my current partner inside out. But I don`t. I hope to learn what I can. As in any situation

Almighty dollar?

It is amazing to me how much revolves around the concept of money.

A few years ago I made the observation that every adolescent at some point makes: money equates to freedom.

As years passed, I found myself in little desire of money, and the evil sway I was convinced it had over people. I was certain that even with little money people could be happy.

Even still I know that if EVERYONE had less money, just enough to get by and have a little on the side perhaps, then a greater number of the population would be happy. Throw a little papal cooperation in there while we're being idealist, and you have better population control with contraceptives.

But this my dears is the theory of communism, one theory that sounds wonderful on paper, but has not yet worked well in practice. Either someone gets power hungry, keeping the excess for themselves and their select circle of family and friends (as in Russia) OR the people realize that not working at all gets them the same exact amount of money as working six days a week,(as in Cuba) so there is no reason to toil away at a job you don't like. There is also no incentive to go to school beyond actually wanting to learn. And if you strip away the promise of financial benefit in our Western society, I believe you would find that many of our population would no longer have the desire to attend universities or trade colleges.

Some would. I'm the type to go to all the classes I can and learn as much as I can from people who already have that knowledge. I'm also the type to in turn pass along knowledge I have obtained.

Anyway, over time I struggled somewhat with money: more so when I moved out on my own. I paid a lot of money for my independence. And then when I was finishing up school, and no one was calling me back right away for jobs, I had to rely on others for getting by. Finances really put a strain on James and I. I'm still uncertain if I would have been that stressed if it was just me. Probably.
For about two weeks all of our interactions were inlaid and sabotaged by this overwhelming stress of money.

Then after working at HSC for a month, I finally got paid. And all these little stresses melt away. We have food to eat, and I can slowly pay back my credit line. Its truly amazing how easily they left. Its also amazing how little money it took for that stress to leave. I'm writing this to remind myself not to get caught up in "stuff". Possessions are just things. Food and shelter and transportation come first.
I'm not going to hoard all of my money, not by a long shot. But I am going to try to be consciencious about it. After I pay back my credit line I'll either save up for a trip or a car. Probably a trip. But we'll see.

Little steps get you farther than giant leaps where you slip, fall and break your leg.

A stretch of nights

I survived my first three night shifts as a non-student. Even though people come and check on me, there is still a feeling of helplessness inherent in every moment that action happens and I fumble with a package of sutures or a stethoscope. This is in complete contrast to the moments where I have confidence that I am doing well: monitoring fetal tracings, reassuring the parents and later on, being the labour coach for mom.

There is an intense gravity to the first moments of a child's life. My first shift I stood dumbfounded as the baby, covered in vernix was first rubbed down on mom's stomach, then handed to me. There are at least twenty things that need to be done in those following five minutes (and I am not exaggerating for storytelling merit) and I was just standing there. If there wasn't a goofy smile on my face, it was engraved in my mind.

My goal this past week was to be able to keep my head in such a situation, to be able to accept the gravity and work with its flow to get the tasks complete. I find I talk a lot to the parents.

I have to be careful, because the docs are usually still waiting to deliver the placenta. I have to memorize the time of birth, apgar scores, delivery of placenta and if there's any tears. I am wearing gloves to handle baby, so writing things down at this point is usually not an option. If the docs need a hand, I'm the one to pass them supplies, to increase the oxytocin, to position mom. They are in a sterile field and cannot break it.

Everything happens so fast.

Before I know it, twenty minutes, half an hour has passed and they're leaving, and I'm feeling like shit for all the little things I screwed up. I still have what would take Grace or Crystal only twenty minutes to complete, and I'm probably going to take a full hour.

Next week they're going to let me handle a low risk delivery completely independently, without direction. I am terrified. The adrenaline keeps me going though, and the conviction that if I give this job time, I could be fantastic at it.

Saturday night shift was the worst. High risk side was really short on nurses so low risk side closed down and the labour nurses from there went to help. I'm currently orienting to the low risk side, so the switch to high risk was overwhelming. (On a side note I have been re-defining the word "overwhelming" the way a labouring mother re-defines "menstrual cramps")

I nearly had to deliver a baby because of how short we were. I was sitting there reassuring the mother who had already had at least five babies. I knew that if this woman sneezed, baby would be out. Everyone was busy, even the nurse I was shadowing. I was lucky that the doctor walked in on time, because in my shock I had not gotten anything ready. I felt like an idiot.

By the end of the night I was hiding out in a patient's room while she was sleeping, and this one nurse came in to see how I was doing. Angie did the nicest thing for me. She asked how I was liking the job, and when I started to cry, she took me into the next room and gave me a hug. She told me about when she started and how she did many stupid things, and would go home crying, not knowing if she would come back for the next shift.

She talked through some of the situations where I'd gotten stuck with me and validated my exhausted psyche. She took the time in a busy night to be the nurse's role of counselor to another nurse. I don't often break down and cry and was embarrassed, but she made me feel okay, and cracked jokes until I was smiling again. I'll never forget her, because she was right: I didn't know if I was going to come back the next night. But because of her encouragement I did.
All this from someone I had never met, and was on her last shift on this ward before starting her 9-5 position.

I got home at just after eight that morning, and cried and cried. James held me through all that, missing his bus for his sunday twelve hour shift. I didn't even have the energy to feel bad about that, though I should have.

The hardest part has been realizing that I worked so hard, spent so much money to get to this point, and I don't immediately like my job. It is stressful and upsetting and frustrating. When people ask, as they are bound to, whether I like my new job or not, I am probably going to lie, because a lie in this situation gets me to the next subject a lot faster. I know that with time, I will gain confidence, and I trust myself for making this choice.

I will enjoy what I'm doing in time. Not because I force myself to, but because the adrenaline will be much more positive when I do things right. And I will be terrific at this once I get the hang of it.

Sometimes, beginnings are painful.

Bus, Stop

I saw her on the bus yesterday. Hadn't thought of her in a couple weeks,
other than the boots that still sit at our doorstep, waiting patiently for their owner to pick them up, or for the day I take all my unused clothing in garbage bags to donate to the thrift store or to the kids foundation boxes.

She was sitting near the front, and I didn't realize it til I was almost past. She wasn't looking at me, but she knew I was there. We always know.

I was busy giving myself a pep talk before my second night shift of my non student career. I was reviewing how to emergently deliver a baby, and there she was, looking more like the girl I knew a few years ago than the one I fought with last summer.

I owe her an apology, but some days I feel that hers should come first. I don't want to spend my life apologizing to people for saying what I feel needs saying. Other days I know it would make no difference. Apology or not, our bonds were severed.

There is no lingering feeling of guilt when I consider the lack of drama that has accompanied her absence. I do wish I hadn't foreseen that.

There she was, on the bus, close enough to hold and I walked right past head held high. Where was she going? Work? Coffee? Party? None of my business.

I smiled at the man sitting next to me, and gave him the time when he asked. I tried not to notice the gravity of her presence, or my heart picking up its already quickened rate. I tried not to notice when she got off of the bus.

Thirteen hours, and a world of heightened emotions, fast paced births and adrenaline later, I got back home where a hug, and those boots were waiting for me.

Two more weeks til my trip to the thrift store.
They're still good boots, someone should get use out of them.

Pride and Prejudice

Every moment is both unique yet following a pattern of moments past. Like frost on a window.

This is my first stretch of real freedom from studying in over eighteen years. I'm that child kept in low light for a stretch of days and nights only to have the overhead light flicked on, which initiates the blinking. I'm blinking at the world with the same eyes that were looking before, but everything has a different quality.

I can commit to going to a show because not only do I have free time, but I have money that does not need to be saved and budgeted for the dark hours of midterms and finals. I spent all of yesterday sketching one idea, and guilt would start to settle in for procrastinating before I'd realize that there was nothing to put off.

~

I was reading Another Roadside Attraction during the lunch break of my RN exam, and I came across an interesting interaction between the characters, that relates to respect and authority.

People that are older demand respect, often for the simple fact that they ARE older and have gone through more life. That phrase right there has a lot incorrect about it already. You can go through more life in five years than twenty, and age is relative.

One of the key points that I have heard used in argument for respecting someone is that they fought in a war, or suffered through tough times. That we should appreciate said sacrifice. "I risked my life so that you could live in this free country". I'd like to pause right there for a second to explore that statement.

Being a member of any armed forces was often mandatory. When it wasn't mandatory, it was encouraged, glorified. Fathers were proud of their sons for fighting for their country, girls were attracted to men in uniform. Overall, the individuals were commended for their choice. One might even say it was the right thing to do.
When an overwhelming mass of people determine that something is "right" or "good", is it really that much of a risk to partake? Yes, your life is risked. But not the respect of your community, not the love of your peers or your own ideals and principles. You don't risk your soul.
People that die in battle for their country are revered. They "made the ultimate sacrifice" and are regarded as heroes, as martyrs and are expected to spend their afterlife in the glory of paradise.
I'm not arguing that risking one's life is easy. I'm arguing that there are more difficult and much more important qualities to risk.

To me, the people that go against the grain, even though they'd lose respect, trust or ideals are far more worthy of respect. Its easy to believe what the masses believe or to follow. It is difficult to speak against the norm, and initiate change despite a world of opposition.

This leads to why authority should not necessarily elicit respect, but should earn it. Authority helps create social mores. The ebb and flow of daily life and "common sense" are determined by a combination of authority and how little people are willing to create a fuss. Authority is only that because we allow them to be. Authority is nothing without followers. Authority rarely demands that we respect anything other than what authority provides.

Authority makes it difficult to have an opposing viewpoint. I'm not on that bandwagon of the authorities keeping us down. If we are down, it is because we allow ourselves to be. Respect should be earned, and should not be given easily to the first individuals who speak louder than the rest. Because volume does not equal quality. If that were the case, every bully in every playground would be made class president and make the other children afraid.

Within the book, Amanda is speaking with an FBI agent, and the agent is explaining why America is the greatest country in the world, always has been always will be, and Amanda points out that Tibet had been civilized for at least six millenia before America had ever been "discovered". He becomes very belligerent, and she offers him some custard, to avoid negative confrontation.

Pride drives our weaknesses. If we can humble ourselves enough to learn, enough to be open to other ideas we would become stronger. And respect would become a quiet affair associated more with wisdom than with fear.

Thoughts of Time and Space

I'd say I was beginning anew, but because of how I believe in time, that phrase would be as empty as a drum.

Everything exists at once. We experience time in a linear fashion, which is why it is so easy to get confused. Its easy to live now and only experience what is now. But there is a gravity to what is to come, and what has already been.

Every experience we have is valid and meaningful and necessary. If you are angry with someone once, it does not mean it was always so. It's something I was explaining to Andrea yesterday. Every good experience you have with a person is always with you, and is not tainted by what may have happened later on. Every good experience stays with you. In that moment, you were happy, loved and so forth. Following this thought, every bad experience stays with you. And is necessary.

I believe in free will but I also believe everything has already happened. We cannot foresee what will come because in order to live our lives by free will we need to live by our own wits. Often I wonder whether we choose to ignore what we could in fact foresee. For example, we do have conjecture, but often choose a path that we could logically conjecture leading to an undesirable situation. Is it because subconsciously we need that undesirable situation? Or do we too often let our "in the moment" attitudes drive our lives?

I ponder these things from time to time.

When I miss people I was close to once, I remind myself that it is not who they are now that I miss, but who they were then and it is who I was then that meshed so well with them. We are all on our own paths, and sometimes the ties that bound us are loosened. Never entirely let go as we always have memories and possibilities. But if I were to become close to someone again, it would be like meeting them anew.

Then there are people who have been in my life I regard as soul mates (not in the conventional sense of the word). I don't have a word adequate to describe them. They are people I feel that in any lifetime I would have met up with and loved. That we may have been in different roles in each lifetime and still had a profound effect on one another. We may have met up at different times in life, and may have experienced conflict several times. But we are at heart still bound to each other in one way or another.

I feel that the person I was as a child and youth was searching for the things that would lead me to where I am now. I wanted to have diverse interests even when I didn't. So I let curiosity lead my way. But I am not who I was and I will not be who I am now. But each of these incarnations will always exist. In my memory and in others.


In a few weeks I am officially moving in with James. This could be seen as something new. It'll definitely be a change in a way. My conjecture on this has been that it will be good, at least for the first while. Otherwise this would not have been our course of action.

I am very excited for this step, and nervous as well. This is my first time living with someone. It is not James' first time. But I don't resent that. They had wonderful times together and experienced many good things and bad things they needed, and I was experiencing what I needed to.

It is amazing to me how much I feel like myself. How well I know what I like and dislike, and how little of that is influenced by James or any of my close friends and family. I am very content, yet still thirsty for knowledge and experience. Even though my "self" is completely different than years gone by, I recognize and love everything about it. Its a wonderful feeling, and very hard to explain. It makes me feel giddy.

Learning to appreciate now while awaiting the future and immortalizing the past has been a difficult road. But I am content with how I do that now. When that changes, another inner journey will be called for.

Over-philosophically Kae today,
Cheers