Long Distance Friendships

I think we can all agree that long-distance relationships are difficult. Regardless of the situation and the individual relationships involved, physical separation is not ideal for anyone involved. Although families and couples adjust during the time apart, their reunion is the bright light at the end of the tunnel – whenever it may be. Expectations are much different with long distance friendships and separation may be for an unspecified amount of time.

Each friendship is unique and no experience with long-distance relationship is the same, but with that said, I would like to reflect on three friendships maintained over a long distance and over a long period of time.

Pretzel and I met at the beginning of eighth grade when I was on the ASB’s welcome committee for new students. I mistook his standoffishness for mystery and was determined to make friends with him. The way he tells it, he was trying not to make friends because the grade would be split the next year when we went to high school and also in the case his family had to move (Pretzel’s dad was in the air force). Pretzel and I became good friends and we ended up going to the same high school for a couple years before his family had to move across the country. We kept in touch via text message and Facebook mostly, but one summer we were able to hang out in person! Long story short, I was on a family vacation in the state he lived in and he offered to pick me up and hang out for the rest of the day with my parents’ permission of course. We lost touch for a few years through college, but have since reconnected via Snapchat (of all social medias) and text message.

My friend Punch and I have been friends since high school. We hit a rough patch in our friendship a bit ago, but have reconciled and now our friendship is stronger than ever. Punch moved around the country in the years after high school pursuing undergraduate and now graduate degrees and taking a gap year in between. I make it a point to visit every place he’s moved to partially so I can see him and mostly because he’s lived in some pretty cool places. Through college we studied together virtually, talked into the early hours, and made it a point to see each other when we were both home on breaks. Currently we stay in touch via video calling, telephone, text message, and social media. Punch is currently on the east coast and I on the west, but even with the time difference, geographical distance, and time in between our full conversations it is easy to trust each other with any issue we face, big or small.

Pilot started out being a friend of a friend and he eventually made his way to my inner circle of friends. We met during a bar crawl the weekend before my graduation from nursing school when my best friend invited him to tag along. Initially we kept in touch via Facebook but then transitioned to texting. Over time we moved to having video conversations via Snapchat and called/texted each other often. Pilot knew what it was like to take care of a grandparent and it was comforting to talk with him about the struggles I was facing after having moved back to my hometown to help care for my grandmother. I was overwhelmed with heartache after my grandmother passed and it felt difficult to maintain most of my friendships. I internalized most of my grief which I think Pilot understood. He told our mutual friend that he wanted to give me space and kept in touch infrequently, mostly via Snapchat. At the time it felt a bit like I had been abandoned. The lack of communication as well as having not physically seen each other in over two years weakened our friendship in some ways, but when Pilot reached out to me a couple months ago I took the opportunity to reconnect.

Perhaps my long-distance friendships have survived thus far because of the individual friendship dynamic? Pretzel and I tend to be introverted and although our interests differ, we enjoy learning from each other. I wonder if it is because Punch and I are both independent, because of our similar careers, or simply because of the longevity of our friendship that make it easy to continue being friends. My friendship with Pilot is the newest comparatively to the others, but is it the depth of trust having shared in similar experiences that keeps the friendship going?

There is no doubt technology has played a role in the development and sustainment of the friendships, but what else? What makes an acquaintance that lives far away a long-distance friend? Whatever the case, I am grateful to have the aforementioned friends in my life and look forward to talking with each of them soon.

2015 New Years Resolutions

I do love good lighting. Wintertime is the best time for mood lighting – and what better way to light the mood than by stringing white Christmas lights up everywhere?

My new years resolutions are based on six characteristics I would like to foster in the new year. The chosen characteristics are ones that I may have but are underdeveloped or ones that I feel I lack entirely. I have written resolutions based on the characteristics I want to exemplify – and some things I just want to accomplish.

The six characteristics are as follows:

1) Patience

One can never have enough patience. This year especially I have noticed how my patience has grown and how much I still need to improve.

2) Trust

I have been challenged more than ever to be trusting of others in my professional and personal life. I hope that in the next year I can develop a sense of trust that will enable me to care for my loved ones.

3) Wisdom

Of course, this does not simply mean “learning.” It goes without saying that my education will not end when I graduate next May. I want to develop the wisdom that comes from experiencing joy, tragedy, love, and laughter. I hope that this next year I can truly devote myself to the relationships I have previously nurtured.

4) Faith

My faith journey is a very long and twisty one. I hope that in the coming year I can foster good habits in my prayer life and pass along only the best for my friends.

5) Courage

This one is a difficult one to explain. While I may be able to advocate for my patients, I want to develop my own sense of courage. I want to be able to withdraw from relationships and revoke bad habits that hold me back from becoming the best person I can be and providing the best care I can as a nurse. This will be especially beneficial as I progress in my nursing career.

6) Compassion

The above being said, I hope to have the compassion to understand others and develop relationships that will benefit others. I want the compassion I develop to transfer to the patients I care for.

Now I know this post does not necessarily cover my new years resolutions themselves but there will be another post coming that will cover them. Although, I’m curious as to what others’ new years resolutions are… Two of my more practical ones are to exercise more regularly and finally learn how to snowboard.

Intensive Care

There is so much I can say about this novel, but for the sake of time and to entice more readers I will only speak to a few main points I took from it.

 

One of the first things I would like to point out is that Echo was a mother while also going through nursing school. She raised her child to the best of her ability and did have some “real-life” events that threw her off her guard at points. The fact that she included these life events in her book as well really influenced my perspective of her as a nurse and her as an author. 

 

It truly is easy to become swept up in the grandeur of medicine and forget about the bad days, hard decisions, and inevitable consequences of others’ decisions. Intensive Care is a great reminder of the challenges nurses face. It is also a gleaming example of all that is important about nursing. The compassion Echo shows her clients is incredible! I think every nurse strives to provide the best care for their patients and the stories Echo shares are only a few examples of the ways we can do so.

 

That being said, I encourage all healthcare providers and families of healthcare providers to read this in order to gain a deeper insight into one woman’s perspective of the healthcare industry. It hopefully will gain us nursing students some compassion and nurses a little more respect than frequently experienced.

 

Spring Break: Day Five

This morning I woke with a start. I barely slept last night, the usual traveling jitters, and was convinced that I had mistaken the time of my flight’s departure with the time of its arrival. I have no idea why. Realizing it was a false alarm, I tried with no avail to return to sleep. Instead, I hung in a half-awake daze until my alarm rang.

 

I sprung out of bed, turned on the oven, and got dressed. My sister bought waffle sandwiches from our favorite waffle sandwich place, Bruxië’s, to supplement us for our long day of traveling and it was my responsibility to make sure they were warmed appropriately. Just after I had finished getting dressed, my sister joined me at the mirror to apply makeup. Using the tips I had given her the night before, she coordinated a lovely shade of purple with a nice beige eyeshadow. Watching her in the mirror, I started tearing up – partially because I was so proud of her, partially because I was impressed how quickly she had caught on, and partially because I did not want to leave. Both of us were too preoccupied to notice the time.

 

After we finished our breakfast and gathered last-minute things, we headed on our way. My sister’s flight was later in the day – meaning she had a whole day of work ahead of her after dropping me off. I had hoped to treat her to a coffee or something beforehand, but we soon realized that the most important thing we needed to get was – you may have guessed it – gas.

 

On our way to the airport I became increasingly distraught at the thought of saying goodbye to my sister. I am sure she could tell by my passivity during the drive. Sure we chit-chatted, but I did not have the strength to hide my despondency, nor did I have the wherewithal to explain my behavior.

 

Is not that a shame? Throughout the drive I could have reminded her of all the things I love about her, shared some more outrageous nursing student stories, made wisecracks about our surroundings to make her laugh, or even sung my lungs out with her to music. We could have talked about our trips, work, books, music, etc. Heck, we could have played “I spy” for all it matters.

 

Why is it that some people become so upset at saying goodbye? I could say I inherit the habit from my mother, but it is not as simple as that. I suppose it is because I have a pessimistic view of changes, or because I become so attached to having people in my life. Whatever the reasoning may be, I just hope that it does not interfere with the interpretation of my feelings toward the person to whom I am saying goodbye.

Ridiculous Analogies of My Current State of Being

As I was running errands and interacting with people today, I realized how much more entertaining things would be if we could sum up how we are through analogies. For instance, instead of the typical dialogue:

Cashier: How are you?

Me: I’m good, thanks. How are you?

Cashier: Good. I’m good.

 Me: Good.

Our conversations would flow more like this:

Cashier: How are you?

Me: I am swimming in the ocean, with one eye on the shoreline, listening to the waves calling me further in. How are you?

Cashier: I’m sorry to hear that. I am melted chocolate without a mold, shaped only by a caring hand.

Me: Good for you! I hope your day matches your mood.

I swear, I’m not crazy. I just have a hard time brushing people off when they or I ask how the other is. I do not necessarily want to tell them my whole life story, but at the same time I wish we could share a little bit of our lives with each other without it being awkward. I understand that some people have enough problems and wouldn’t necessarily want to bother nor be bothered by anyone else, but it irks me that I can’t have a bad day in public. It’s not appropriate.

 

For instance, today I was exhausted from a rough night and constantly felt irritated by those around me. I knew my poor mood was due to lack of sleep and I felt myself constantly correct behavior. After a while my frustration grew and I retreated home to relax.

 

My challenge is this: ask someone how they are doing and mean it. Ask after their family or their job or school and talk with them if they want to continue the conversation. Make time to make a connection with someone – you never know, they might need it.

My New Friend

I made a friend today at clinical! Unfortunately my friend suffers from severe dementia.

 

Many of my interactions with my friend prior to today were brief and tense. I had heard that my friend liked to twist arms, bite, and lick and the thought of a person like that kind of made me nervous. Today however, I was in a strange mood because of the death of a patient I had worked with and my friend must have picked up on that. My friend clung to me all night and kept telling me that I was loved and how special I was.

 

Although my friend’s speech pattern was very strange, I immediately picked up on things by the way it was said. Our communication kind of reminded me of how I interpreted my brother’s speech when we were younger. I know that seems awful comparing my brother to a person with dementia, but bear with me.

 

Saul, my brother, used to talk in a roundabout way. Getting from one point to the next was a journey, but not always a linear one. To get from A to B, he might skip to H or P before implying B. He did not speak in word salad (unintelligible mixture of words and phrases) like my friend, but it was sometimes hard to tell what Saul was actually talking about.

 

Over the years, Saul has developed in so many ways and I have honed my skill of interpretation. It may be the fact that I am his sister, but most often I know exactly what he means when he says something unclear to others. Whatever the case may be, my friend today reminded me of one of the many reasons I love and miss my brother. I am now going to try and get over my homesickness with – you guessed it – sleep.

The Difficulty of Speaking with Children

I am very uncomfortable around children that are not related to me. I am always afraid I will overstep some social/personal boundary that will make parents and kids alike disapprove of me. I am all too aware of the phrase “stranger danger” and my consistent over-analytical perspective, however, I cannot help feeling tongue-tied whenever I am around a child.

 

Today we were able to speak with two seasoned pediatric nurses about their experiences in communicating with children. I was in awe of their demeanor and of their attitude toward their patients. I commented on my lack of ease around children and asked them whether it was possible to overcome my boundary fear. They responded warmly that in peds (short for pediatrics), boundaries cease to exist as one gets to know one’s patient and patient’s family. The nurses spoke about desensitizing the patient to their role through simple measures such as prolonged presence, fleeting touch, and speech pattern.

 

Part of treating a peds patient is acknowledging their needs based on their age group as well as their individual needs. For instance, if a school-aged peds patient is undergoing surgery one might try to explain the procedure based on the patient’s interest in learning and give them some sort of responsibility used toward the burgeoning sense of competence. One might also encourage the patient to then explain the procedure to his or her family.

 

I do not want to make it seem as though I can now be the child whisperer (that is creepy and should probably not even be uttered facetiously), but by keeping those concepts and tips in the back of my mind, I hope I can now make positive contact with a child unrelated to me. (I have tried re-writing the previous sentence to make it sound less creepy, but let’s be honest, a post talking about talking to children is already walking a fine line.)

Television, Movies, and… Dating Advice

The show Catfish on MTV makes me very uncomfortable. It is about people that have online relationships, that for some reason or another have not met in person. Most people on the show are not who they say they are, which leads to the misconception that all online dating is deceitful. I have never tried online dating, but having known people who have met their significant other through online dating, I have some respect for the process.

 

Interestingly enough, I started watching the show after I finished watching the movie From Up on Poppy Hill for the second time. The contrast in dating between the show and the movie was striking! Granted, they are not only represent two different cultures, they represent two different time periods. From Up on Poppy Hill is based in post-Korean War Japan, focusing on two students who fall in love unexpectedly. I encourage everyone to see the movie – it is funny and cute and has a great soundtrack and, of course, directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli.

 

Catfish shows that a relationship takes time to develop and does not necessarily rely on physical closeness. From Up on Poppy Hill shows that a relationship can occur in an instant and can last. What does this mean for contemporary adults and young adults? Which dating style should we put our trust in? Is love-at-first-sight real?

 

*CUE ELLEN-STYLE DANCING*

Keep it cool. What’s the name of this post? I can’t remember, but it’s alright, a-alright. JUST DATE. It’s gonna be okay. Da-da doo-doo-doo. JUST DATE. You’ve got a message bud. Da-da doo-doo-doo. Just date. Gonna be okay. D-d-d-date. Date, date, just j-j-just date.

An Open Discussion About Beliefs and Nursing

Today I attended the first meeting for a club called Nursing Students for Reproductive Health and Justice. It is a long title, but it is meant to be all-encompassing. We had a discussion about where we want the club to go and what we want to do. The six of us shared our reason for joining and wanting to participate in the club – mine being to learn and provide the best care for my future patients. Unlike some club members, I had no personal experiences relating to the club but tried to express my (possibly naïve) wish to help the community by connecting people with resources that could help them.

At one point we talked about abortion. Now, as many people are aware, abortion is condoned by the Catholic Church. One person reflected on the experience of having a professor proclaim a personal stance on abortion. It made the person not want to discuss abortion with the professor because their personal stances on abortion differed. I found it terribly unfortunate – not necessarily the fact that the professor stated a personal stance on abortion (I suppose everyone has a right to do that in certain environments), but the fact that dialogue was seemingly stunted because of the assumption that the professor would not be able to converse openly about a popular and controversial topic.

Cannot one discuss a topic with another without devolving into an argument or debate? Unfortunately nowadays it seems as if it is an impossible endeavor. Maybe that is why many refuse to talk about politics or politely defer in contentious discourse. Referring to my previous blog post about a particularly heartfelt conversation with my friend, maybe war is taboo because communication is stunted in so many levels of society by the impression (or dare I say assumption?) that personal beliefs are limiting to a holistic view, particularly religious beliefs.

I once argued in a high school paper about the death penalty (interestingly enough, part of a religion class curriculum) that my personal beliefs are validated by my own thoughts and feelings, not by an organization. I based my written argument on data, logic, and reason and my points were justifiable. I vaguely remember writing that if I had simply founded my thoughts and feelings only by the teachings of the Catholic Church and not by my own analysis and contemplation, I would consider myself a cult member.

The point of this post/rant is to encourage everyone to become comfortable with open dialogue. Communication is truly fundamental in every kind of relationship, whether it be societal, political, religious, or otherwise.