On this episode I share the new emotions I’m dealing with as a retired paramedic during a pandemic.
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This episode of BrainStorm is brought to you by The Homewood Health Clinic Mississauga
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➡️ BrainStorm by Natalie Harris is proudly produced by PodcastWagon.com
I’ve been owning the seconds of my life. I’ve been embracing them like a small baby in my arms needing comfort and security. I’ve been recognizing the frailty of it all; time, love, honesty. So mush so that I often feel like I needed someone to talk me down, and get me out of the rainbow-coloured alleys, and butterfly chases – when just like that, a second happens to knock me down. There comes this second when I don’t want to open my eyes because a relationship is immanently about to change as trust goes over the edge of a cliff. I can’t stop it from going over – I’m just a spectator – the leap is not mine to be had. Then, during the next second, the universe is torn and my heart is on the floor bleeding hot, angry blood.
I need to own my seconds again – somehow. I need to stop thinking about the cliff. It’s airy silence reminds me that it’s not mine and that I should pay no attention to it. I had to look hard to find this relationship – and now everything is gone. Time to turn life off for another day. I can’t stop thinking about what we used to be. That I loved you – that I chose you. Now all I can see are stars in the sky reminding me that another second to be owned will come…eventually.
I will be thinking about us. And life moves on with yet another lesson I never asked for or saw coming. Like being sideswiped on the corner of a street by a speeding van – this relationship loss has hit me hard and fast. I have to stand my ground – trust deserves the splendour it is entitled to. Trust is everything. Until my tears have soaked my shirt with tears of truth, I will continue to look for another perfect breath. Chasing stars and hope. Backing away from the cliff at the very last second.
Dear Insomnia,
I know you keep trying to be friends with me, but it’s just not going to work out. You see, I’m tired. Even though you try to trick me into thinking that waking up at 2:30 am every day is the ‘cool thing to do’, I know it’s not. Insomnia, it’s dark out, that means I should be asleep, but you never seem to care about that, it’s always ‘insomnia, insomnia, insomnia’. Selfish. How about we try to make a deal – you let me sleep for just one solid night each week, and in return I will not get so frustrated when you creep into my sleep-world at an unGodly hour of the morning on the other six nights of the week.
How wonderful it would be to have a good night sleep! I hate doing the Navy Seal roll through the sleeping animals on my bed in order to find my phone while praying that it will say something like 6:30 am, only to find time and time again that it says 2:30am. Walter and Lollers are snoring away – phew. My strategic roll through the blankets didn’t wake them up – that’s good. So I’m going try to say farewell to you for the night.
Please stop trying to be my friend,
Natalie (a.k.a. exhausted)
On this episode of BrainStorm: Sometimes reminiscing about working as a Paramedic brings sadness, and crying, its ok, but PTSD sucks.
Books
Daily Lessons from Save My Life School: Here
Save My Life School: Here
BrainStorm by Natalie Harris is proudly produced by PodcastWagon.com
I’m still searching for some meaning here. I’ve been ‘here’ before – figuratively and literally. I’m at Save-My-Life Summer School, where I hope to bump up my grades. “What grades?”, you may be asking. Well, my grades in coping with life and PTSD symptoms. I’m so grateful, don’t get me wrong. Like SO grateful. But no matter how you look at it, summer school sort of sucks.
I have a feeling that I will have a breakthrough – but alas, it’s only day three for God’s sake. I need to be a bit gentler on myself.
I actually bored of writing right now. No epiphanies to share. I’m numb. Completely numb. Like a robot walking the halls, emotionless and cold. I wish I had some feeling of connection to this life beyond being a mom; that connection is inherent. I mean a connection to a person or an experience. A connection to a feeling.
There were lots of spiders outside this morning. One even crawled onto my hand. A baby one. I passed it to my neighbour and he passed it to his. Without words, just passing spiders so delicately, like balancing a fragile egg on our finger nails, fearful that it would fall. It was moved safely to the seat beside us to go on with it’s merry day. It’s funny how none of us even came close to killing it. We’ve experienced enough trauma that even killing a spider is too much to bear. Well at least that’s my view of the experience.
I get so tired of feeling like a skipping record when I share what feels like the same story over and over with yet another nurse or doctor. I’m grateful – but I’m tired. The skipping record laughs at me and taunts me. Just when I think I’ve reached the end of the damn record, it skips and starts again. I wish I could just smash that record! Smash it into smithereens. Jump on it and scream for it to never play again. The pieces wouldn’t even deserve to be swept up. They don’t deserve my attention anymore. They don’t deserve my breath, my energy, my time. And I don’t deserve to be a broken record. Maybe I will smash it over the next eight weeks. It would feel so wonderful to have a different story. This one seems so pointless now.
Have you ever noticed how the most fragile and rare things are often the most beautiful? And have you ever noticed how their beauty often vanishes into the invisible abyss of atoms and time before they can ever truly be enjoyed? A snowflake, a dandelion seed, lightening, innocence – in all of a moment – they vanish. Happiness fits into this category of beauty for me.
I get frustrated with how happiness and my personal life seem to exist in separate orbits. Rarely eclipsing one another, but when it happens, like all phenomenons, it inevitably comes to an end. Watching this eclipse also my eyes to burn and tears to flow, especially when I see the orbit of happiness leaving, knowing that it will be a while until it returns.
Everywhere I go, I’m there. I can’t escape the sadness my mind simmers in so often. My mind’s inability to practice gratitude elicits enormous levels of guilt. And I know full well that guilt is a useless emotion – and that it only brings more pain. But still I feel guilt’s heavy dagger pierce my heart when I see the sunrise and simultaneously need to fight to see the beauty in it. I should be able to see the beauty in it. Why can’t I see the beauty in it?
September is Suicide Awareness Month, and I will endeavour to continue to share what it’s like to be in the mind of someone who has battled with suicidal thoughts and attempts. Don’t worry – I’m safe. But I feel it is necessary to continue this dark and often confusing conversation so that those who don’t understand, can; even if in the smallest way.
On this bonus episode:
-I share how I use “The Four Agreements”, by author Don Miguel Ruiz, to help me form healthy boundaries in my recovery,
-How to cope with negative support,
-and Lollers finds Walter’s bone. 🙂
I have a new book coming out that you can preorder here.
Busy and bored – I’m both. It’s possible. Weird right? Even though I am not on the road as a medic anymore (sigh) I am a busy bee. Family, fur babies, podcasts, new book, new speaking engagements, and lots of emails to reply to, keep my busy every day – and I’m grateful that I am able to do all of these things – but I’m bored. I’m on a new medication and I think it is giving me a lot of extra energy (Abilify for those who are wondering). I wake up super early and can’t get back to sleep which is weird for me as the old super depressed Nat only slept!
So with that being said I want to share a few amazing words of inspiration some friends have given me over the last day or too to help easy my mind with it’s new found energy and boredom.
From Christine Newman: “Here’s what I can tell you for sure Sis… things will seesaw for a while until you eventually find your happy medium. Some days you will be in the groove and rocking your socks off. Other days, the needle skips on the record and everything sounds like shit. And at least Lollers didn’t barf IN your shoes”. Brilliant! She also told me that because I have been through so much this year, that it will take some time to find a happy medium.
From Caroline Richards: “Well, I guess this is just where I’m at, I really need to just accept this”. Beautiful and true! When Caroline said this to me, I felt like she was speaking to my soul. I have to accept where I am – it really makes things a lot easier.
From @365daysofbipol2: “When you feel like you are moving forward and seem like you’re going nowhere you are on a plateau. Learn to enjoy the view”. Simple and profound all in one.
From Dr. Debra Lindh: ” Some days are harder than others. Remember: We grow when we’re stretched not when we are comfortable”. Isn’t that the truth – thank you for reminding me.
I hope that if you are feeling the way I am that these messages help you as much as they have helped me. XO Time for some Pearl Jam and Linkin Park.
I had an excellent meeting with the CEO and Head of the Nursing Department of a hospital in which my daughter and I had a very terrible experience with a nurse and her lack of professionalism and compassion. I’ve always believed that positive and positive attract – and today that theory was once again proven.
The primary reason for my request of this meeting today was to share a negative experience, but I don’t go about doing so with the old Natalie ‘jersey them’ attitude anymore. I now approach difficult experiences as an opportunity to grow; and today I think that all three of us in the meeting did just that.
After sharing my recollection of the events in a detailed fashion, I continued the meeting with a request to not have the nurse in question reprimanded, but rather to have my daughter’s and my discontent shared with the nurse (or how would she even have the opportunity to change her actions and bedside manner), and to share an offering of peer support to her and all of the staff at the hospital. I explained to the CEO and Head of Nursing what Wings of Change was and how it could easily be facilitated at the hospital. I am not naive to think that it is quite possible that this nurse was having a bad day and could require some support of her own – however this does NOT condone her actions. This conversation point went over very well and I will be sending more information about Wings of Change to both of them for there consideration.
I also suggested the following:
I also applied to be on the Patient and Family Advisory Committee and requested that if I am selected that I have a voice in the adult and youth mental health department services and care.
According to the College of Nurses in Ontario, Standards of Care, “Nurses are obliged to provide empathic and knowledgeable care” (www.cno.org), and MOST do. But when a situation occurs where this standard is not met, I encourage you to contact the patient advocate in the hospital you are being provided care in.
I would like to thank both the CEO and Head of Nursing for meeting with me today and for their professionalism and genuine concern with regards to the care of my daughter.
Paramedic Nat 