Posts

Quiet - Moral Distress and Mental Health Nursing

I hadn't talked to anyone outside of work in four days. Going out last night was a strenuous task. The idea of leaving my apartment and meeting new people, hanging out with a friend from my Margaret House days seemed like a well-conceived plan but it didn't translate well into practice.  I'm not sure why but lately I find myself not having the energy to make new social relationships. This lack of interest in being social combined with hanging out with three people slightly my junior in different places in their lives boozing while I remained sober proved an unpleasant combination. I found myself being increasingly irritating by being told that I am incredibly fascinating because I: "don't emote". What the fuck does that mean anyway? That's not a compliment. Well, I'll fucking tell you right now: To express emotion, especially in an excessive or theatrical manner. That's not a fucking compliment...Especially when this is followed up with, "You ...

Is this really all there is?

Each day I find myself increasingly dissatisfied with everything.  Right now I am watching Qiuncy , which if you do not know is an old tv show about a medical examiner (like orig Crossing Jordan I suppose). The episode is about a young adult that has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia who kills his family insighting a debate about how mental illness must be treated in accordance with the legal system. Whatever. As I watch this I realize that attitudes towards mental illness have not changed that much since the 1970s.  We think we've come a long way but there is still the same amount of stigma and misunderstanding attached to mental illness. This show is really about fear I suppose because it is a complete pile of bullshit that most schizophrenics have command hallucinations telling them to commit crimes such as murder which they compulsively follow. http://www.world-schizophrenia.org/   Blah blah blah blah.  This sucks.    Love,  Michelle D.

The Hardest Thing I Have Ever Had to Do

Kelly (my life partner) is in Calgary right now on business.  We live in Vancouver. I am sitting alone in a cold apartment watching the local news with a feeling of intense sadness is my heart related to mostly PMS but also partly feeling inadeqeute for not being able to force myself to finish my masters thesis and partly because I really miss my family right now.  I feel maybe a little more like I want my family here because I know that without me there are only my brother and mother back in Calgary which means it is mostly my mother alone in the house with the tv blaring and missing her dead husband, my father. So today I feel like I have lost my will to live and a cancelled free haircut has driven me to nearly giving up on everything.  Sometimes I wonder if the reason why I cling to this thing that is my unfinished thesis is because it is a part of me that began with my father and I feel like if it is over then I am losing part of him. Does that even make sense?  ...

When I was in high school I wrote a zine

Those of you that knew me may or may not remember it. It was called S.P.O.R.E.S. An acronym that stood for nothing. Anyhoo, I was browsing through my word documents and I found some stuff that I wrote another zine that I was going to begin putting out post-S.P.O.R.E.S that I never finished. Here's a dismal piece of teen angst...although I just turned 20 when I wrote it. What the fuck happened to the 5 years in between then and now? University I suppose. Whisper softly to me, the words I want to hear… I am incredibly tired right now, you couldn’t even imagine…hmmm…actually you probably could. No sleep and a lot of coffee make Michelle a bitchy, bitchy, horribly irritable girl. Jesus, how the hell do I even keep friends? The last four days have lasted at least three weeks. I wake up early, go out come home a 3 a.m., repeat. The other night I couldn’t even think straight, I had no fucken clue what day it was. That’s not saying much though because right now I’m not really sure what day...

So I did it: Pop Media and the Gender Stereotype

I watched the infamous fight between Elisabeth and Rosie on YouTube. The issue is that she's a pretty white Republican, and Rosie O'Donnell is an overweight lesbian liberal. There are many things I dislike about The View in general, mainly because of the ridiculous discussions they have, which all the hosts engage in. However, Elisabeth Hasselbeck is simply an idiot. She was on Survivor Season 2, right? She lost? But she's pretty, so she's on a show that's supposed to be a new-type talk show, and she's supposed to represent the opinions of 20-something American women? In all honesty, she appears to be an incredibly uninformed conservative. I'm not sure what her background in journalism is, and I'm not sure what her educational background is, but nonetheless, it seems she gets all her information from Googling things. I don't understand why she seemingly views everything so black-and-white and is so quick to defend the American government, believing...