Nurse Sean (dot) com

Its been a great few days. After letting my entire life crumble into pieces and scatter to the wind for the last three months, it feels nice to be picking up the pieces and putting them back where they belong.

Of course like any life changing event, going back to school has changed me. In two of my classes I proved to myself that I really am smart enough to get an A. However, in two of my classes, I proved that no matter how hard I try, sometimes things are just going to be shitty! In the end I can say that there really wasn’t anything else I could have done. I’m not sure what my mark will be in those two classes, but I know that whatever mark I get, that its the best I could have done.

Unfortunately, those two really bad classes may turn out to be low enough to prevent me from getting into the nursing faculty. So, I’ve learned how to deal with the possibility that I may have to take a different path. There is a certain amount of surrended involved in letting someone push you down the right path, rather than doing it on your own, but taking the wrong path. I’ve done both, neither is pretty, or easy, or wrong.

I’ve taken leaps and bounds in my ability to cope. What hasn’t been thrown at me in the last few months? My life long friends - my seventeen and nineteen year old cats - passed away. I had to move. I dealt with my car breaking down. I ran out of money and didn’t know how I was going to make it. I had to sing in front of people - a life long fear. I struggled with my classes more than I knew possible. I watched practicaly every friend of mine have cars, computers, jewelery, rent, vacations bought for them while I had nothing. I saw all my friends partying and going to movies, while I sacrificed sacrificed sacrificed my time to studying and working. And now my grandma is sick in the hospital.

I made it through though and everything was just fine. I made my marks, I worked extra shifts, I got on that stage and sang the shit out of my songs, and I reveled in the knowledge that I can make it through life without someone paying my way. I learned that every crisis really is small. I realized that my problems are smaller than a hell of a lot of peoples!

Something happened to drive this thought home. A close friend of my was diagnosed with AIDS. Now, being gay, you live with this disease. You can at most times point out a few people in the bar with AIDS…you are comfortable with AIDS…you know that at any time you yourself may get it. However, it seems so distant as though there is an impermeable bubble around you and everyone on the outside can get AIDS and you and everyone on the inside can’t. Even more distant are the days when upwards of half of everyone you know would eventually die. For some people, every person they ever called a friend died one by one. For my generation, its still those people…I least sometimes we think it is. They’re simply the ones that survived this long. It never crosses your mind that at any point in time your own friends could start dropping dead. Its like a giant sword, driving home the idea that AIDS is still real and still out there, and that nobody in the world is safe.

I don’t know if that describes it right. Imagine the holocaust. It was horrifying and aweful. However, all we can do is watch the movies and read the book. We know its real, but at the same time it feels almost fictional, because it is so hard to believe that anything that evil could happen…but it did. Thats kind of how I think my generation sees the massive AIDS epidemic of the eighties. The difference though is that it hasn’t stopped and in some cities its still getting worse. Imagine if the holocaust was still happening and we knew about it, but refused to believe it! Then one day someone walks up and tells you your good friend just got sent to a death camp. All of a sudden that thing you forgot was real becomes very real again…

I hope that analogy helps…without offending anyone. I know how sensitive the subject of the holocaust is. I’m not in any way trying to disrespect it though, or even claiming it to be the equivalent of the AIDS epidemic.

Anyways. Things are pretty darn good with me! My mind was on one track for the last three months, and its feeling wierd to be letting other issues and emotions into my life again.

Shouldn’t I be depressed though?

I had a dream the other day, but you need some background info in order for it to make sense:

When I worked at Boston Pizza, I was immersed in one of the most intellecualy enriched environments I’ve ever experienced. I worked with Theresa who was in nursing and through her stories begun my fascination with that profession. I worked with Jason who was finishing his BA and was on the fast track to get a PhD…he was one of the most brillian people I’d ever met and ever day was spent trying to impress him (which took many nights of reading books that were WAY over my head just so I could have simple conversations with him). Then there was Troy the philosopher who was always arguing something or another with us…always to do with enlightenment pholosophers.

Well, its amazing what happens when you fast forward three or four years since the last time you’ve seen any of these people. Theresa is a nurse on a cardiac ward and just got married to the man she had been dating when I last saw her. Jason is just finishing up his PhD. I just did a search for him at the university he’s at and saw that he was teaching classes and everything. The other day I ran into Troy at university and found out that he finaly got into the MA program, so he too is on his way to finishing his long saught after dream of getting his PhD.

We were always the elite croud at our restaurant. It was right in the middle of a fairly white trash neighbourhood of town and we all seemed to stick out compared to the less than intelligent, not so hip, not so open-minded crowd that ate there. I will never forget our nights when we’d spend hours at Denny’s just talking intellectually.

Anyways, my dream was very simple. Jason, Troy and I were all in the back of a limo. We had lost touch with each other for years and years. I had just gotten my PhD and Troy and Jason already had theres. We were all on the way to a conference in which we were all presenting at. We had collabarated on a study which had made us famous as researchers.

Just a silly dream that seamed way more prophetic than it should have. I kind of miss my goal of getting a liberal arts PhD. One of these days I just might have to bring it back…