Author: Cody

24 year old RN coming to a hospital near you! Seattle born and raised. 4'11" of sass, puns and nerdy facts. I am perpetually hungry for ice cream and always down for deep talks and pondering the existential realities of the universe.  Twitter handle: Facebook URL:

The Key to a Happy Heart is Patience

Patience and Love

Anything worth having, whether it is a friendship or your next love story, takes time to bloom. Each requires both parties to be on the right page. I am going to use my best friend in this example because despite the fact that I love her to death and I cannot picture who I am or what I would be without her, our friendship has needed so much time to get to where it is today. Any relationship involves two unique individuals with their own experiences and timelines. We grew up together and spent the first few years of our lives being annoyed at each other.

Fifth grade we finally became real friends. 7th grade drama came around and our friendship was pulled apart by outside influences and necessary circumstances. We both had a bitch phase that we needed to grow out of and pride to suck up. Coincidentally, we ended up at the same high school so this friendship was able to bloom and breathe on its own. And we have been able to maintain it going to different colleges and a 2 hour distance involving texting every day and copious amounts of effort.

I am partially a believer in the mantra “fuck those who don’t make an effort to be in your life”, but that is selfish and limiting. Yes, you should not wait around for those people and mope around that they don’t want to be there, but we should also give them leeway and understand that they have their own battles and hurdles to overcome. A person will come around through their own will and means and not when it is convenient for us. If that person comes back into your life and you understand this journey they had to go through to make it here then you have a good starting point for a lasting relationship. Don’t wait around for a person to change but when they do, meet them where they are rather than keeping the door closed.

When it comes to a new possible relationship, it is also helpful to keep this mindset because that person will not always be in the same place as you are and trying to force them to feel something they don’t can only push them away. Some people need time for overcoming solidarity, unpacking their baggage or coming back into the world of dating. It is great when two people are in the same place and everything clicks into place, but life isn’t always sunshine and roses. People are constantly changing and evolving and it is our job as fellow humans to respect this divine process as Charles Darwin would have us do. I, for one, hope to evolve into Charizard and bring my relationships alive with the fire of my sassy personality. Keep it classy, bitches.

 

The only person you are in control of is yourself. Why it's your secret weapon.

Someone one told me that my first language is emotions. My reaction was "oh shit. I never thought of that." As I pondered it, I realize how true that was and how relevant it was to my life. Yes I can be introverted and I love my alone time but my degree of emotional intelligence has allowed me to be entirely self-aware, introspective and perceptive and vulnerable as well to several people and situations.  Life is chaotic but I find clarity and solace through reading, nights of journaling and unexpected but much appreciated deep talks and heart to hearts. At this point in my life I am at a standstill. I am in between school and currently job hunting. But at the moment I am writing this, I can honestly say that it is well with my soul.  

  Humans were created by God to be relational beings. In life there are many types of relationships, such as those forged in a certain time of your life where you don’t talk everyday but can pick up from where you left off when you meet up, to a relationship with your best friends whom you talk to everyday, and the one-of-a-kind relationship between a mother and daughter. I have realized the importance of consistency in relationships. If there is one thing a person should do in their life is to always cultivate the relationships with those people who help you grow. I love having many close friends because I am able to compartmentalize myself into various people. For example, I can talk openly about bodily fluids with one person and another I can vent about my home life based on these common threads that we share as people. This way I can vent and make myself a healthier person but also I am not giving all of myself to one person alone.

 

When it comes to my mom, I am at the stage in life where I am adult and she can talk to me about more serious things and it is at the point where we are able to share life experiences with each other, which has really strengthened our relationship with one another. She knows me better than anybody else and I feel comfortable enough to be completely vulnerable and am grateful for all of her insight and advice.

 

  Another great thing about relationships is the fact that you can discover common threads formed through having similar upbringings and life stories. I can tell my best friend absolutely anything but sometimes she doesn’t understand where I am coming from with certain aspects of my life so it is nice to have someone who I can relate to has been or is currently in my shoes.

 

Through my realization of this relational aspect of humanity, I have discovered some other things about life.

Singing in the car at the top of my lungs to complete strangers is therapeutic. Everything about it literally and figuratively screams “I don’t give two fucks about what people think of me and I’m going to do what makes me happy”. There is so much joy I find in this activity because I honestly don’t care about how bad I sound to these people and secretly I think getting sung to makes people’s days a little bit more interesting. They may give weird looks but it is definitely not an occurrence that happens to them on the daily. So you’re welcome, for whatever I caused to stir up in you, lucky bystander and involuntary audience member of mine.

 The little things make a huge difference.I have always been fascinated with the concept of the red string of fate which connects individuals. I used to watch the show Touch, which is about a boy who used to be able to interpret the sequence of fate and his dad would run around New York trying to find these people who are supposed to meet one another.I was on the bus and  I noticed these two kids sitting near the part where the bus swivels in the middle (which I hate by the way, motion sickness…). As they were getting off, one of the boy’s phones fell out of his pocket onto the seat and I was able to nudge him just in time. He thanked me and I smiled back as he walked off the bus. I will probably never see him again but I live for those moments of being to impact somebody else’s life in a small way. Through my clinical experiences, I have enjoyed my time with my patients and the relationships I was able to create in the short time that I spent taking care of them. This concreted my desire to become a nurse and impact lives. The world is really ours for the taking and there is so much to gain from interactions with other people’s experiences. I feel like sometimes people underestimate the power that they have in changing lives just by living their own lives.

 

Every encounter happens for a reason.  Relationships are an important aspect of life but they will not always be good ones. There is always going to be someone who has hurt you and made you want to shut yourself out from ever trusting somebody else, from ever going out of your shell for fear of rejection and fear of experiencing pain. I learned recently that physical and emotional pain share the same neural pathways in the brain. I never discovered the truth of that until my first breakup. But it’s real. I have experienced broken friendships and dealt with the pain associated with wishing life was different, wishing that a person could be different. But all of this time spent being angry and hurt does no good to my emotional well-being. It’s like the idea that anger is a poison that you drink in hope’s that it will harm the other person. The only harm is the harm done to you.

 As humans it is natural for us to close ourselves off and metaphorically “shrink our soul” to protect it from further damage or betrayal. There is no point in drawing a smaller circle. When Jesus was dying on the cross he drew bigger circles and reached out to those who hurt him. It’s about putting yourself in the hurt people’s shoes and understanding that they may not know any better. It is very similar to the idea of turning the other cheek or the golden rule but in a way that really speaks to me.  I am not going to get into my upbringing but I know that shutting myself off and choosing anger and hurt only makes things harder for me. You may not be able to change a situation or a person’s behavior towards you, but you can change your response to negativity in such a way that it is well with your soul no matter the circumstances.

Life is constantly changing but I know that as long as I can choose to respond positively to the inglorious parts, I can make myself a better person to continue to cultivate my relationships and grow even more as a person. The world is a poisonous place if you allow that poison to consume you. 

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