Games of Light and Shadow

There's been a niggling darkness with me today. School took a more complicated hop, anticipated and known, but now reality as we get to the threshhold of what some might call "the basics" and peer over the precipice that leads into the vast ocean of "real nursing". In other words, we are having our skills exam on medication administration next week. It makes my mouth go dry. I gave my first injection last week and it was no problem. I can work on and with a patient without breaking a sweat. But put me in front of an instructor, whose job it is to judge me, and my knees start to buckle. I am so freaking anxious inside, and it leads to that little forest always on the periphery of my mind, the one I can go into so easily if I don't keep my eyes firmly forward...the one of memories that are dark and hazy and full of guilt, of self esteem that took a beating growing up, literally and figuratively, and still whispers mean things in my ear. The one that flashes images that debilitate rather than motivate. It is a haunted forest and strangely hypnotic in its pull. I have to be so careful not to let myself go there, and I have danced all around the fringes of it today, flirting with tortured mental pictures of Joseph's suffering and of a girl who didn't think much of herself for many, many years, whispering seductively to me that this is someone else's life I am living, that all of these blessings and wonderful things are a fraud and who do I think I am, being so happy, feeling so competent, working so hard, so consistently. It is senseless really. I can pull myself back, give a good mental shake and feel it fall away...it is so much easier now than it used to be to do that. But it leaves me a little breathless, this anxiety. Sometimes I think that sinking into depressive, dark thoughts is a bad habit, a broken way of coping, a listless means for making excuses because something in me is intimidated and worried. It is far easier to be overwhelmed and helpless than it is to move forward despite my fears and concerns. A good friend actually posted this today on her Facebook page, not even knowing what's going on in my world at the moment....that being overwhelmed is the psyche's way of letting you off the hook and keeping you stuck where you are comfortable. I can and I will push past it, but I am weary of it. Joe is on his way home....the world is warm and breezy and full of sunlight. I have so much to be grateful for. Stop flirting with the darkness Sheri. It will always be there...you can go in any time you like. And right now, you don't. So don't.