Time Moves Fast...

I get home from my trip, and I blink, and I'm three weeks back in school, and already getting to the middle of April. Hard to believe that in about three and a half months, I'll be an RN. We're in the home stretch for the year - a lot of clinical time, and not nearly as much class time. I've seen a birth, and I've held, soothed, and fed newborns who came into the world in a rough way.

Still, my mind keeps wandering back to the West Coast - Portland and the Bay both went far better than I expected, and I miss it. I miss living somewhere where I make sense to people. And I keep contrasting the puritanical coldness and busyness of New England with the laid-back openness of the West Coast. At least spring is here - we've already had a couple of warm days, even if now the weather wants to trudge along in that not-quite-warm-enough-but-not-deathly-cold spring chill.

In Portland and in the Bay, what struck me was how fondly so many people had missed me. It turns out that a lot of what I thought would be the case was just my paranoia. People out there helped me realize I haven't become a different person, I'm just a more grounded, more even-keeled version of myself. A me with an actual longterm plan that is in motion, which, sad to say, is a new thing I'm doing in my thirties. I guess I'm finally getting really responsible, rather than living hand-to-mouth, day-to-day.

What keeps me going here are the crew of people I'm around. My class, we've all formed various bonds with each other. Some I'm close with, some we mainly just have the connection of going through this intense rollercoaster of a journey together. I can feel myself letting my guard down, bit by bit, as time goes on, learning to trust, learning that I can have a place in the world that isn't so damn marginal all the time. It's terrifying, but it feels good.