The shift was over, fifteen minutes too late as it usually is the case. I rushed thought the hallway and waved good night to the patients that were still awake. Some of them waiting for their sleeping pills, others waiting for the night medication because it's easier to stay awake than being disturbed in their sleep, others were just laying there, staring at the pale yellow walls, bored, alone, sick, full of uncertainty, in pain... The luckiest ones were already asleep despite the constant ringing of the alarms, the phones and the nurses running up and down the corridor.
I walked the silent solitary halls to the dressing room and rushed to take off my white scrubs so I could make that one phone call before it got too late. The phone call that lightens up my eyes and helps me sleep somehow. And so I stepped out of the hospital and felt the summer rain on my face.
Rain has a weird effect on me, it awakens thoughts and makes me look inside of me. It has been a long, long time since I last took the time to listen to my inner self. That made me wonder why. Why did I stop analyzing my thoughts and feelings? Why did I make such a big effort not to face my heart? Why was I afraid, terrified of finding out if I was sad? Or was I just afraid and terrified of finding out that I wasn't? What would that say about me?
One of the patients said today: "love is evil, it just sucks!" Maybe it is true, I had no time to sit and ask why he said so, I had no courage either because I agreed, in that moment I fully agreed. It wasn't until I walked out and took my phone that I realized that love has many sides. It can look evil when we think about ourselves, when we think about what love makes us leave behind, the sacrifices, the pain, the worries, the tears, the loneliness that eventually it makes us fell, the emptiness that kills us when a loved one is gone. Love can look evil sometimes but it is not! I thought that just as we do, love is both good and bad, happiness and sorrow.
I then thought about myself, my life, my present, my past.
I am now a registered nurse and have so much responsibility over my shoulders. I've fought and cried and made sacrifices and struggled and I made it! It makes me happy, but not all in life goes the way school does... That's the beauty of school, that's why I felt a certain peace and comfort while in school, school is easy, it's predictable. You study, you pass. You have boring, tedious and useless classes but you know when they will be over, you can write it down on your calendar, and when they are over, they are over for good! You give time and effort, you read, you write, you go to classes, you pay attention: you get a reward! You know what the reward will be! no surprises there, you pass! you get your degree, you finish...
Life is a whole other story... In life you have boring, tedious times, they will eventually be over, or so we hope, but we never know when, we never know how. In life you learn your lessons, you fight, you make sacrifices, you try, you try, you try... you make your best, you give your best, you get up when you feel like staying in bed, you sometimes smile when you feel like crying, you push your feelings aside to be able to cope with the practical stuff, you deny yourself at times, you work hard, you live and you never know what your reward will be.
After ups and downs, good times, bad times, patience, fights... After having tried as much as I could and maybe even more, I lost the battle and got left on my own... I got left to begin a beginning I hadn't plan, I am on my own. I am not sad, and I am not mad. I don't feel defeated, I don't feel I've failed and for a moment I thought that I didn't feel at all.
We don't know what we will get in life, it is not always as easy as school is. We lose dear ones, we see people going away, we walk away from people, we get disappointed, we get hurt, we hurt and so on... And here I am this rainy summer night, alone in my home not being able to kiss my girls goodnight but over the phone. Here I am tonight writing in the loneliness of my new unfinished kitchen, unable to sleep and thinking how life is unpredictable. Life is a lot like love, I think... it can be evil at times, It can be evil when we think about ourselves, what we give, the sacrifices we make, what is left behind... but life is not evil, life it's just like us, it's good and bad, it's generous and stingy, is happy and sad, is worth it even when we don't know what we'll get.
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