Two parts

We are over a week into the new year. I’ve been meaning to write since before 2022 officially began, but that’s ok.

I have two shifts left as a bedside nurse. It’s been almost 10 years since I had my first nursing job and if you count DMAT, I’ve worked in 6 different specialties. The week after next I will begin working from home for the first time! I had to resign from the federal DMAT team and that, combined with the the fact that next week I have to say goodbye to a bunch of really awesome nurses that I work with, has me all in my feels today.

So I’m allowing myself to feel my feelings. I’m taking a bubble bath, made an iced coffee, and turned on Cat Stevens.

Naturally, any big life change inspires reflection on previous ones. I’m thinking about how I’m 32 years old and rapidly approaching the age when I will be able to split my life in an exact half. 50/50. When I turn 36 I will be able to say that I am entering fresh new years that, when combined with all of the years after my 18th birthday, will then make up the “majority” of my life. That might be a weird lens to use to reflect on a life, but it makes sense to me so bear with me.

I bet there are many others who do this. I view my life as two completely separate lives. It’s the only way I can comprehend it because of how drastically different they are. Not just in the obvious sense in the difference in age and wisdom, but in the way that one was traumatizing and the other is the most beautiful story I could ever imagine.

Even though I view my life in two separate parts, I am truly grateful for both of them. The first part absolutely blows my mind in a way that I can’t fathom how I got through it. Yes, there were good parts, to which I clung onto tightly, but irreparable harm was done in those sweet, precious, fragile, forever gone years. But now I know true suffering. I know the feeling of complete and utter hopelessness. And that has allowed me to live each of these past 14 1/2 years without taking a single thing for granted. I am in complete awe of a life that some others might find quite plain.

I tell Heidi and Chris all the time, I would go back and do it all again in a heartbeat if it meant securing this future.