No Shame in Breaking

The voice of the ICU nurse is waning- she is exhausted, but she forces a smile as she tells me that if COVID happened now then she wouldn’t hesitate to go through it all again.

The PPE would make her want to scream and she would feel overwhelming anxiety, but patients would need her, so she would step into the unit and let her fears disappear for that shift.

She tells me that her pain will last forever, but she hopes to get to a point where she doesn’t feel broken but instead maybe cracked.

She leaves me feeling in awe as she isn’t afraid of imperfection because she knows that perfection doesn’t exist.

She has been forced to live and work an impossibly imperfect existence for the past two years and she is hurt and continues to hurt and she is not protecting me from that because it is important to be seen and to be heard as you really are, rather than an impression of you that you think will earn people’s approval.

She sees, hears, smells, tastes and touches uncontrollable and messy emotions of anguish, intense pain, fear, love, ecstasy and joy most shifts. She is a close acquaintance of death and knows the importance of life and living unshielded by fear.

She teaches me that there is no shame of breaking sometimes.