the nurse is in
i am an ER nurse.
i don’t talk about it an awful lot here at blahyaya, and i started to think that was kind of strange, which prompted the thought for this post. because the fact that i am an ER nurse is pretty much my life off-line. i try not to be completely obnoxious about it, but it’s one of the great loves of my life.
i am a self-professed trauma junkie. the gorier, the better. i don’t wish tragedy on anyone in this world, but i’d be a damn liar if i said that i didn’t want to be there to help fix it when it happens.
sirens make my heart race, hearing radio-talk between law enforcement, medic units, and us is like a fine symphony. blood and needles make me tingle. abnormal EKG’s are the stuff of my dreams.
the strangest thing happens to me when i’m in work-mode. when the shit hits the fan, when everyone else starts running, this crazy, deep, almost supernatural calm comes over me. every sense i have hones in. my voice lowers, my hands steady. everything in those moments makes sense.
i’ve not had a personal life history that has had an awful lot of that calm. i was an incredibly fearful child and teen, that grew into a young woman with one hell of an anxiety disorder. impending doom became an integral part of my life and psyche.
when i fell into emergency medicine, it was coming home. i had a place for all the trauma in and outside of my head, my heart. and for most of it, i had the healing power. it became evident quickly that i had the gift for it. i don’t believe that would be true if i hadn’t lived through my life, experienced my experiences, developed my own personal neuroses.
i am able to provide something for people in the midst of a tragedy…i’ve been there. in many ways. i have been there. i know that sometimes, your worst nightmare…it comes true. it comes true and you have to keep going anyway. i’ve walked through that fire. and it makes my entire life to be able to reach out a hand from my own flames, to help lift someone else out of theirs.
doing this for a living, i have so much gratitude for it. for how it has healed me. i have so much respect for it. for what it teaches me. i have so much love for it. for what it has made me.
i’m alisha, i’ll be your nurse tonight. tell me what’s going on…
This is fascinating, Alisha. I can relate, at the psychological level, of being interested to help with the dark places that have been familiar to me, and to help people out of those places by being willing to in with them. This also made me think of the process of healing anxiety through confronting it, having crafted natural exposure therapy for yourself and turning anxiety into healing for others seems in some way the essence of transforming pain.
Still, I find myself increasingly thinking about prevention as the optimal wellness strategy—and thus the healing of our own traumas so that we do not pass them along, in a self-perpetuating cycle, to our children.
thank you for such a well-thought comment, truly. it’s a very refreshing point of view.
i couldn’t agree more with prevention as wellness. that opens up a whole new area of thought for me, regarding my own anxiety, what could be passed through to my children and how i could utilize my personal experience for them. i will be thinking on this comment for a while.
i’m so glad you came by!
OMG! What an amazing post, to take the things that frightened you the most and turn it into this wonderful career that you’re passionate about, that sustains you. Wow. I am full of admiration. What a story of strength and championing the exact things that could have defeated you.
And congratulations on doing something that fills you up. I tell my daughters constantly that one of the most important things you can do for yourself in this life, is to find your passions and create a life around those passions. There would be a lot more happy people in the world, if we all did this.
And the name of your blog? LOVE IT!
Thank you so much for your kind words over at Just Be Enough. I appreciated them greatly.
thank you!!! that’s a very important thing to pass on to your daughters, and you are so correct…when you are living your passions, it fulfills you in a way that nothing else can.
i’m so glad you found your way over here, thanks for finding me!
What you have is a true gift! I do like to help people at a psychological level, but I have trouble with the really deep stuff because I have such a tough time of detaching. I am too involved in others’ problems that I began to feel them for them, if that makes sense.
that makes total sense. i’m working with a young nurse right now that is having a really hard time with that. this is going to sound harsh, but to do what i do you have to have this big faith that you do what you can, what you’ve done is enough, and then let it go. of course, we all have “those cases”…the ones that haunt you. it’s tough, but i feel incredibly blessed to do this. thank you so much for reading and commenting!