Insomnia

Appearances can be deceiving.

I'm not trying to sound paranoid (although often I am anxious, & care too much about what others may think about me).

Before all of this, a long time ago, I wanted to be an artist. I'm actually really good at drawing. I could once draw anything I wanted to. I probably could do this again, too, if I wanted too.

I went to art school, for four years in Minnesota. I studied printmaking. I know how to make fine art etchings, lithographs, screenprints , woodcuts. I know how to set type, and work various presses, I know how to bind books. I have also welded, used power tools, table saws. Developed my own film, printed my own photos in a darkroom, made Super-8 films and even acted a little. I painted. I made charcoal drawings of models in the nude.

Then I stopped all of this and went back to school to become a nurse. I was tired of working soul-crushing, non- art related jobs. I usually made less than $20,000 a year. I have lived with very little in the past, and did not have health insurance for a number of years. I was unemployed at times. Not a good situation.

I attended an intensive 12 month Bachelor's degree nursing program. In nursing school, I saw people with various illnesses on the verge of either recovery or death. I will never forget the woman with emphysema, gasping for breath, terrified. Her relatives tried to comfort her. She knew she was dying. I made my husband quit smoking because of this.

I saw a baby being born. I saw laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery, I saw a craniectomy done on a little boy, who had been suffering from terrible seizures. I gave injections, put catheters in people, cleaned up a lot of bodily fluids, cleaned wounds, gave meds-sometimes crushed through a stomach tube if the person could no longer eat by mouth. I put my first IV in a junkies arm. I went into group homes in Watts, to screen men for TB. I sang karaoke (Cash) with a WWII vet at the VA hospital.

I became an RN. I went into psych. I went straight to work at a mental hospital. I met men who thought they were God or Satan. I saw patients have ECT. I met a young boy who believed he was a cyborg from the future, who showed me the plans for his time machine. I again cleaned up a lot of bodily fluids. Tried to keep patients from walking around naked, having sex with each other, or trying to kill each other, kept them from trying to kill the doctors or other RN's. Once someone said to me: "You aren't a real psych nurse until you get hit."

I was never hit.

I loved co-leading the AA and CA groups.

I hated it every time we had a code green and had to place patients into restraints. I usually had to call the MD, get orders, draw up the meds, and inject the patient in the buttocks.
I left that place for a clinic job. I felt safer, but unsatisfied. Sitting at a desk, on the phone for 8 hrs a day talking to patients who were suffering. Sometimes they would yell at you. Some were drug seeking & entitled. I dreaded the suicidal calls.
It was making me depressed. So I quit.

So here I am. Trying to figure it out. Am I an artist? A designer? Can I do this? Is it enough? Too much? I need to try...it has been two months since I quit my job.