RN

Today was the day that I became a Registered Nurse.

Do you know what a pathetic fallacy is?  It's when the weather matches your mood.  Thunder and lightening when you're angry.  Pouring, gray rain when you're at a funeral of someone you love.  Snow and ice when you're frustrated. 

Sun when everything has turned out like you've always dreamed. 

It is a sunny, sunny day.  


I knew I wanted to be a nurse on September 11th, 2001.  I was in high school, sixteen years old.  I was still awkward and to some extent still that shy girl who was comfortable at home, by herself.  Then I saw the rubble, and the chaos, and the heartbreak, and I wanted to help.  Not donate blood or organize a fundraiser, or start a prayer group.  I wanted to physically be there.  Out there.  Pushing away stone and ash.  Kneeling down and looking into others eyes.  I wanted to put a hand on their shoulder and a hand in their hand.  I wanted to be a nurse. 

I'm not going to sit here and talk about how it was a long and hard road.  It wasn't really.  I'm 25 and I'm a RN.  I'm on the road that I was always suppose to be on.  Yesterday I took my test and it was over faster than I thought.  I was done an hour into it.  I stepped outside and didn't know what to do with myself. 

Then I realized,  I can do anything. 

The doors have opened.  And they are wide. 


I knew, and I didn't.  I knew though.  I didn't have the results, but I knew.  I had a feeling that my life had changed. 

Besides, the fortune cookie told me on Thursday, and you can't argue with that. 

Especially in this house.  We have a track record of fortune cookies actually, you know, predicting fortunes. 

So, Life.

Welcome. 


Yes, I have to find a job now, but in the meantime, I'm going to celebrate. 

K's card that he gave me after my very last LPN shift.

Nursing is an art:
and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation,
as any painter's or sculptor's work;
for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble,
compared with having to do with the living body,
the temple of God's spirit?

It is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.

-Florence Nightingale