Believe

So today all my hard work over the last 4 years (if you include the access course) came to an end. All that is left is for me to turn in my uniforms when my placement ends next week and don the cap and gown sometime in July and this journey will be over. But will it though?

As a nurse you never stop learning about things, new treatments, new patients, new stories and it is the same with writing. Writers learn every day of their lives, it might just be the resolution to a particular plot line they had been wrestling with or they may just see a face in a crowd who sent their mind racing off into another story idea, all because of the way someone walked or looked.. As a writer you can’t help but look at some people and wonder what story would they have to tell if they were a character in your book and as a nurse, looking at someone tells you so many things about your patient, the expression on their face gives you insight into their pain, their grief, their condition, the way they breathe tells you if they are fighting an infection, having an asthma attack; even the colour and feel of their skin gives you clues to what your patient is going through. Writer’s and nurses are much alike and I am happy that I count myself as both.

It has taken a long time for me to get here and at some points I didn’t think I would reach it, in some ways I still can’t quite believe it, but I should.  Because I have fought for this, I have fought against myself and my bank balance to get to this point because it mattered to me.  All those times I found myself thinking “this is crazy,  I can’t do this, just go back to the call centres, life was simpler then, at least in a call centre you stand zero chance of causing someone grievous harm” and “is there any point to this writing? Is anyone reading this other than me? and should I even bother sending this off for possible publication as who would read it?” 

Because that is what I do, and I have found a lot of other kindred spirits do too, we find excuses to not be brave with ourselves, we stop believing in us and I stopped believing in me, the difference is now I realise it. And once I realised it, I remembered that book I mentioned previously ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’ and what it said about the fear being the only thing stopping us from doing what we really want to do and the person you really need to convince is yourself.  So I may not be totally convinced and there is still that small voice in my head that says “maybe still go back to the call centre and put the notebook down and step away” but it’s much quieter than it used to be, because now, just maybe I believe in myself and what ever the future holds for me “I got this” because now I am not constantly looking down waiting for the branch to break.