I start and stop. Start and stop. Write then quit. Draft after draft. 100 words are written, and 100 words are deleted. How much more until I just give up. I have so much I want to say but just as much doubt, hatred, and exhaustion. Doubt in my abilities to share my thoughts. Hatred of myself. I am exhausted from the daily reminders that I can never be all that I wish I could be. It goes without saying that working in a hospital during COVID, especially in the ER, is exhausting. But add in this consistent and disappointing journey into who I am and want to be, and I am overwhelmed beyond beliefs. I spend my days watching families lose each other over and over. Cleaning bodies up so families can say goodbye. Performing CPR, pushing drugs, keeping track of time for pulse checks, and calling it after an hour or two. Digging through their belongings trying to find a family so we can let them know “your 35-year-old daughter is dead”.
12 hours on repeat, only to come home to an empty apartment and have only my thoughts. Thoughts of how useless and pathetic I am. How I cannot help my patients. How I do not do enough for them. How in two years, I have made no progress in this journey. How I have given up writing about my thoughts and trying to dive through them. I backtracked. Hard. My cat became sick and was in the ICU for a few days. ICU. I didn’t even know they had that for cats. But there he was. I thought I had finally lost everything. All I had was my job. For a moment, I lost myself and began thinking that maybe everyone was right. All the men from my past were correct. I am useless. I am nothing. I ended up going back to what I knew. I found these awful shitty men. I knew these men. I knew how to play with them and make them give me the thing I craved. Validation and attention. I never once meant anything I said or did. I just needed validation from them. To feel something other than my own hatred towards myself. It was the only way I knew to get this. School, work, and men.
Once my cat was okay again, all the desire to have this validation left. The only thing that remained was pure and utter disgust with myself. I am trying to rebuild and regain myself. But the feeling of hatred is still there. Thoughts of ending it all rage on in my head. I know I can’t. I have my reasons. Yet, the idea that I am worthy of any sort of kindness, redemption, or even joy, disgusts me. How am I, a person so weak she crumbles and crawls back to these men, worthy of anything at all?
For the first time in a while, I am ready to admit to myself that once again, I am far from okay. I am not okay, and that is okay.
Expression of my life 
I can relate to this so much. There was a time when I sought validation through the wrong guys and in the end, I just ended up feeling worse by the time things were over. I eventually realized that my self-worth had to come from me, not from someone else, and it took me a long time to end that struggle. I still have my days where I need someone to validate me because I don’t have the strength to do it for myself, but those days aren’t as frequent as they once were.
You are stronger than you realize. What you deal with day in and day out would be hard for anyone to go through, but not everyone has the strength for it (I know I don’t). Be kinder to yourself. The fact that you’re still trying is a good thing. And progress takes more time than we realize. Believe me, I’m farther than I thought I would be at this point in my life, but also somehow not as far along as I thought I would be (if that makes any sense).
Thank you for sharing this. I like your honesty and raw emotion. I hope things turn around for you because you deserve some good in your life ☺️
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