Changing The Narrative

by Cara Alwill Leyba

I have been doing a lot of soul searching recently. Maybe this is a midlife crisis, who knows, but what I do know is that I need to change the narrative of my life.

This poem by Cara Alwill Leyba resonated with me deeply, it kick started this need in me, this desire to be more, to be me. I must admit that the pandemic broke me just a little bit. The very nature of the job that I have been doing as a nurse brings me very close to death and to the fragility of life and makes me more aware of my own mortality, my own time on this earth could be just as fleeting and I have regularly found myself questioning what I am doing.

I used to love my job, it was a dream, but something about it has changed, something I can’t put my finger on and I find myself sad and anxious and no longer wanting to do it. It has become more about something other than the patient and I have questioned my own thoughts and values on many occasions. I no longer feel like I belong where I am, but I don’t really know where I do belong. I only know that this is not it.

I have to start doing things for me, fulfilling those things that make me happy and what is it I want? Nothing more than to live a creative life, to be this creative person whether that is writing, painting, drawing, crocheting and everything in between and somehow maybe still helping people but without the NHS politics and stresses of not being good enough or fast enough to see everyone that needs to be seen, to not be questioning my every thought and decision because of the added strain it would put on the service. I want to cut the apron strings. I want the freedom to make my own choices to set my own timetable.

I have been wracked with guilt over this, I’ve not slept, worrying because I used to love it, I’ve worried because I have been contemplating leaving a career in the NHS to one that is far from secure. But my sensible head says I will carry on doing agency to prop up my income (because I’m following my heart doesn’t mean my head isn’t still working) and because of that I will always be a Band 5, there is no promotion, but this is not high enough to make the changes that need to happen and who would even listen to me? So I will be doing it, knowing it is more a means to an end than what I originally signed up to nursing for.

I’ve questioned my own sanity, what kind of mad woman would dive feet first into setting up a creative wellbeing business in today’s climate when I have very limited experience myself and no one has enough money to live on let alone spend it on anything I might have to say or make or help them to make and yet…

I have to do it, I have to change the narrative of my life and do what I want to do regardless of whether I end up living in a tent at the end of it because I refuse to be unhappy, to be just another number scrabbling around trying desperately to provide for her patients when we don’t have the services or the man power to sustain it. Am I adding to the problem? Yes I am. Am I being selfish? Yes I am. For the first time in my life I am being selfish. I am putting me first. The NHS has broken me and try as I might I cannot glue us back together no matter how much I might wish it.

I am wracked with guilt, guilt for my colleagues that I leave behind to plug the gap, guilt for the patients I will no longer be there for, but this stress is destroying me and I made a promise a long time ago that there is a road I would never take again and I have found myself thinking about that road more than I care to, so this is the part where MJ says no.

Enough.

It is time to be me, to follow my own path. It’s time to set myself free.

And I do that by changing the narrative of my life, because that is not how my story ends.

I do not know where the next chapter will lead, I only know that I am me always and forever now. I have been a long time in the shadows and it’s taken me 45 years to finally decide to stop hiding and step firmly into the light and my work is just another one of those areas where I am done being in the dark.

Until next time x

MJ