“It makes me so happy.  To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing….A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs.  It’s the best possible time of being alive, when almost everything you thought you knew was wrong.” – Tom Stoppard

“When almost everything you thought you knew was wrong.”  It can be startling, that moment.  Jarring.  World-rocking.  I don’t know that I’ve thought about it as the best possible time of being alive, but isn’t that why we have writers in this world?  To open doors for us that we never even realized were there?

This is the end.  And the beginning.

I started this blog a year ago, thinking it would be light and fun and hopefully funny.  It morphed into something else.  We went through the name change from Orange Rhymes with Vodka (oh, my sweet, sweet vodka!) to So says the psych nurse.  We talked about all sorts of feelings and betrayals and successes and challenges.  Well, I talked.  Rambled.  You mostly seemed to listen, bless you.

We’ve been in the condo for a year.  Both of my lovelies are in high school.  They are growing into WOMEN, I tell you.  Strong women.  Brave women.  I sure as hell hope mostly KIND women.  They are pushing back and pushing boundaries and pushing through and I couldn’t be more proud.  Parenting isn’t easy.  It’s thrilling and heart-breaking and terrifying and mostly worth every sleepless night it creates.

I’ve learned about me in the context of relationship.  I’ve learned what I’ll put up with (too much) and when my boundaries are finally annihilated so completely that I have no choice but to rebuild stronger, better walls.  Walls with doors and windows, but sturdy walls, nonetheless.  Those walls are unfamiliar but so far feel safe.  Comforting.  Protective.

And now I embark on school.  Again.  RN to MSN for my Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner’s license.  And it’s a lot.  It’s work and teen girls and school and a household to run.  And so the blog to write isn’t quite making the list, anymore.

And there’s the end.  I always thought of myself as a writer.  I have a writing degree.  I have ideas for what that first novel will be (hell, I have several chapters of that first novel on this computer!).

But you know what?  Right now, I’m a mom.  And a psych nurse.  And a student.  And that is enough.  That is more than enough.  And so while I feel like I’m kind of giving up on my writing dream, I suppose the truth is closer to the fact that I’m shifting dreams right now.  I love being a psychiatric nurse.  I love mental health.  I love sitting with people in their darkest moments, just being there.  Being present.  Listening.  No, it’s no novel.  I won’t be on Oprah’s book club list.  I won’t be doing book tours.

But to the patient who wants to die and needs an ear/a shoulder, I’ll be there.  To my daughter who just had a lousy day at school and requires ice cream, I’ll be there.  To my professor who is demanding a five page paper, APA style, I’ll be there.

But writing a blog for the next three years?  Regularly, anyway?  Probably not.

One thing I HAVE learned is that I have to prioritize.  I cannot do it all.  I think some people can, but I am not one of those people.  I have to focus the energy I have on the most important things:  girls, work, school.

Thanks for reading along with me for the past year.  Thanks for indulging my self-reflection.  Thanks for the love.  And I may pop back on here from time to time if the muse grabs me by the hair and demands that I do so.  But for now, this is the end.  But for me, it’s the beginning.  I have a lot to learn.