Opportunities, Misfortunes, and The Makings Of

We live in an imperfect world, a world so imperfect that the society’s flaws seem customary. But I do not understand why this should be the case. We are imperfect but imperfection is not tantamount to hopelessness and helplessness. And even if it is, being hopeless and helpless don’t mean you have to continuously go with the flow and stick with the status quo. They say this is life and this is life as we know it. Wrong. Life is what we make of it. And your life is the product of the series of choices and turns you do each day.

Right now, I am a 23- year old Filipino Registered Nurse who graduated from nursing school and passed the local board examination on April and August of 2011 respectively. It has been 2 years and here I am still jobless. My being jobless and having no own means of income are burden, not just to me but to my parents and my family. I rely on a monthly allowance that is from the interest of the money being lent by my parents to the people that need it. It is more than enough 95% of the time but sometimes it is just a dime short for my needs. But I never go hungry and I occasionally buy stuff that makes me happy. Sometimes I get to save, sometimes I don’t. There are some opportunities that came, some I failed to answer or acknowledge, some I didn’t get, some I declined. I think I’ve always known what I want and more often than not, those opportunities do not present me with that. I am a little embarrassed to myself, to people, to my parents, that at this age I have not earned my own money since the short lived call center stint I had and left at for my nursing training. I am just lucky that my parents do not pressure me to get a job other than what I really want. A job that will make use of my hard earned degree and sought after profession.

Yesterday, I went to file my application at University of Santo Tomas Hospital, for what appears to be the third time, almost a year after I finished my Medical-Surgical Nurse Training Program there. I don’t know what happened and why it is taking so long for them to hire me. I am not the smartest nurse there is but I am not dumb rock to begin with, so to speak. My clinical preceptor even told me then that I am the best preceptee she had and that I am the first to ever get a line if 9 rating from her. I am quick on my feet. I make sure I know what I need to know and I know how to do what needs to be done. I hate not knowing and the answer ‘I don’t know’ is not acceptable to me. But human as I am, I do not know everything there is under the sun but I make sure I ask and I read and I learn on and about it because not knowing after being confronted with something you are supposed to know the second time is never acceptable. My being compassionate, hardworking, and conscientious make up for my not being a latin award honoree and for not knowing someone from the inside or from the system so I can get the job express. All these do not answer the question, why hasn’t USTH called me yet?

I have always wanted to become a nurse. Or maybe even a bit more than just a nurse. I wanted to become a doctor or a lawyer. My relatives and friends say I can do it and I will make a good doctor or lawyer. But my parents are already of age and my siblings and I wanted them to retire early so I didn’t push to overburden them with my academic needs more than what they can stress-free provide. Right now, I want to practice my profession. I want to care for people, to touch and even change lives. I want to make a difference in an indifferent world. I miss talking to people and caring for them and making them feel that they are well taken care of, that they are not alone. I miss the touch I give to convey that I do care and that to me they are not cases and patients but people that need all the help that they can get to get through all these that they have to get through. I miss the smell of antiseptics and bleach and even the pungent smell that hospitals reek of. I miss doing what matters. I miss doing what matters to me the most.

My license expires in 10 months and despite the three hospital training I had since, I have not fully used it. I know I chose to wait. I chose USTH over a much bigger and more recognized institution. And for the past year and a half, this is the cycle of choices I made and still making. I choose to wait.

Right now, I sit 8-9 hours a day in a classroom or computer laboratory 5 days a week in preparation for my foreign licensure. When I still can, I read and answer a minimum of 2 chapters a day and 150 questions a day. I am far from proving to NCBSN that I am a competent nurse, but I am not that far that I know before the year ends, I can call myself a USRN, too.

My life is imperfect, almost too imperfect that I ask myself everyday, ‘Why is this happening to me? or ‘Why do I seem to unfortunate that I have to wait this long?’ I feel helpless and sometimes even hopeless and I do seem to be just going along the waves and along the status quo. Most of my choices have broken me instead of making me before but this time around, my choice to wait and intensely cling to that goal and purpose is going to make me this time around. With that and with all the blessings I am getting, I am beyond thankful.

Back for Good, Hopefully

I’ve been an awful lot blogger for not being able to update and maintain this blog like I promised myself almost a year ago when I created it and being preoccupied with a hobby isn’t going to make up for that. But I am back to business or whatever. I’ve been running around with thoughts in my mind that needed to be broken down into some spectacle or clutter for a blog post for months.

And just to a wee, quick update, I have just started my official NCLEX-RN review last June 6 here in Manila. I know I have been reading and answering questions since I started applying last August 2012 but I figured that isn’t quite counted and valid preparation because I wasn’t serious about it and I didn’t prioritize it.

So yes, it’s 6:51 am of June 19^th today. My class is in 3 hours and I am just killing some time catching up with a few TV series to relax.

I promise to myself I will update, especially NCLEX-RN wise. I would like to hear stories from people preparing or applying for it. And maybe I can help. 

- N

Buhay Paddler

April 30, 2013

Blessed, honored, humbled, and empowered - just four of the things I feel 2 1/2 months after joining the Philippine Dragonboat Rowing Team (PDRT) Fireblades. No one (and I mean NO ONE) expected I can do this. Some people even said di na akobabalik, that I won't survive and just quit. But I didn't and I don't see it that way.

I've come from being a mere supporter on the sidelines, to a dead weight on the banca, to someone who endures and frisk away muscle soreness and pain, to a force to be reckoned with. Chos.

1 local race, 1 international race (where we bagged 1 Gold and 3 3rd runner up places) under my belt, and the Philippine National Games to champion next month, kaya square ang blade, twist, reach, power entry, quick pull, j-shape, bangon, taas recovery, baon, etc. pa. Keep calm and paddle (pero if you know me + as evidenced by this picture, hindi ka kaya maka-kalma)!

Love Beyond All Faults. Cry Behind Closed Doors. Fight Battles That No One Knows About.

Ah, it’s been a while blog. I think I owe a lot of stories by now. The last time I was here, I was a nursing a terrible heartbreak. And now that I am back, I still am nursing a big, fat heartbreak, which luckily and unluckily at the same time, is different from that of before.

“How was the first quarter of my 2013?”, I asked myself today.  Let’s see.

My sister and my niece visited the country after not seeing them for almost 3 years and I spent very little time with them because I was away from home for a training I was always hesitant of taking part in.  A few days before they left, I got sick, caught a flu, and didn't see a doctor to be checked until it is nearly Pneumonia. They left with a promise that my parents are due to follow them to the States soon. I still am not well despite the meds and had a TB scare because I lost weight, lost my appetite, and had blood in my phlegm which I eventually realized was due to a chicken bone I swallowed that nicked my throat. The doctor doesn’t know what to make out of what is happening to me. Flu then what? Pneumonia? No. Lungs are clear. Allergies? Maybe. Until he said it may be Tracheobronchitis. Practically, I drowned my liver and kidneys with antibiotics which don’t seem to work. Impractically, those medications are damn expensive and they didn’t work or they aren’t for me to begin with. Finally, I got better and gained all the weight I lost back. Color is back on my cheeks and so are the unnecessary and unwelcomed fats. I, too, joined a sport’s team – a dragonboat rowing team and if you know me at all, you’d just laugh at me and dubiously look me with equal questioning eyes. People from the team probably thought I won’t make it out there alive, that I will quit, but I am still in the team and on my way to my 2nd race.

Amidst all these, I was with the best hospital in the country and was about to be deployed in the area by April. Despite having other plans and another preferred hospital at that – even if this is the best hospital in the country – I did all my best. I aced every exam, every oral revalida, every recitation. I was in my A game. The once timid and mediocre girl in the corner is back on the tracks. I was then ‘highly recommended for hiring’, my preceptor’s own words. I was ridiculed by the nurse in the employee’s health clinic for being fat. The doctor had to send me back to my gynecologist for more series of tests because of my Polycystic Ovaries, which shouldn’t be a matter of concern because it is just not. They say I might bleed when the problem is I do not bleed regularly. They say they don’t want me taking my meds or anyone who is taking meds but what if that is what keeping them from any further harm? The doctor said I might have bigger and more cysts somewhere in my system when in fact, the TRS / UTZ is conclusive that I have less than 1 millimeter (YES, that minute things) cysts that my gyne characterized as dot-like. In the end, he didn’t give me clearance because I am on hormonal pills to help me with my PCOS and menstrual irregularity. He – a doctor – wanted me to stop taking my meds, the only thing which hinders more cysts from growing. He isn’t a gynecologist and he doesn’t have the say for me to do that. My gynecologist, who by the way, is affiliated in that same hospital, is furious. My family and friends cry foul – it is discrimination, they tell me, and I believe it is. After all, what does my ovaries got to do with my job? My ovaries won’t hold a dying patient’s hands. My ovaries won’t care for sick people. My ovaries sure as hell won’t talk to patients and  make them feel better. Should I stop taking my meds so I won't have any chance of bearing children in the future? So I just let it go. Not because I am letting myself get victimized by the fucked up system, not because I am a coward to change the system. You just know that things are not worth it when you see it eye to eye.

Do I have any regret or sense of waste as to what happened? No. Because my heart – and my caring hands, are with somewhere else. It always has been. So after a year of my training at another hospital, I had my papers followed up because that’s where I always wanted to be. That’s where I felt I am indeed a nurse and that I am appreciated as one. I checked with the Nursing Service Office and Human Resource Division only to be told that the reason that they have not contacted me for further evaluation is because I have not submitted my requirements in the first place. How is it possible when a month after my training, I submitted my complete requirements, on the first day when they already allowed us to do so, with the people who are now scheduled to start their jobs there as a Staff Nurses? A cousin of mine told me that we have an aunt who is working there. Do not get me wrong. I know I said before how I hate the backer system that this country is so sought at for. I told my parents about this and they confirmed that I, indeed, have an aunt who has been there for a long time now. We knew a lot of doctors from there but we didn’t sought help for me to be employed, not once. But I figured, she’s my aunt, I am more than deserving and qualified so I owe no fucking explanation to anybody. We then found that my application has been sleeping there at the bottom pile because no one’s giving a little push to it. I have always known that that is how it is here so it wouldn’t really hurt if I use my linkages, too. After all, I know to myself that I owe nobody a goddamn explanation and I fucking deserve this this time.

On that same day that we visited her and submitted a new set of application, our house helper called my mom, who was in the city for their check-up in the same hospital, and to fetch me, to say that our dog, Pretty, passed away. My niece couldn’t help but tell me the ill news right away even if my dad told her not to tell me until we got home (which I would have been mad about) and we are in the middle of a hospital where real human beings die every time. I didn’t even know she was sick. It doesn’t make any sense. It has been more than a month since I saw her – alive and well. As expected, I cried almost as instantaneously like how people just die one minute after you see them alive – and I felt that, I , too, have died. A big part of me has died. I cried and cried and the 4-5 hours of ride back home to the province has been the longest and most painful trip of my life. I loved – love – Pretty so much, almost to a fault. She is my constant companion, my pull, my one true bestfriend – which are all understatements if I have to be very honest. We arrived home to see her covered in her old spot. I asked for her not to be buried until we got home, breaking more than a dozen health and sanitation rules but I don’t give a crap, until I see her for one last time. She lay there, like her sleeping old self. She obviously lost a lot of weight, I’ve been told she has not eaten in 4 days, and I felt a pang of grief and pain that we may have neglected her and that no one is around until her last dying breath and worse, I didn’t see her and she didn’t see me through her wonderful, big doe eyes I have always grown too fond of. We are all there, family, Dad, Mom, my brother, Nicole, crying – bawling, speaking to her, thinking maybe she still can hear us. Even our other 3 dogs are in despair. Apologies and gratitude are said to this lovely furry creature we have been for 8 long years. She died young but I’d like to think she didn’t die with her life’s purpose unfulfilled. She changed us. She changed ME. She made me my best possible humble and compassionate self. She made me peaceful and warm and loving to every breathing being. She deserved a separate post than this, which by the way will take time because one cannot help but cry when one speaks of such wonderful living form that she is. To say that she is the best dog is truly an understatement. We are forever in debt of her goodness to our family and I face each day with both joy and pain – joy because she is in a happier place now and pain because I can no longer share that happiness with her. I miss her yesterday, today, and will always miss her tomorrow and for the many years and dog years to come.

In the middle of all these, my parents are due to leave in 5 days and only God knows how long we will have to see them again. Visas are not freely and easily given to people like me – a nurse, and an unemployed and inexperienced one at that. This, too, deserves a other post, in another time, because I don’t think I have an ounce of courage nor strength to break through my denial and sadness of being left behind with tons of responsibilities and independence I do not like. But I am a big girl now and one must continue living not just for oneself but for others – for Nicole, my brother, my family in the States, our dogs, and other many dogs out there who need saving.

Also, to make myself even more despondent, as if it is not enough to be this despondent for too long, I missed my job interview at the Philippine Institute of Development Studies. They e-mailed me last Monday for a scheduled interview the next day (I frankly didn't expect to be considered) and I read the email the next day after that. As much as I would like to regret and feel ashamed for not being able to check and be prepared for this, I chose not to. It isn’t living and sure it won’t be the death of me. At least, not today.

So...

5 days, mom and dad will fly to the States.

I am left with so much responsibilities and I will become a mother overnight because I need to care for my niece and our dogs and myself all at the same time.

I need to get into UST. I need to pass my exam. I may need to go to Law School. I need to lose weight. I need to learn how to be independent and how to not get victimized and absorbed into by this country’s dirty system. I need to see the light beyond the tunnel.

God save me.

x Nin

Personal Paradox

Hey X,

I feel unwanted today. Like a broken toy or an old piece of clothing. Dusty. Worn out. Torn. Out of place. Replaceable. I don’t know if it is normal to feel all these bad things at once. What I am sure of is that this is something I wouldn't want any person I love to feel.

I also feel helpless. No power. No means to actually create a fire, let alone spark a plug.

I feel numb and hurt both at the same time. I cannot explain why and I feel embarrassed even to myself to admit why.

I guess this is the price you have to pay when you are aloof, frigid, cold, and emotionally distant. When you push people away and far from you.

But sometimes, all I want is for them to pull me closer the harder I push them away. Sometimes, all I want is for them to need me back.

And yet again, I am selfish and I always ask for too much.

Not that you listen but thanks,

N

Of burgers and tears

Dear X,

I cannot talk about things like this to anyone that even my shrink tells me I am being illogical. So I am writing this down here just in case someone understands. I’m going to start calling you X from now on because I do not know and I couldn’t be sure who is reading this, whether someone does, so I’m going to start referring to you as the variable ‘X’.

My dad just brought me my favorite burger not over an hour ago. And my reaction was more of horror than thankful. I figured he had to leave work early today and I hope it is not because he finds a need to buy me a freaking burger. Thing is, he brought me this big burger which I am fond of eating before, which I never eat anymore. And that has to mean one thing after his question early this morning before we went for our usual run.

I am not sure what gave him the idea but he asked me if I slept in late last night. I can’t bring myself to look in the mirror to check if my eyes are puffy or red or both. If that’s what gave everything away. I didn't know I slept crying last night, like I didn't know that I do for the past months. I answered ‘no’ and he didn't give a fuss anymore.

I respect so much of my dad, more so for respecting my privacy and not asking too many questions that’s only going to make me tear up. The last thing I want to do is to cry in front of my parents. But I guess, my silence is worst than my crying itself. I do not know if my mom has told him of why I am like this (not that I said much), whatever I am like these days or for the past months. Why I find it necessary to go home whenever I can (because I cannot be left alone in my dorm room, because I will just start crying and bawling and shrinking into a ball and cry all over again). Why I push myself to run at least a mile a day or until my legs hurt. Why I do not eat or sleep or talk too much like I used to. Why I always ask for hugs. Why I cut my hair. Why I am not the same happy person that I once was.

I can only hope that they do not worry about me. Another thing I don’t want them to do is to worry about me, not when they are leaving in a few months.

Are dads always like this? Do they easily pick up what troubles their daughters? Do they sense that they are hurt or sad or feeling abandoned? Do they really feel something is wrong even if we do not speak of it?

Daddy, I know you are not ever going to read this but thank you. Thank you for all these. For not asking more than what I can answer, for keeping me on my feet, for always making me feel that I am worth it and that I am worthy of all the love in this world. I love you and I love that I will always be your girl.

I love you that much that I ate half of the burger even if I didn’t want to. I ate it even if it made me feel sick and that it was hard for me to stomach it. Partly, I ate it because I do not want you to worry and I do not like you thinking that something is wrong (even when there is truly something wrong).

I hope this is the first and last burger. Not only because I do not want to eat it, but also because I do not think the burger is going to help me get that space between my thighs. :)

Love you Dad,

Wanina

Of pain and getting inked

Hey you, if anyone’s out there, if anyone still stumbles into this blog I keep for my sanity, if anyone still bothers to read,

I want to get a tattoo. No, that’s not it. I will get a tattoo. Get myself inked. Not a henna. A real one, the type that uses those scary needles to beautifully scar your skin with a solid black color.

I have been thinking about this for a few months now. And I think, at the back of my mind I have always wanted one. And I know that people who know me personally would not approve should they find out. My parents would freak out. My dad mostly and seeing my tattoo might give him a coronary. As for my mom, I don’t know. I think she’ll hate me for a while but I don’t think there’s anything they can do since you can’t erase it (unless they’d rather see me with big keloid scars over where the tattoo used to lay). As for my friends, I guess they’d keep an open mind. As for my future lover who will see it one way or another, I can only hope that he won’t judge. After all, I feel empowered by getting one. I feel that my current state of pain and helplessness will be gone once and for all if I get through the pain of getting inked. Well, maybe, maybe not. I can only hope that he’d still see me for what and who I really am despite the thing marked on my skin.

So for ideas…

I want a tattoo on my wrist. Not yet sure of what. Not yet sure whether on the right one or left but that’s not what worries me. I am a nurse and people tend to really judge people with inks, let alone a nurse who has one on her wrist. So, um, I guess not.

I want an anchor tattoo. A simple anchor. This is more of a symbolism and I don’t think it is necessary to explain what an anchor symbolizes. This would look good on my lower back, left or right, I have yet to decide.

Or maybe a good phrase from a good book I have read. Or a song lyric. Not sure what exactly since most of my favorite quotes from a book or lyrics from a song are sentences long. And what worries me with this is what if I don’t believe in that saying anymore? Nevertheless, I think another option is getting one on my inner torso.

Birds. Birds. I can’t even begin to start to talk about how this is my best idea for a tattoo. Birds. Again, this is a symbolism. A bird flies and is free. And that is basically what I think I am – free. I am in awe of these beautiful bird tattoos on the back and since there aren't really rules that say you can’t copy someone’s tattoo, I think I’ll get this one.

I know I have to think and rethink about this more. I got time. I feel like getting one for my birthday or before my birthday. Or when my parents are no longer here in the country that they can’t chastise me for being so reckless, not that I think getting inked is reckless.

I haven’t even thought about the pain. I am not afraid of needles and I think I have a degree of tolerance to pain. I think getting pins of needles on your bare skin can mask whatever pain one has. But nevertheless, I can only hope that that future lover of mine won’t not only judge but kiss that tattoo of mine as he kisses all my pain goodbye, as I tell him my story. :)

x,

N