I read somewhere that we each have three faces. the face that I see, the face that others see, and the face that neither sees.
I also know that we each have different faces for each of the people we have to be..so as a mother, a nurse, and a rescuer..i may actually have 9 faces altogether.
wow..that's a lot of faces to keep track of when I think about it.
yesterday afternoon, end of the day, all 8 of us are back in our pod finishing up our charting for the day. one of the nurses asks..how's it going carol up at the farm?
I make a face,and say, not all that great and she says...awww did one of the animals die? and I say no the animals are fine, its people shit. we are all still charting or working on the computers, but we always listen to each other and chat back and forth while we are charting or working on the computers. so someone asks..what's going on? I say...oh, there's a bunch that do not like me and think i'm a bitch.
seven chairs spin around and out of seven dropped jaws comes the word..huh? the look of shock on their faces was actually kind of funny.
but the reality is...the carol that they know and love for the past 15 years is the carol they know as a nurse. that carol is cheerful, cooperative, helpful, she is kind and generous, intelligent and skilled...she is actually kind of funny and jokes around quite a bit. they cannot possibly conceive how anyone could possibly NOT like me.
I am chuckling here because I can bet folks from saints who are reading this description of myself, think I am on crack. that is not even close to the person they see here and they are right...its not.
and is that not interesting that both groups actually do know me really well but both see totally different faces of the exactly same carol.
do i I have multiple personalities?>..I don't think so. I just think that different circumstances and different situations and different kinds of demands on the very same person can bring out different parts of the very same carol.
I think I am a nicer person at work as a nurse because all I have to do in a day is my actual work. I am not "the boss," I am just part of the herd. no one expects anything unusually exceptionally special of me except that I be a good and competent nurse.
anyway, I think it is interesting that I can go from one extreme to the other in the same day. I am pretty sure that is the real reason I am reluctant to retire, it feels good to be well liked for 8 hours a day.
I keep on stirring up the debate on purpose lori...I really want to get folks thinking and thinking and thinking about this over and over again, from every possible angle.
we all encounter people we don't like or agree with, every single days of our lives. and we suck it up and deal with it. but the issue here that sometimes pops up is misconception that I am the one responsible to act as the chameleon, I am to change my color and polka-dots and stripes to match the needs of whoever it is that comes here...and there are a lot of people who come here and I don't want to have to change myself that much, it is freaking exhausting.
what I really want to get across is two things...one is I am not doing the whole costume changing thing because it would make me a lie and two..i don't have to do it anyway because the only purpose in coming here is to help take care of the animals and bring some light to their lives. there is NO other reason for being here.
it is not and never has been to remake me into someones version of the more acceptable me.
and until we finally all get this thru our heads,once and for all... people will continue to stir up the pot and blame me for all I am not. it has happened four times in the past 9 years and I want it to stop. it has nothing to do with how I rescue animals..no one has a problem with how I do that.
right now I feel like I have to fight for the right to live MY life. none of the people at saints have any right to expect or brow beat or guilt me into living someone elses vision of what my life SHOULD be.
that is when THEIR rights infringe upon MY rights.
and the really interesting thing is..whether folks support and agree with me or not..they are all watching me fight for my right to be me alone because none of them know how they can help me.
I don't know how to help me either, that's why I keep obsessing and trying to figure it out.
I will eventually get there, just don't read the blog for awhile.