i am having a hard time in nursing school.
i just had to admit that to myself.
the discipline is hard, the not working is relaxing, but guilt trippy and stressful, and...the culture is rough.
i'm just not very cut out for passive aggressiveness. and the racism in the school., in its explicit and implicit ways, really affect me.
be tougher, be stronger.
and, just say, fuck em. cos all that matters in the end is that im a good nurse, not them. not these petty peons.
on a positive note, im going home to visit my family w M
i'm excited about that. about the break. about not having to go to school.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
i taste the thrill thumping in high school dance halls,
i shrink from the sharp pain racing from my father's tough callous hands
i hear his distance as stress sucks him ever further away
i smell the crisp fresh air of duino, blue, deep, clear, clean
i feel the way my mind is frozen, shocked, sudden, static.
i am searching.
for a way amid this confusion.
i shrink from the sharp pain racing from my father's tough callous hands
i hear his distance as stress sucks him ever further away
i smell the crisp fresh air of duino, blue, deep, clear, clean
i feel the way my mind is frozen, shocked, sudden, static.
i am searching.
for a way amid this confusion.
Still the diary of a disparaged CNA
its not over.
to have to breath deep,
again, not
giving up and sinking into this
slimy pool of their voices
silencing, drowning mine that is
yelling at the top of my lungs
to
be heard
acknowledged
and not to be
stifled
snuffed
under
accusations of aggressiveness hysteria and the many stabs
at my righteous rage.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Hello, world
It's been a minute since I wrote on this blog. I think partly it's cos I really disliked the layout of the blog but was too lazy/slow to change it. Blogspot has this "dynamic" option that looks kinda cool, but...actually really confused the fuck out of me. So back to simple option. If thats gonna make me write, it's worth it looking shittier :)
Small things count. I'm learning this in nursing school as well. Small things like how you have to take extra time to gear up in protective wear cos the patient is in isolation, makes it such that you dont go in as often to those rooms..and not surprisingly, that patient in isolation, who actually needs *more* care, actually gets the short end of it. So, need to fight against this instinct to be, yes, lazy, cos it has real impact on someone else's life.
Small things count. Like how it's stressful for me -- in the microaggressions piling up everyday sort of way -- and how I have to talk myself in my head into going to school, being excited, being interested to learn. It's too much minutia and kinda emotionally exhausting for me to revisit all the ways that my awful class mates grind me down, that I won't mention them all here. I get really irritated with myself for being angry. But, that's why I am mentally avoiding school and everything associated with it. Yes -- my other excuse besides just being a lazy bum right now.
On a positive note, I'm trying to channel all this anxiety and isolation in school toward more constructive ends. I'm trying not to be a loner in class -- which I had been for the past 2 quarters partly cos I have been wiped out from the organizing related to Occupy, and also partly cos I have been so annoyed with my classmates. But, those that I dislike don't speak for all of my classmates. There are some decent good people around and I am trying to make the effort to get to know them, to be more social and less, well, judgemental. Also, my friend S and I are going to start some kind of more radical nursing club kinda thing. So even though I have a lot of rage, I am trying to channel it and not let it burn me alive. Let's see how this works out.
I have been meaning to write longer pieces about the readings I have been doing. The Hunger Games (yes!), Fanon, Richard Wright and the like. I am trying to do more internal work and processing. I am missing something. I can't name it yet. But it's a part of me trying to understand what kind of a revolutionary and person I am, and am becoming. It is a humbling feeling.
Weird. Maybe it's me being paranoid but suddenly I am wondering how much of this vulnerability I am putting out here is going to be traced by the state and by haters. I did just get called a "fucking bitch" by some asshole whom I just flyered to. I grew up watching TV serials on how anti-colonial fighters got tortured by the Japanese imperialists and how comfort women were made of prisoners of war. Makes me pissed thinking about how the state was getting all us young ones paranoid and pumped up about nationalism and the like, when they themselves as such fuckin' collaborators with imperialism all through and through. I remember at a young age thinking through all the scenarios of torture, rape, assault and the like and reminding myself how I need to prepare for such a time and how to react so I won't betray my country. They just messed with my young psyche and emotions! I don't think this is unique to me. Many female bodied people have been taught to censor our bodies and actions fearing such moments. But some days this vulnerability feels stronger than others and I don't feel free. And sometimes I think there's something really wrong with me.
I don't feel free, and small things count.
There's a lot to be afraid of, and small things turn into big things quickly. The cold blooded murder of Trayvon Martin, the refusal of medical treatment for Anna Brown, the shooting of Rekia Boyd by the off duty cop...and then the ongoing assaults on free speech on campus, ease of arrests, secure communities...this is alot. What did Germany look like before rise of the Nazi party? How do we know where we are going? How do we change that course?
What strikes me particularly, is Fanon's last chapter in Wretched of the Earth, where he writes about the mental disorders caused by colonialism. I can't help but think about if Anna Brown had been a rich white woman, she would have been alive and treated with hella respect. But because she was a Black woman who had to be assertive to advocate for herself, she was hauled instead into jail and left to die, and refused care simply because she was profiled as a drug user. And...so drug users are refused medical care now? This kind of oppressive, white supremacist treatment *makes* people adapt to it in ways that warp and distort us.
Fanon's last chapter in Wretched, and the Dying Colonialism have been such powerful pieces. The Dying Colonialism has a powerful way of analyzing how colonialism shapes and warps the practices, culture and traditions of oppressed people. It has such a powerful and tangible way for understanding how struggle and revolutionary change is part of the transformation toward a new culture, new humanity, new being -- that is rooted in the present, that is rooted in change, that is movement. The man has some shitty gender politics but I still gotta say he was super ahead of his time.
I really crave being, in freedom
Small things count. I'm learning this in nursing school as well. Small things like how you have to take extra time to gear up in protective wear cos the patient is in isolation, makes it such that you dont go in as often to those rooms..and not surprisingly, that patient in isolation, who actually needs *more* care, actually gets the short end of it. So, need to fight against this instinct to be, yes, lazy, cos it has real impact on someone else's life.
Small things count. Like how it's stressful for me -- in the microaggressions piling up everyday sort of way -- and how I have to talk myself in my head into going to school, being excited, being interested to learn. It's too much minutia and kinda emotionally exhausting for me to revisit all the ways that my awful class mates grind me down, that I won't mention them all here. I get really irritated with myself for being angry. But, that's why I am mentally avoiding school and everything associated with it. Yes -- my other excuse besides just being a lazy bum right now.
On a positive note, I'm trying to channel all this anxiety and isolation in school toward more constructive ends. I'm trying not to be a loner in class -- which I had been for the past 2 quarters partly cos I have been wiped out from the organizing related to Occupy, and also partly cos I have been so annoyed with my classmates. But, those that I dislike don't speak for all of my classmates. There are some decent good people around and I am trying to make the effort to get to know them, to be more social and less, well, judgemental. Also, my friend S and I are going to start some kind of more radical nursing club kinda thing. So even though I have a lot of rage, I am trying to channel it and not let it burn me alive. Let's see how this works out.
I have been meaning to write longer pieces about the readings I have been doing. The Hunger Games (yes!), Fanon, Richard Wright and the like. I am trying to do more internal work and processing. I am missing something. I can't name it yet. But it's a part of me trying to understand what kind of a revolutionary and person I am, and am becoming. It is a humbling feeling.
Weird. Maybe it's me being paranoid but suddenly I am wondering how much of this vulnerability I am putting out here is going to be traced by the state and by haters. I did just get called a "fucking bitch" by some asshole whom I just flyered to. I grew up watching TV serials on how anti-colonial fighters got tortured by the Japanese imperialists and how comfort women were made of prisoners of war. Makes me pissed thinking about how the state was getting all us young ones paranoid and pumped up about nationalism and the like, when they themselves as such fuckin' collaborators with imperialism all through and through. I remember at a young age thinking through all the scenarios of torture, rape, assault and the like and reminding myself how I need to prepare for such a time and how to react so I won't betray my country. They just messed with my young psyche and emotions! I don't think this is unique to me. Many female bodied people have been taught to censor our bodies and actions fearing such moments. But some days this vulnerability feels stronger than others and I don't feel free. And sometimes I think there's something really wrong with me.
I don't feel free, and small things count.
There's a lot to be afraid of, and small things turn into big things quickly. The cold blooded murder of Trayvon Martin, the refusal of medical treatment for Anna Brown, the shooting of Rekia Boyd by the off duty cop...and then the ongoing assaults on free speech on campus, ease of arrests, secure communities...this is alot. What did Germany look like before rise of the Nazi party? How do we know where we are going? How do we change that course?
What strikes me particularly, is Fanon's last chapter in Wretched of the Earth, where he writes about the mental disorders caused by colonialism. I can't help but think about if Anna Brown had been a rich white woman, she would have been alive and treated with hella respect. But because she was a Black woman who had to be assertive to advocate for herself, she was hauled instead into jail and left to die, and refused care simply because she was profiled as a drug user. And...so drug users are refused medical care now? This kind of oppressive, white supremacist treatment *makes* people adapt to it in ways that warp and distort us.
Fanon's last chapter in Wretched, and the Dying Colonialism have been such powerful pieces. The Dying Colonialism has a powerful way of analyzing how colonialism shapes and warps the practices, culture and traditions of oppressed people. It has such a powerful and tangible way for understanding how struggle and revolutionary change is part of the transformation toward a new culture, new humanity, new being -- that is rooted in the present, that is rooted in change, that is movement. The man has some shitty gender politics but I still gotta say he was super ahead of his time.
I really crave being, in freedom
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