and thinking as such, I think it is safe to say that every now and again, nurses wake up one morning and ask themselves why in the hell they ever decided to do this job. It is thankless. It is, at times, backbreaking. It is confrontational. It is humbling. It is rewarding. It is unbearable. It is heartbreaking. It is encouraging. It is maddening.
When I first became a nurse, we still wore hats, all whites (including hose) and really and truly believed that Doctors were a god of sorts. Many young nurses I have come into contact with have been enamored by the “hat statement” … but then they never had one fall off into a bedpan. There aren’t enough bobbie pins in the world to keep a hat securely in place when you are bending over doing lord knows what to lord knows where. I was never so glad of anything as I was when hats became a thing of the past.
I don’t want to portray the opinion that I don’t like being a nurse. I do, for the most part, but I feel that I have reached a place that many nurses reach after many years of seeing things, even as they change, stay the same; burnout. I find that I have to work harder to really listen. I roll my eyes more, wish I were somewhere else more, hope that I win the lottery more. I think it is safe to say that I have all the signs. I have a wanderlust that eats away at me. I want to be so many other places than where I am. I know that I have the freedom to just get in my car and drive; it is the courage I lack.
I don’t want to carry the responsibility. I don’t want to bring people home with me in my mind and think about their well-being in the middle of the night. I want to be selfish and self-centered and think of no one but myself. I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it. The problem lies in the fact that I’m not wired that way. I don’t really know how to say “you have no importance to me”. I can’t, in a million years, imagine telling someone that they don’t matter; even people I don’t especially like.
I give it everything I have. I don’t believe in doing something halfway. It’s just not what I wanted to be when I grew up.
