Tachycardia.
I decided that it would be a good idea to have normal human contact. And even realizing that at this point I don't know what that means in its full scope, the idea of normal, of having thoughts ideas patterns that others could identify with and comment on in a way that's productive beyond a coworker nodding and saying "well in life, sometimes you have hard decisions," I knew I needed a perspective outside my own. Outside that which would do the other party some benefit, persuading my decision.
A coworker who knows nothing of the sleepless nights, a coworker who knows nothing of the exhaustion of not being able to make a decision that is in any way productive or tenable towards this thing you know to be progress, life, success. I have no idea what it's like, to know the goal early on in life, to know it and to work towards it, to work towards a thing like retirement in a career you started in your twenties. A passion that you found in your twenties and stuck with. How do you make a decision like that? My kingdom for the ability to see the fork in the road and to be able to say with assurance, "Gentlemen! To the right!!"
An outside perspective was needed, and knowing no other way to go about getting it, the same methods were tried: a liberal application of gin, and talking to a face that would nod and simultaneously begin talking of their own failings; a talk that would get you precisely nowhere.
So I find myself relegated to a basement that smells of sweat, and of cat piss.
What am I doing? I hate this question. This question is the bane of my existence. What am I doing? Thirty years old and still finding out, how to get it. A melody that bites bitterly ironically horridly sophomoric in my brain. There are two options.
I have never been good at making decisions. I will start school this winter, but is that what I want? I have learned to hate people my age who are successful. And I have no idea how to quantify the idea in my head that measures the person I deem successful; I know only that they have attributes that I don't. Because I don't deem myself successful.
Too many, too much. Too many failures and I want too quickly to write things off as a character fault of my own. The world is full of tragedies. We are never too old to begin again. This is what I tell the kids. The Great Lie. We are never too old to begin again when I don't even believe it myself. Still trying to make up for mistakes that were never mine in the first place. Are you fucking serious? And crying?! Crying gets you nowhere but with an icepack on your face four AM trying to make yourself presentable for work. I can't believe the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps bullshit that I try to peddle on everyone but myself. How do I take myself seriously. Do I?
I told him, it's grad school, or paramedic school. I am thirty years old. I don't know why I look in the mirror and see twenty-three and say thirty and it feels anathema. Like the blood in my veins is different than the blood I feel in my core. There is still enough time to make a monumental decision like that, right? After all, Grandpa J didn't start in Rocky River until he was 31. One year to go and right now it feels like eons.
The thought process: I didn't choose Guidance. It was the easy fit for the time, the thing that paid the bills and something that I was comfortable enough with to make it stick. But I chose emergency response. When I go out on calls, I feel the adrenaline in my blood stream. There is a checklist you go down in your mind, on the way to the call. My last full arrest was a little over a week ago and though now in my self-conscious state I question my decisions, at the time the course of action was clear. And the eyes are something you never forget. Cold hollow blank stare his shirtless body bloated and blue, dyspnea and cardiac arrest and there is a prescribed set of motions that your hands begin and after a time, the mind follows. As much as you question yourself afterwords, your hands flow like well trained pilots to the tools in your bag and you put the instruments together as best you know and you make life happen. To the best of your ability. I would want someone like myself standing over myself, in that instance.
Why is that a hard thing to say?
So, it's grad school or PRN and paramedic school. I don't know why I sell myself short. I pray only for the ability to stop. For those same hands to work as calculatedly and as confidentedly on my own life. Down to go up. Money, at the end of the day, should not be the factor. I have no idea why I am so terrified of the future. In all honesty, I think I know what I want. I am too close to my own thoughts to see them in perspective, and I am too much my own worst enemy to do myself any good. If you care about me, this summer ask me if I am in grad school and if I am fulfilled. Or if I am on ambulance runs and working closer to running on life flight. We get one life. There is no playing it safe. There is no back-up plan. Is there?
A coworker who knows nothing of the sleepless nights, a coworker who knows nothing of the exhaustion of not being able to make a decision that is in any way productive or tenable towards this thing you know to be progress, life, success. I have no idea what it's like, to know the goal early on in life, to know it and to work towards it, to work towards a thing like retirement in a career you started in your twenties. A passion that you found in your twenties and stuck with. How do you make a decision like that? My kingdom for the ability to see the fork in the road and to be able to say with assurance, "Gentlemen! To the right!!"
An outside perspective was needed, and knowing no other way to go about getting it, the same methods were tried: a liberal application of gin, and talking to a face that would nod and simultaneously begin talking of their own failings; a talk that would get you precisely nowhere.
So I find myself relegated to a basement that smells of sweat, and of cat piss.
What am I doing? I hate this question. This question is the bane of my existence. What am I doing? Thirty years old and still finding out, how to get it. A melody that bites bitterly ironically horridly sophomoric in my brain. There are two options.
I have never been good at making decisions. I will start school this winter, but is that what I want? I have learned to hate people my age who are successful. And I have no idea how to quantify the idea in my head that measures the person I deem successful; I know only that they have attributes that I don't. Because I don't deem myself successful.
Too many, too much. Too many failures and I want too quickly to write things off as a character fault of my own. The world is full of tragedies. We are never too old to begin again. This is what I tell the kids. The Great Lie. We are never too old to begin again when I don't even believe it myself. Still trying to make up for mistakes that were never mine in the first place. Are you fucking serious? And crying?! Crying gets you nowhere but with an icepack on your face four AM trying to make yourself presentable for work. I can't believe the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps bullshit that I try to peddle on everyone but myself. How do I take myself seriously. Do I?
I told him, it's grad school, or paramedic school. I am thirty years old. I don't know why I look in the mirror and see twenty-three and say thirty and it feels anathema. Like the blood in my veins is different than the blood I feel in my core. There is still enough time to make a monumental decision like that, right? After all, Grandpa J didn't start in Rocky River until he was 31. One year to go and right now it feels like eons.
The thought process: I didn't choose Guidance. It was the easy fit for the time, the thing that paid the bills and something that I was comfortable enough with to make it stick. But I chose emergency response. When I go out on calls, I feel the adrenaline in my blood stream. There is a checklist you go down in your mind, on the way to the call. My last full arrest was a little over a week ago and though now in my self-conscious state I question my decisions, at the time the course of action was clear. And the eyes are something you never forget. Cold hollow blank stare his shirtless body bloated and blue, dyspnea and cardiac arrest and there is a prescribed set of motions that your hands begin and after a time, the mind follows. As much as you question yourself afterwords, your hands flow like well trained pilots to the tools in your bag and you put the instruments together as best you know and you make life happen. To the best of your ability. I would want someone like myself standing over myself, in that instance.
Why is that a hard thing to say?
So, it's grad school or PRN and paramedic school. I don't know why I sell myself short. I pray only for the ability to stop. For those same hands to work as calculatedly and as confidentedly on my own life. Down to go up. Money, at the end of the day, should not be the factor. I have no idea why I am so terrified of the future. In all honesty, I think I know what I want. I am too close to my own thoughts to see them in perspective, and I am too much my own worst enemy to do myself any good. If you care about me, this summer ask me if I am in grad school and if I am fulfilled. Or if I am on ambulance runs and working closer to running on life flight. We get one life. There is no playing it safe. There is no back-up plan. Is there?
