Through Others

They’re so cute.

Can you really be happy for them?

Have you heard? He’s in love; giddy as a schoolboy, wholeheartedly absolutely caught up in her, and it’s so cute. Like little kids, he says. I can’t help but smile.

Why?

It makes me happy he’s happy. Even if he doesn’t think I give a shit.

I mean, I was the evil b*tch who gave up the relationship. Mental note to El, who also recently broke up with Mr D, I’ve said that so many times now that I feel very much like this image in my head of some cold hearted wretch who unemotionally and purposefully broke the heart of her partner for no reason at all.

It’s strange.

It makes me feel torn into two entities, the person I am, and the person I paint myself to be in my head. There’s an overlap, but at the moment, I’m not sure if the evil bitch is an exaggeration of sorts or someone I really am.

Love makes me happy though.

In the very least, watching the people I know find love again.

There’s a phrase; that we live vicariously through other people, that we share their hopes and fears, their tears and joy; that we live through reading and listening and watching their actions. I think that’s truer than what a lot of people think.

In the very least, I definitely feel like hearing about the happiness of others makes me a very happy person.

I guess everything happens for a reason.

Maybe it was for him to find her.

The Phone Conversation

I don’t know what brought it on, but something definitely snapped. With every word, I could feel the walls being built, higher and higher.

It was ‘Now, now, now.’

A conversation, with no proper resolve. A conversation, which aimed for nothing more than an issue at hand, whilst the two involved probably suffered more from its aftershock.

I didn’t expect it to be that way. I didn’t expect so much frustration in that conversation; I expected time to have lessened the pain, I expected to be able to discuss things rationally, I expected to be cold civility instead of the raw aggravation.

It has been awhile, and while nothing’s been organized officially, I didn’t expect that knee jerk reaction. There was so much raw emotion in his voice, so much emphasis on his need to be free of me, and have nothing at all, not even the slightest reminder that we were once together.

So starts the systematic process of erasing me from his life.

If that’s the way you want it, so be it.

But I can’t be like that.

So give me a break, albeit a short one, while I sit for the most important exams of my life.

I will get on it.

Honest.

I’m not trying to make excuses, and I’m not trying to make you out as someone you’re not. I know you have every right to want things to be sorted out, and to remove the reminders of the time we have together. I know you have a right to be upset.

I just hoped we could talk as friends.

Reality

The reality of working in the health services hit me last week.

Death.

It’s always a possibility, one I’ve always known. I’ve seen death before, and it’s something I’ve merely accepted as a part of life.

This time though, it was a patient. The very first patient I talked to in Ballarat.

e was a man with chronic liver failure, with a suggested background of alcoholism. We knew he would deteriorate, we knew there was nothing we could do for him but to make him as comfortable as we could.

Palliation, they call it.

But we knew. We knew he was going to die because there would be no chance of a liver transplant.

We knew.

And I knew. I had seen him every day, checked up on his condition. I had talked to him, seen him get worse and worse before my eyes; seen the signs classic of liver failure. The gradual confusion and pain, the gradual sleepiness as his brain started shutting down.

Last week the gravity hit me.

This man was going to die. And for some reason, it affected me a lot more than I expected it to. I felt my throat swell up as we walked down the hall and it surprised me, this sudden rush of emotion.

He died yesterday.

My first death.

And suddenly, it makes me realize the reality and gravity of why we do what we do.