recollecting myself.

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.

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.

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.

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

Grrr....thoughts!

I have a barrage of stuff in my mind. As usual, I need to spill them before they explode in my brain.

1) Joy and comfort from hearing my parents' voice, even from afar.
The knowledge that this may not last forever.

2) Anger, deep anger and resentment of the nursing program.
Specifically, anger about the racism and classism within the program, including the obvious withholding of knowledge from CNAs in nursing homes. 1 quarter of being a nursing student, I feel I have more knowledge of my patients than 2 years of being a CNA. I am resentful. Also pissed about how nursing school is educating a whole generation of nurses to be punked on and to punk on CNAs. Reproducing the hierarchy of white supremacy, division of labor...etc etc

3) Sinking realization that industrialization and capitalist division of labor is primitive and backward. That a generation of industrial capitalists came up with an idea one day and disseminated it wholesale everywhere in a powerful way and this has changed our earth, our living, our bodies in ways unimaginable. In ways that made human life unworthy and equivalent to the products that we handle -- whether it be hogs, or cars, or in the case of caring labor, people with disabilities and the elderly. Industrialization and capitalist law of value dehumanizes in such a complete, unbelievable manner. I can't believe it. I rememeber not being able to believe when I was treated SO MUCH like shit, and again it's that whole feeling of incredulousness...

4) The pace of the movement -- D/OS, alongside being a student, a child to elderly parents, a friend etc - is unsustainable. Needing to rest, as I am right now, but also to figure out an involvement that is more sustainable. Understanding that this, is now, my new reality. Needing to figure out how to absorb this mentally, emotionally so every moment is not a crisis or a dilemma.

5) How to integrate all the energy from D/OS into workplace organizing -- or is workplace organizing obsolete at this point??

A Xmas day note

2011 is coming to an end.
Xmas day doesnt mean much to me except as a landmark. The week before the end of the year, a reminder that some things, tasks or mental notes, need time to wrap up for the new year's welcome.

I believe in new beginnings. Resolutions are a way to initiate them. I have collected lists of resolutions, and kept, only a mere few. Yet a mere few that has meant a lot to me.

The same time last year, I was not good. This same time this year, I am doing better. I would say much better except that I believe in jinxing myself. So, officially, I am doing slightly better :)

I feel like there's a lot in my head that needs to come out. Thats how I process and make real in my head the experiences my body takes me through.

Uncharted terrain

Writing has always brought me back to myself.

Since the Occupy movement has taken off, I have been gradually losing touch of myself. It is an irony, because it is precisely this moment of potential mass upheaval, the expansion of possibilities, that I feel that I, and many others around me, have sprung into, that coincides precisely with me losing a sense of myself. Where every work of creation begins with a work of destruction. It rings too true and I can't handle it.

I am afraid of the power that I simultaneously have and dont have. I am suddenly shocked by how much power this democracy offers me, and people around me. We have the power to make the powers that be, throw down their weight on us. We have the power to smash on their ideas. I have no illusion about the somewhat weak position we still are, and the challenges we confront. But for regular people like me, and everyone else around me, the sudden power we have is both beautiful and somewhat fearsome. I don't know if I have the mental, emotional resilience, stamina, and most importantly, the compassion of heart, to handle these moments.

I have felt myself become patient with emotions because, emotions are rough and tumble unpredictable things that throw me off my rocker. Does it build the revolution? No. It distracts me from the tasks I need to do. I know it's the wrong way to feel. It's a baggage of capitalism, a baggage that I have fought to resist, a baggage that my entire upbringing and schooling has trained me to be. But in moments of stress, I run auto-pilot and distance from that which destabilizes is wise.

And strange.

And strange because it has never been how I have seen myself. Strange because I have always been that emo kid who cried too easily about dolphins and laughed too loudly about inappropriate shits. I don't know. I just feel lost.

Or burned out.

I feel so nervous about the upcoming actions. the last time we organized something big like this, it flopped on us and all the relationships around us burned. Burned to a crisp that tore my heart, lost people whom I thought I loved. So, what now when this fails?

And the voice of the bureaucrats whom I had shut out for a while, relishing the new found joy, freedoms and sense of power that my community and I have struggled for, suddenly came back. Suddenly I heard their voices again that reminded me of  what we slide back into when this movement, if this movement, dies.

I fear my loss of inihibition. I love my loss of inhibition. I love the visions of a new world and I fear losing it and what awaits us if we do.

Days like this I realize that dreaming, actually, as cheesy as it sounds, takes a hell lot of strength, and super super thick skin.