Divisions

I try to keep my life in divisions. There's work, school, and personal life.

School and personal life are merging, finally. I am happy for that. It means less frustration, and more freedom to be myself.

But work...? I often feel like I'm putting on a mask and making up shit. For whatever reason, I'm not comfortable sharing my personal life or my school plans with most of my co-workers. And let's not even get into my religious beliefs -- that is a subject for another time, another day. Suffice to say I'm neither as religious as I appear here (where I often post only the "highs" of spirituality) or as atheistic as I appear at work (where I often seek to distance myself from the crazy radicals). I'm somewhere in-between; I have my beliefs, but they're just that... beliefs. I guess I feel like people at work will judge me, and so I distance myself in that way.

The people who I work with often know much more of the true me. That is, the people I laugh and joke around with... show random pictures on my phone, have inside jokes with, whatever. Ironically, the true test seems to be the infamous "Am I Facebook friends with them?"

And oh boy -- do I get nervous when I add a new co-worker on Facebook. That's where the division crumbles and they figure out who I am. It might be quite different from how they imagined me. Or maybe not. Who knows.

But the majority of my co-workers think I'm maybe going into public health; maybe thinking about pursuing a graduate degree. They don't know I love midwifery, because many of them make fun of female EMTs who end up working in reproductive health, and I just don't want to deal with that. (Well, that's what I tell myself. It's more probable that my true reason is that I am scared of failure and being stuck as an EMT forever.... lol.) There's apparently some debate about whether I'm in a relationship, engaged, or married... and although I try to clear that one up, somehow most end up thinking I'm engaged (because obviously a ring on my finger means an engagement ring, right??? No). Probably because of my reluctance to talk about my relationship at all; I guess it's just a sort of private matter to me that I only talk about with my closer friends.

I'm not sure what my reason for posting this is anymore. Maybe just a splattering of my own thoughts about everything. It's certainly helping me think through stuff. It's probably painful for you to read, though! I may go through this later and delete most of it, because it is a bit long and unnecessary. Hah!

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Resolution: I'm going to try to be more positive on this blog. I got depressed reading back the past few entries.... so let's be clear. No, I'm not depressed. I am stressed, and I am dealing with life as best I know how. I have good days and bad. I've struggled through a lot in my life, but I'm emerging on the other side of it (or that's what the occupational therapy interview told me... yay for helping OT friends with their interview homework!) and I draw strength from it as surely as I struggle with it. I'm not all put-together, but I'm certainly not falling apart. I'm no longer stuck in a survival game.

I am blessed to be where I am, living the life I am. There's no way around it -- and that's where a lot of my spirituality comes from.

Life shouldn't have turned out this way for me.