I ruminated on the year that had just passed by. It was,
like it is for everyone, the beginning and the end of so many things, but there
were more than the average notable occurrences. Most importantly, it was the
last year I would ever be single (at least I hope). Really, who goes into
marriage assuming that it’ll someday end? Not me. And not Sam, thankfully. We
met in February and intend on walking through this life together. As a part of
that, it was also the last year I would spend New Year’s Eve alone. It was the
last year that I would feel lost from my path; nursing school has begun and as
the culmination of four years of work, it feels like a big part of me that has
been waiting to bloom has finally started to. It was the first year I lived
without the fearsome pain of endometriosis, and had to live for 365 day the
reality of never having a period, ovarian cysts, terrifying bleeding,
suffocating pain, or the possibility (however slight) of giving birth to my own
offspring.
It’s an odd thing, accepting that bit. It’s easy to accept
something when you have the capability, and a little harder to swallow when it
has been forcefully taken from you…more so when you yourself is the one who did
the taking, to survive and thrive.
I realize I haven’t blogged in quite some time, and as I was
talking to my friend Kathleen today, I realized why that was. Simply, it’s Sam.
Blogging began as a way for me to expel my deepest self with force and words. I
was unable to do it in regular life, primarily because I was too busy, or often
because it was too much for me to reasonably expect my friends to listen to as
I processed my life and feelings. Life is not easy, and I am poor, but instead
of therapists or making my friends hate me, I turned to this venue. Writing it
made it true.
And now, honestly, I tell everything – EVERY SINGLE THING, that
poor bastard – to Sam. He is in every way the best thing to happen to me. Also,
the idea of spare time to write these days is a mirage, and I think that if I
am going to devote a certain time of day to writing, it needs to be creatively,
not just regurgitating the same things I’ve already verbally worked out with
Sam or another friend.
I’ve decided a few things though. 2015 will be a big year
that much is certain. Sam and I will be moving into our own place with a spare
bedroom for our loves who need a place to land for a while. We will be getting
married in May (the date isn’t known by many because we’re eloping and don’t
want to cause a fuss), I’ll be completing my B.S in Nursing at the end of the
year and beginning my preceptorship in anticipation of the NCLEX, and I’ve mentally
committed myself to volunteering in a nursing home, ideally with hospice
patients who don’t have their own family to sit with them.
I just watched a documentary called Serving Life, about inmates
volunteering in Angola penitentiary’s hospice program, and what the warden said
has stayed with me: it’s about taking care of each other in this life. I’ll dig
your grave, and someone else is going to dig mine.
I’ll hold your hand and dig that grave for you, because I am
capable of doing so, and not everyone is.
There was a lot more that happened in 2014. Mental health
advocacy for friends, cosigning on a car for a friend, refinancing my own,
getting different health insurance (saving me thousands every year – THANKS OBAMA!),
two knee surgeries, not missing a single day of nursing school despite those
surgeries and still managing a 3.8 GPA, loving not only my life-partner but his
family, road trips, tears, fears, and everything in between.
My best friend told me today that I am mellower these days.
That Sam has calmed me down. Truly, I think that I am now tempered…that the
fire of these last few years has done its job. I felt my blows. I hardened, and
sharpened, and am formed in the best shape so as to slice.
So as to slice.
