nah-nee

[nah-nee]

Sunday Grind

I am currently blogging in Jacob’s suite as I am still wearing my scrubs from today’s shift. It’s been a pretty Sunday; Jacob and Michael are sitting on the couch watching the Browns lose (surprise surprise) to the Ravens, while I’m sitting at the kitchen island finishing up the last of the work I had to finish today. 

I was at first dreading my day shift this morning-- a combination of having already had to wake up early yesterday morning for practice, and just not having to work in a while-- but it actually was a pretty mellow shift. Everyone in my shift was a self to a barely x1 assistance, and even better, everyone in shift was continent. I never thought I’d see the day where I went through a shift in which no one in my assignment shit or pissed themselves, which is an actual miracle haha. I even received a compliment today from my patient’s wife that my patient told her that I was the nicest nursing assistant he’s had, and it was only my first and only day to see him. She also told me that back when she was pregnant, if she gave birth to a girl she was going to name her Nina. I always like little things like that. 

Other than that, the past two days have been kind of tense and dumb as fuck in terms of the tennis team. The seniors are currently having drama with Kat right now, and it’s one of those times where we’re like “We’re way too old to have this petty drama right now.” Basically she’s just been feeling left out and thinks that we’re doing this to her on purpose, but really it was all miscommunication in our team group message. Basically, we were trying to tell her where we were at for dinner, but we assumed in the group message that she knew the restaurant already, so we only told her where we were physically in the restaurant. She then took that the wrong way and thought we were excluding her from the team dinner. So, yeah. And then there was the time before that when she got mad at me because she thought I snitched on her for not doing the workouts that we’re assigned to do by tomorrow even thought 1.) I didn’t, Nithya did, and 2.) She deserves to get yelled at by our coach for not doing the workouts because she’s been not doing them for weeks. But that’s a different story. I was both frustrated and angry, yet still anxious and a little bit guilty for unintentionally hurting her feelings. In the end, it did kind of fuck with me for the past couple of days; it made me very antsy 

But then I don’t know, the other thing is that, and not to turn this into one of those overly emotional and sentimental posts (yuck), but there was something very humbling being around my patients today. I floated today to the Bone Marrow Transplant unit, which specializes in chemotherapy for cancer patients and, you know, bone marrow transplants. So, definitely not the happiest of units. And yet, all of the patients I met were so inspiring. They were some of the most optimistic patients I have met. And I mean, I’ve had patients who were very whiney and milking little, tedious things like back pain or swelling hands. But these people were troopers; they never asked me for help unless they really needed it, they were very determined to be able to do things by themselves, they told funny jokes and kept things light. They were really patient with me and told me to “take my time” or to come in “when I had the chance” and were very understanding of my workflow. Two stories struck me in particular. 

One was this very kind, laid back man in his 60s. His wife was with him and was very sweet and was constantly concerned the whole day that he couldn’t get warm. While I was changing his bed, I told him how sweet his wife was. His eyes kind of twinkled and he said, “Oh yeah, I got a good one. We’ve been married for 35 years.” I asked him more about their marriage and he was telling me how they actually got married during a solar eclipse. Of course, this compelled me to bring up the solar eclipse this past summer. His response: 

“Oh yeah, on that day, we celebrated and kind of decided to take this last minute road trip down to North Carolina, you know, to see a total solar eclipse. We stayed at the base of the Smokey Mountains, and we watched the eclipse in this really flat field that was open to the public; there were probably like 500-700 cars, and buses filled with students from universities. Let me tell you, it was amazing. You gotta see it for yourself sometime. It got so dark I remember the crickets came out because they thought it was night time. And this was all right before I came in here. We wanted to do that because we knew that once I came here, it was serious, and it was real. You know, because sometimes life just deals you these kinds of cards, and you just have to be optimistic and enjoy life.” 

The other conversation was with that patient’s wife. The one I mentioned earlier who almost named her child Nina. We were talking while my patient was taking a shower. We were talking about what it takes to get well again, and I brought up how despite how hard the treatment seems, they seem like a very optimistic couples. She said, 

“Yeah, we have two kids, so it’s them who kind of keep us going to be like this. One is 5, and the other is 9. My husband back when he went through the treatment, he would always walk what seemed like a mile around the unit. The nurses would call him ‘The Walking Man.’ He says he would do that because he thought that that was the one thing he had control over, and wanted to make the most of it.” 

I wanted to internalize these conversations because it kind of reminded me that there are way bigger things that people have gone and are currently going through, and that we don’t have the time to worry, or be petty, or hurt each other, or let little things get the best of us. And it made me wanna be more optimistic and persistent as they are. 

Anyway, that’s my post of the day. It’s been a busy, yet very, very satisfying Sunday. 

[nah-nee]

Tuesday Slump

Well, I’ve been hiding out in the back meeting room with Allison for the past almost two hours of my Capstone site. I guess shit went down last week, so everyone here is kind of in a grumpy mood. Also, the clinic nurse manager is back after breaking her ankle, and she’s kind of terrifying. So naturally, Allison and I decided to kind of dick around back here and do nothing. 

I think these are the times when I kind of miss having lecture classes. As easy as this semester is going to be with my project, it is very, very boring, and the thing that makes it a little difficult is that we have to be adults and work very independently when we’re here. That means we set our own deadlines and goals, which means we could either fly or burn and crash on our own terms. So far though, it seems our faculty member who’s overseeing our project says we’re on a good track right now, and we think we’ve come up with a tentative issue to address. It’s just kind of hard because now that we’ve come up with our issue to address (compliance with the staff using the translator hotline-- it’s a long story) we have to start talking to the higher up people (administrative people, doctors, etc.) which is a tiny bit intimidating. Slowly but surely, though.  

[nah-nee]

Terryfolds

I have officially finished the first week of my last year of college. It feels very, very strange typing that out; I still forget that this is really my senior year. I think that was the theme of this whole past week. I felt like I was in this stage of disbelief that this was actually a thing, haha. That especially hit me during this first week of practice, like my body almost refused to move and compete this week during practice because I just felt like I could not get over the fact that tennis season has officially started. Even this week, we’re already leaving for our first invite from Thursday to Saturday, and now that I think of it I haven’t played a competitive match in months, so we’ll see how this goes haha. 

I’m not quite sure what I want to get out of this year, to be honest. I think it all depends on my drive towards how badly I want to do great this year, in school and in tennis. Right now my gut feelings is telling me to take it easy, and to just have a good time with my friends and all. So, we’ll see. 

[nah-nee]

Last Weekend of Summer

This week was deceptively busy, but I finished my last intensive before the school year! It was a little bit tough because at the end of the week, we had a quiz, a giant group presentation, and an essay all due within Friday and Saturday. And then on top of that, I had work this morning and still had to help Jacob move some things out of my summer apartment to his place. But I did it! And I can finally relax a little bit, and I’m about to end the night in a few hours by going over to Peyton’s to celebrate her 21st. 

I feel a little tired, but also a little thing I noticed this weekend that made me a little bit proud of myself was that I noticed that some of the skills I kind of developed over the summer carried on into this year. For example, this morning I killed my shift. I have just never felt so confident in my skills, and I was ahead of everything most of the time, and overall had an almost seamless shift without any hiccups. And then moving into my suite for the school year, I was more quick to think of little housekeeping things that I’ll need. It’s a really good feeling, feeling like I matured just a little bit more from the summer. 

Meanwhile, Jessie left to New York, and then is going to leave for Spain the other day. I know I tried to stay stoic about the situation this whole summer to try to calm her down whenever she freaked out about studying abroad, but honestly, it was really sad that that was gonna be the last moment I’d see her for a while. I hugged her twice, and told her if she ever wanted to FaceTime me, to not even hesitate. I really hope the best for her, I know she’ll do fine, and as scared as she is, Nit and I both agreed that this is good for her, and that it’ll teach her to be a more independent young woman who won’t always have to rely on people like Nit and I, especially for when we graduate. She’s learned a lot of lessons throughout the summer, and it’ll just keep going throughout this semester. 

And then secondly, I had this bullshit drunk conversation with Nick, it was very odd. On Wednesday, I was throwing a tiny going away party for Jessie at my suite, and we were playing Drunk Jenga (naturally) and Nick pulled the roast block (as the roast block naturally always stirs shit). Out of the five other people in the circle, he was only able to come up with one roast for me, and it was: 

“Hey Nina, I know you’re an athlete and all, and you don’t like putting garbage in your body... so why are you putting Jacob in your mouth?” 

I literally had no words to say back to that. And then later that night, we were both really drunk and just talking, and he just started going on this tangent about how he just thinks I’m too mature for Jacob, and that Jacob just acts like a child. I tell him that I really want Jacob to be the one, and I think he is, and he goes, “I’ve asked out about a total of 14 girls, and Jackie was the only one that kind of worked out. I really wanted that to work out, with all I had, and it just didn’t, and I think you just have to realize that that’s just the case somehow. And honestly ever since I moved on, I’ve been a lot happier.” And then it got really, really weird when he starts talking about how he had a dream that he was cuddling with a girl with curly, brown hair. That was kind of uncomfortable. The next day he texted me and said, “Hey I’m sorry about last night, I’m not telling you to break up with Jacob I was just fishing around to see how you really felt.” And it just made me so angry, because 1.) He has no right to overstep himself into making judgements in my relationship and 2.) He cannot possibly think that I was in any state of mind to have a conversation with him like that that was filled with so many loaded questions. It was unfair. 

And really, things between Jacob and I have been amazing. I think after those fights we had last weekend, we both actually learned a lot from it, and I could tell that our relationship has improved a lot ever since. He’s been a lot more open to telling me things that are on his mind, and a lot more keen for us to have long conversations about it, while I have been a lot more self-aware of his feelings, and working with him through things. 

It’s been a very interesting week with ups and downs, but overall, I think I got through all of it, and I’m just ready to take on my last week of college. 

[nah-nee]

2 am

So Nick and I just showed up to our intensive 30 minutes late, which is kind of embarrassing considering I showed up to class this morning 20 minutes early, then heard that we were supposed to come in later. I misinterpreted that we were supposed to come in at 9:50 so I slept in until about 9:20, but then I got a text from Pearl saying that class started at 8:50, so Nick and I booked it and here we are. 

I’m very tired and sleep deprived right now due to staying up over the weekend until 5 am for Nithya’s birthday, and then waking up at 8:30 am, and then the past two nights I’ve stayed up until 2 am. 

This past week has been very draining on me, emotionally and mentally, so much as gone on the past couple of days, that I’m sure I could go on and on in this post. To start off, over the weekend I got into my first big fight with Jacob in a while. I was having another strange, anxiety-stricken, totally illogical pregnancy scare, and I was telling him about it, and it made him upset at me. I tried to explain to him the pressure from my parents and my upbringing of my perceptions of sex and how it clashes so much with how I was raised, but he wasn’t listening. He said he understood how I’m like this, but then he was saying how he thinks I never understand how it makes him feel and how hard it is for him to have to cope with this all the time. I still don’t completely agree with him about this, and that hurt me a lot, but I agreed with him that I can’t always rely on him to be the voice of reason and comfort out of the two of us. He went on to talk about the bigger picture kind of things, about how he just wants me to be there for him. And that was when eventually, I made the choice to be abstinent for a month or so. I reasoned that maybe a reason why I get so paranoid about all of this is because maybe there’s still a small part of me that maybe isn’t ready for sex. This of course, may definitely not be the case, but at least it’ll be a good way to stop and reset a little bit. But regardless, by the end of the night I felt very heartbroken and hurt. I felt a little betrayed, because after that conversation, I just felt like I just gave up a part of my vulnerability I have towards him, and I just felt like I couldn’t talk to him about anything that was bothering anymore more, because he would just get frustrated and upset with me. I tried to reassure him that I’d get over it, but the next day I felt just as bad. I just felt very jaded about our relationship and I just thought that whole day, maybe this relationship isn’t that relationship. Maybe I should break up with him. I just didn’t feel like talking to him, I didn’t feel like seeing him, I didn’t want him to touch me, or kiss me, or anything-- it was bad. 

I eventually decided to text him, just because I’ve learned it’s not good to keep things bottled up. It wasn’t much, it was something small just to keep the ball rolling. Eventually I got we got into why I was upset. I told him we shouldn’t be like this, and that in a healthy relationship, people shouldn’t feel afraid to tell them each other everything. They shouldn’t be afraid to hurt the other person’ feelings, or afraid for that person getting frustrated with them, while the person listening should be open to listen to everything and to be fully supportive no matter what. I’m not sure if he actually took that seriously, and even as I’m typing this, I’m feeling that same feeling I felt Friday night, but I hope he does. 

I don’t know. We eventually made up, and we’re good now, but I feel like there’s still a part of me that hasn’t forgotten this past weekend. And especially after these past couple of days talking with everyone, it made me realize that there are things between Jacob and I that we need to resolve sometime down the road. They may not seem like a big deal now, but now I see that if these thing linger for too long, it will not be healthy for us. And even though I love him, I would have to break up with him. I think what it is is that our relationship just needs to mature a little bit more. At this point in our relationship, we need to get past pettiness, and fights, and bottling up emotions like high schoolers, and getting over ourselves.

And then that brings up yesterday. Jacob came over so we could go to the Feast of Assumption over at Little Italy, this Italian food festival and hang out with each other. We were having a really good time until Nick texted me saying that him, Matt, Chrismaly, and Pearl were all gonna meet up with me at my apartment at to hang out. And of course, that went terrible. The whole time, Jacob didn’t speak to anyone else except Chrismaly. Soon, after Chrismaly left, Matt, Nick, and Pearl were saying they were gonna go check out the feast and asked us to come, but I declined and said I’ll stick around in my apartment with Jacob for a little bit longer. Jacob didn’t tell me what was on my mind-- he said he couldn’t explain it and even if he could, I wouldn’t understand-- which did hurt a lot, especially because we just talked about telling each other everything over the weekend. But eventually I was able to lighten the mood and we were good before he went home. After he left, that’s when I met up outside of MOCA with Matt, Pearl, and Nick. 

Of course, they were talking about the whole Nick v. Jacob thing, and the whole conversation was honestly terrible. What I gathered from it, is that they’re worried about me because of the position that I’m in in this drama as the in-between between Nick and Jacob and the pressure and stress that’s put on me for that, and that they just don’t want me to become too “accommodating.” They think that it’s obvious that our little friend dynamic as a whole is on a decline, and unless something is done to fix it in any way, they’re afraid that down the road I’ll crack and I’ll feel like I’m gonna have to be forced to choose one over the other, which is something I can’t do and is unfair for me. So yeah, that’s fun. And just overall, I just didn’t like the indirect things they were implying about Jacob. I think the part that made me snap a little was when they were discussing that Jacob would need an incentive to change in this situation, and Nick and Matt were saying that he doesn’t have an incentive. That was when Nick said, “His only incentive would be to change for you because he cares about you and loves you. He knows how much this is affecting you but he hasn’t tried to change in this situation, so what does that say?” Thank god Pearl was there, because she was able to tell how pissed that made me, because after that she told him to back off and that he’s going too far. I guess he just has this very real fear of losing me as a friend, but still, there’s no reason for him to say things like that. In the end, we all got back to our apartments at 2 am, and I guess Pearl told me that I guess while they were walking back, Nick got all choked up and was like, “I don’t want to sound dramatic, but I’m really gonna miss her.” 

And then I finally got Jacob to talk about what his deal was. I guess what his thing is is that Nick to him like what Eli was to me, but what makes it hard is that some of his closest friends are still friends with Nick, so 1.) he knows that despite his feelings towards Nick, he’s still probably gonna be stuck seeing him a lot and 2.) it’s hard to see how we still think highly of Nick and think he’s great when he associates Nick with bad memories. He says it’s hard to stay on the sidelines now whenever we hang out as a group, but he doesn’t know how to get out of those sidelines while still maintaining his distance from Nick. Lastly, he feels like mostly all of his friends at this point have sided with Nick, except myself. 

So yeah, fuck everything. I felt better by the end of the night, but now that it’s a new day it’s all coming back to me and I just feel very tired and stressed. I told Jessie about some of this stuff and she was ike “Why can’t they just both change for the sake of you? Do they not care at all about how this is messing with you too?” And yeah, I wish it was that easy but it isn’t. 

[nah-nee]

Summer 2017

With my last shift ending last night, and classes officially starting tomorrow, I wanted to take some time today to just have a little Nina time. So today, I slept in until 11 am, decided to call off the workout for today, dressed up and put on makeup, and am currently blogging away and reflecting on my laptop. I’m getting dinner later today with Pearl at Barrio around 5:30 pm or so. Classes start tomorrow at 8:30 am. 

Tomorrow, I also pay off the last of my apartment debt, in which I’m paying back my dad the $366. Looking back at this summer, it has made me proud of myself for all the hard work I’ve done and the slight maturation I’ve gone through. It’s also made me appreciate the difficulties more of growing up, and how much I might actually wanna cling onto my youth for a little bit longer. I think I really enjoy having this total independence, and being in charge of my life, but I also dread the other things I never had a care for before, like being more self conscious about money, my newfound responsibilities and accountability with my job, and just acting more like an adult. It’s also made me appreciate being around the people who you sometimes neglect, because you don’t realize how much time you actually have with them. I’ve learned this from Lolo, and not even just him after he died, but also Miguel, Isabel, and Diego. It’s crazy to imagine still that when I come home for break and so, Miguel just... won’t be there anymore. When we said our goodbyes to him before he started the first day of the rest of his life, it made me wish a little bit that I stayed home for the summer just so I could have spent more time with him before he left. And from time to time, I still think back to the last moments I was with Lolo when he was alive and well. Isabel’s starting college this year too, and now it’ll just be Diego by himself at home. 

I’m starting to ramble a lot, but I guess what I’m trying to get at is that I learned that as I slowly move on to this next chapter of my life, as I keep striving for more and more, it’s nice to kind of stand still for a little bit and appreciate the things and the people I have around me at that moment. Don’t forget to love and care about those who are far away, but close to my heart. 

[nah-nee]

End of Summer Burnout

I think lately I’ve been getting mildly depressed? Or I guess that’s kind of a strong word, but the other day I actually woke up that morning with the strange thought that I never had before which was that for a split second I thought, “This is pointless” with this sense of dread of doing the same thing over and over again. 

I think I’ve kind of hit that wall where I feel very burnt out. Lately, I keep on making up excuses to cancel a shift, and having to constantly dissuade myself. All of my friends are busy or moving back home for the rest of the summer before classes start, and my classes start next Thursday. I’ve been dreading going to work. I’ve been feeling really tired during the day, yet unable to sleep at night. I’m at this point where I want classes to start just so that I have an excuse to not have to work. Fall tennis season feels like this upcoming wave that I don’t quite feel like I’ve found the nerve to get enthusiastic about. I’ve really gotten into the working out and getting fit, but in terms of competing and playing tennis, I’ve been losing touch of that as of late. 

So, yeah I don’t know. And thinking that the rest of my life is going to be like this for now, it’s a little daunting. 

[nah-nee]

Me Time

Jessie left for Alaska yesterday, and Namrata left a few minutes ago to go out on a Friday night-- something the weekend worker like myself is unable to do-- and so, I took some time early today to get ready for bed. I went through my whole skin routine, showered, brushed my teeth, got my stuff ready for work tomorrow, and made myself a cup of tea. With it only being a little bit past 9 pm, and with seemingly no distractions at the moment, I took it upon myself to have a little bit of time to myself to blog and reflect on some stuff. 

I thought today was a day well spent, because it was a good balance between work and leisure. The day before, Jacob actually visited me and we had a really, really good time, it was something I definitely was kind of looking forward to, although I didn’t want to be outright about it. We cuddled, made out, had sex, and then I took him to this arcade bar I wanted to take him to this whole summer, and then went back home where I cooked us dinner and watched the newest episode of Hero Academia. After that, we cuddled and made out more, and fooled around more, until he left around 11:45 pm. 

I really, really missed cuddling and kissing him. I always forget how nice it is, being pressed up against him like that. I think it’s because I hardly ever get to see him, or I’m always so busy with something that I haven’t been able to enjoy the little stuff like that lately. 

So anyway, today. I finally got my first full shift in since I got back in Cleveland this morning. Albeit, it was to be a sitter, but it was still eight hours. Nine hours actually, since the sitter who was supposed to take over for me was late by an hour. The case wasn’t too awful, it was your typical lady who was confused and kept trying to pull out her PICC line and foley. It probably would’ve been more of a nightmare if she didn’t also have her boyfriend or her brother there as double duty surveillance, especially when near the end, she started getting really agitated and kept swatting my hands away whenever I tried to grab her wrists to keep herself from scratching her PICC line out. Coming out of that shift, as you can imagine, combined with Jacob staying late, and having to sit in a confined room for nine hours straight to essentially fight with a woman, I was pretty exhausted. But I managed to drag myself to the gym straight after, and bust out a light workout, officially getting my usual three workouts of the week in, on top of the two days in a row I spent running. I’m hoping to continue the habit to run on the weekends, maybe after tomorrow’s day shift? 

After that, I got dinner at Chipotle with Nick, and it was actually a good time. I’ve come to realize that when I’m Nick and Matt together, they both kind of rub off of each other for the worst, and... not to sound bad, but they kind of act like assholes together. They just act very immature, and it’s something I’ve realized I’ve slowly become not a big fan of. So there’s that, although it was kind of a thought I’ve pushed to the back of my head. But anyway, with it just being Nick and I, we actually had really nice conversation. He asked me if he would still be invited to me and Jacob’s wedding, and how he would act at our wedding, and Matt’s wedding. We talked about him and Jackie, and how he can’t wait to date someone for real, and how the one thing that really psyches him out about getting into a relationship is to just have someone who’s there to just see if you’re okay, or to just check in out of the blue to ask how you are. We talked about how I deeply hope for Jacob to find more motivation and a way to fight his laziness, to find his own, individual drive and to do things for the sake of himself and not for others. We talked about our futures, and what we’re gonna do about nursing in our lives, and how successful our older brothers are. I don’t know, I just really liked it, because it’s one of those rare moments where I felt like I could talk to Nick being genuine and honest, Nick bullshit and antics aside. 

So now here I am in bed, listening to music and blogging. I’m waiting out a little bit until Jacob’s shift is finished so I can text him a little bit before I go to bed. But yeah, there’s my week. 

[nah-nee]

Back to the Grind

I’ve slowly been starting to assimilate back into exercising and eating decent. Miraculously, my day shifts today and yesterday weren’t completely cancelled, and I got to work half of both of them. As lazy as I was going to work, it was a good compromise to slowly ease myself back in, however I’ve never really been a big fan of four hour shifts. It’s nice that it’s really short, but that’s what makes them so hard; you come in, hitting the ground running, and you don’t really know your patients that well, or have the time to get to know them well enough to give a coherent report to the next CTA. 

Today was especially shitty, because today was my first time floating to this palliative care unit. The nurses gave me weird vibes, and the patients were especially special cases, stuff I haven’t really been exposed to. Like this one patient who was reported to act like a child, and later yelled and called me a “fucking bitch” for taking her vital signs. So yeah, good stuff.

So it was kind of a crappy morning to a better rest of the day. I worked out, and got a lot of schoolwork done, and then to top it all off, the evening ended amazingly when I discovered that I got a raise! It got increased from $12 an hour to $14 an hour. So that definitely turned everything around. 

Now I’m just chillin’ with Jessie and her friends, and a bottle of Zinfandel. It’s her last night before she leaves for Alaska, and Nit’s already at D.C, so the next week or so will be kind of empty in the apartment, and a lot of time to myself haha, so it’ll suck a little bit, but I guess that’s just them getting back at me for ditching them for the past ten days. It’s also crazy to think that classes start for me again in two weeks.