A Flicker of Light

You’d think depression would be easier the second time around, right? Like everything else. Practise makes perfect. Isn’t that what we continually tell ourselves? That if we try again, and again, just push ourselves that little bit harder, go that little bit further, then it will be easier the next time we are faced with the same challenge.

I think I found the exception. Depression doesn’t get any easier – not even if you have practise in handling it. It doesn’t matter how many strategies you think you learned the last time around. The struggle is still a heartbreaking one.

I sincerely thought I’d be better equipped to tackle depression if it ever dared to enter my life again. And maybe I am, but I don’t feel it. The eclipse of feeling nothing, the emptiness that swallow you whole, is still as devastating as it ever was. The not eating, the not sleeping, the not being able to get out of bed, the headaches, the nausea, the silent tears, the constant screaming inside your head. It is the same and yet so very different. Getting a depression a second time is like finding an old friend you really didn’t miss. It’s like relapsing into an old addiction. Because you do kind of get addicted to this … This thing that depression is. If nothing else in your life makes sense you can always take comfort in the nothingness depression brings. And that is a dangerous road to be traveling, and traveling alone. Because being depressed is to be alone. Nothing anyone on the outside can do, can fix it. Medication might help. professional help might make it a bit better. But rising from a depression is an inside job.

I have not ever been as appreciative of my fighter gene as I am when depression comes along and takes hold in my heart. I am not a quitter, never have been. I get it from my family. They lead by example. I can sit and moan about the hand i’ve been dealt or I can rise above. So I rise. It’s all I’ve ever known. I don’t know how to be anyone else. So what do I do on the days where it feels like my mind is trying to kill me? Let me tell you – this is my forever go to list.

1. Breathe. You are still here. You are still fighting. Breathe.
2. Forgive yourself. If all you manage to do today is breathe, then that is all you need to do. Nobody but you can demand anything more from you right now.
3. Go through the motions. If you can manage to get yourself out of bed, follow your rutine. Eat. Shower. Go to work. = Fake it ’till you make it.
4. Take the short cuts. If the bikeride is what makes you want to give up going to work, take the bus. If the thought of making lunch is too complicated to even consider, buy ready-to-eat food.
5. Be Honest. If you get to work/family gathering etc. and people ask what is wrong, why you aren’t smiling, why you are struggling, be honest. Admit that today is a bloody awful day. They can’t care for you if they don’t know you’re walking through hell.
6. Ask for help. Your family, friends and colleagues will help the way they can, if you swallow your pride and ask for help when you need it. This goes both towards the psychological elements but also all the practical things. Food, cleaning, laundry, less work load etc.
7. Take a time-out from the social media. You are drowning in your own life, you don’t need the constant reminders of all that you feel you can’t achieve. Log off facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Google+ etc. The world will be there again tomorrow.
8. Don’t believe everything you think. I know that on days like these you don’t feel like anyone loves you. That you are one big fat failure. But allow yourself to tell your mind to go fuck it self, because it is so wrong. You are loved. You are precious. You have made something of yourself. You have battled and won so many fights before this. You are more and better than your mind is trying to make you believe.
9. Remember all the good things that have happened today. Even in the most sucky days, there are parts that sucked a little less than the others. Focus on them. The comfort of your bed. The sun that shined. The extra cheese on the pizza. The binge watching of your favorite TV-show.
10. Try to make yourself feel something, in a non self-harm way – basically: Make yourself cry (Books, music, memories, TV-shows etc). You’ll feel better afterwards.
11. Go to bed. If all else fails, go to bed. Nothing good comes from overthinking on your worst days.

These are less general, but. Well. These are the little things that helps me get through my darkest of days.

• Sleep.
• Watch a Disney movie. Happy endings can do a little magic.
• Binge-watch your TV-shows; Supernatural, Sherlock, Criminal Minds etc.
• Read a book. Say fuck the world and hide between the lines of your favorite stories.
• Draw. Paint. – don’t think. just do.
• Hug your pillow.
• Order pizza.
• Call your mom – because, when you’re really sad, mom is usually the best thing in the world.

The fact is depression is hardcore. And it doesn’t get any easier regardless of how many times you’ve been around the block. But I am fighting this. And I will win.

For me, my job helps a lot. I am so fortunate to have a job I really love. And I work alongside some of the best people you will ever meet. I am better when I work, than I am when I’m home alone. My work gives me self-confidence and makes me feel stronger – both emotions usually lacking when the darkest of days hit home.

I am getting better. Slowly. But I am getting better.

The loss of my dear friend Stine is still raw and it still hurts. I still get this acute ache in my chest. I still get tears in my eyes. But the grief is getting a tiny bit easer to handle.

The other day, my boss told me: “The light in your eyes are beginning to come back to life. It’s really good to see”

Both myself and my surroundings are beginning to see the flicker of light, in the mist of all this darkness.

❤

Puzzle Pieces.

A dear, dear friend of mine passed away little over a week ago. She was 25 and died of leukemia. She was one of the most inspiring, life-loving people I’ve yet had the pleasure to meet. And I miss her with all my heart. I could write forever about what I feel about this, but im not going to. All the rest of the world needs to know, is that it lost someone precious when she passed.

This past fall my great-gran passed away at the age of 90. Before her, death had not truly been a presence in my life. Sure, I’d known people who had died and known a whole lot of people who had lost someone. But I’d never been there myself. I still have my entire family – I know, I am one lucky fucking bastard.

But then my great-gran passed away. And even though she was old, her loss is still following me around. She was a dear person to me. I loved her. But she was ready to go. She didn’t want to be here, when she wasn’t feeling well. And in the end, she really wasn’t. She got her peace.

I found myself at a new place though. I didn’t know how to deal with death. I thought I did. How many times over the last two years, as a Registered Nurse, have I stood there. Cared for the dying and their families. Comforted. Daring to be present in the hard times. Way to many times. But I couldn’t be anything or anyone but a scared little girl who was losing her great-granny. So I did what I do best. I ran. When she was in the hospital I would visit. Many times, for many hours. I’d listen and talk and nurse her. Because that, that i knew how to do. That’s sort of my home base. But when she got discharged and went into a rehabilitation center, that later became a place for her terminal care, I didn’t know what to do. I stood there frozen. So I ran. I kissed her cheek, said my goodbye, and fled to the other side of the country  (mind you, Denmark isn’t that large, but still).

My dear, dear friend who passed, was already ill when my great-gran died. We talked a lot about it. Even with everything else going on in her life she found it in her to be there for me. The strength she possessed. She spent a lot of time, like months upon months, in hospital. And I was there with her a lot of the time. We, us people, have a tendency to retreat when life gets difficult. Especially when people get life-treathning diseases. I didn’t want her to EVER feel like she was alone in this. So we spent a lot of time together. Time I treasured. Time she treasured. We weren’t best friends. Actually our friendship had barely begun, as we only met one year ago. But we got really close, really fast.

But I found myself in that place again. A place where i was losing someone I cared deeply about, and everything I normally was able to do to ease the pain, I couldn’t do. Because I wasn’t a professional nurse. No. I was a friend, losing a friend. As I sat down, last Wednesday, to write my last goodbye to her – to her parents – on the card for her funeral, I came across a quote that made every puzzle piece fall into place in my head. All my feelings about death and dying, neatly summed up in a few lines.

Death is never easy when you know the people doing the dying.

—Oliver North

Thank you

To each our own right?

I want to send a special thanks to all of whom have entered my life, left my life, loved me, hugged me, yelled at me, cried with me, argued with me and given me every chance possible to grow as a person.

I don’t generally do this gratitude thing because it sounds cheesy and ew. But I want to thank you, all of you. I am having a moment of clarity and I think these needs to be shared.

You guys have been there through it all – even though some of you might not here with me, for better or worse, in my life today, you have left you imprint.

You were there through the tantrums and the the struggles of a child with ADHD trying to fit into a normal world with normal rules and regulations. The special need classes, the learning to read and write – which for me, being dyslexic and all wasn’t all that great of an experience. The fights and the injuries. The trips to the ER and the broken nose. The endless hours in the water and out in the nature. The competitions, the winnings and the losings. You were there through the cutting, the crying, the not understanding. You smiled along side me, the laughter, the heartfelt joy, the friendships and lovers. You were there when I almost lost my way, when i walked the fine line between right and wrong. You where there through the years of boarding school, the adventures, the everlasting bond. Through High School, the burned out periods, the mess, the struggle and the realization that I was capable of more than I thought i was. And you where there through my years in nursing school, through the depression, the psychiatrists and the mess of person I became when I finally got the ADHD diagnosis. You where there through the victories, the ‘I’ll prove you wrong’s and the getting better. And you were there when I did what I not ever thought possible – you were there when I got my degree. You loved me, you hated me, you sang with me and you yelled at me. But you were there. And you are still here now, through the learning to be an adult with a real job and real responsibilities. Through the incredible highs and painful lows, the learning of caring for someone in a professional manner, the struggle of being a 25-year-old and not having all my shit together yet. You are here.

I never thought I’d be here. I still have my struggles. I still have to fight to get to where i want to be. I still have to put that much more of an effort into achieving what i want, but you have helped me to be the person I am, and for that, I truly am grateful.

So thank you. Thank you for making me the best version of me I could ever be.

And especially thank you to my parents who gave me the greatest gift of all – they believed in me and all that I can be ❤

 

A year and some change into nursing

In January 2014 I got my degree in nursing and have been working full time ever since at a ward for leukemia patients. This sums up to a little over 15 months as a Registered Nurse – it’s safe to say I’m still pretty green in this field.

Nursing is a work of heart ❤ .

I have always known that this line of work was a busy one, but there have been times that I have been astounded by just how busy it really was. When it is worst you run a check line in you mind; Have they gotten something to eat, check. Have they gotten their meds and antibiotics, check. Are they still breathing, check – and then you run off to the next patient. Those days are hard, both physically and mentally. You want to do better by your patients, because they deserve your utmost care, but can’t due to lack of time. Days like that, it’s kind of like running a marathon without knowing how far you’ve come and where the finish line is.  At first, as a new nurse, days like these felt like drowning. There was already SO much you had to remember and you kind of ran around in circles around yourself to get it done. I don’t feel like i’m drowning anymore, more like treading water.

This last year has been one for the books. I have never had something that simultaneously gave me so much joy and so much sorrow in one go, as my job does. I have gone home truly believing I could fly and feeling so high I couldn’t get down again. And I have broken down in tears, feeling so broken and exhausted that I doubted I could go through another day like that.

When people hear where I work, they usually grimace and ask if it isn’t a though place to be. This always leaves me looking funny at them. I mean, sure, it’s not a ride in the park, but I don’t think it’s so much harder than so many other places. Leukemia, and cancer in genereal, is a stupid ass disease. and some of the fates I, as a nurse – in my 15 months – have seen, have been cruel and unjust. But I don’t believe anyone deserves to get ill or die from a disease. And this is regardless of it being cancer or a broken hip.

I have found – as so many others before me – that I struggle the most with my patients dying, if they are young of age, or if they have small children. But when we do have these patients, we – me and my fellow nurses – are champions at caring for each other and giving us that shoulder we need to talk to and cry on. Our patients are other human beings, and during their time at the hospital they get under out skin – and we under theirs. And that bond is very, very special. It makes the caregiving both a joy to do, and a personal task to want to do. I have found that the Nurses at my ward (and myself) ‘fight’ over who gets to care for their patients, as we all the them as ours. But this bond is also what makes it so heartbreaking when our patients do die. But I have found, that my fellow nurses are always there to catch me, when I have found it incredible hard to lose a patient I generally cared for.

And that is a line I also think I will always have to walk on: Having my heart with me, giving it to my patients, but not giving so much so I cannot leave my care for them at the door when I leave the hospital. It’s a damn fine line and I have crossed it during the last 15 months.

But I have also found that even through the deaths of my patients, and the hardship when they are seriously ill, that good things arises. and THIS is exactly what keep me going. The smiles, the hugs, the little gestures from both my patients and their families. As late as this week a patient of mine had gotten worse and her mother was there with her – and had been for all of the day – and when I came the mother stood up to leave for the day, saying that as long as I was there, she new her daughter was in good hands.

A comment like that warms my soul all the way through. There are no words.

So what have I learned, this first year and some change into being a Registered Nurse? Here is my top 10.

1. The job is worth it.

2. My fellow nurses are some of the most caring and amazing women I have ever met

3. It’s okay to have your heart with you, even when it hurts. (especially when it hurts)

4. I am capable of much more than I thought I was.

5. I am ‘doer’ in critical situations

6. It’s not always a bad thing when a patient die. Sometimes it is actually the best thing for the patient.

7. The families of the patients are important to nurse as well. They are a part of your patient. and it’s only a good thing to establish a good bond with them too.

8. It is okay to cry when you lose a patient or your patient takes a turn for the worse. You might be a nurse, but you are also just a human being.

9. You can’t do this job without your colleagues – treasure them. (I have the best ones ever)

10. You have so, SO much yet to learn.

Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn.