I said it, “I love you”
It’s taken almost 4 years before I finally said I love my job.
I have had many conversations about my job and often at the end of it people either tell me or my mother that they sure can tell I love my job.
“Her face lights up when she talks about it.”
"She must love what she does."
My response to that has always been a bit taken aback and denying any love for the job. I would confirm by saying, “I don’t know about love, but I do really enjoy it.”
Don’t get me wrong, I really really enjoy my job. But I could not bring myself to say I love it.
It seems ridiculous, I’m aware, just say it, clearly you do.
I’ve come to learn over the past few years to be very careful how I describe my emotions and things in my life. Especially when it comes to love. I’m great with the sarcasm, but getting down to real emotions isn’t my favourite and I've been okay with that.
Here’s what I’ve learned over the past few years...
Putting great emotion into things means you care.
It means you actually have something to lose if it gets taken away. That terrifies me. I’ve had SO MANY things “taken” from me over the past few years. Health being the biggest and most affected. **I know everybody has losses, I know I’m not special there. But I’m learning how that’s affected me.
It’s made me put up some decent sized walls and REALLY guard my heart and mind. It’s made sure that I keep things I treasure at a distance and to be aware of attachments.
When it comes down to my job, I know my body can change at a drop of a hat and that terrifies me. I’ve said things like this before, life can change for anyone but my life already has hindrances that I know about. This makes me even more hyper aware of my potential future challenges. But it does, it terrifies me to know that one day I might not be able to do this job that I love doing. That one day my brain might stop functioning at a level that’s required of my job. Or I lose strength or heaven forbid bladder function, (that’s a real and terrifying thing), ability to walk or talk. These are real MS symptoms and maybe I will never have to deal with them, but maybe, just maybe I will. That scares me.
But this passed week, having people straight up ask me if I love my job I’ve of late had a hard time saying no. Or even just “I really like my job”.
I love the people I work with, my team of nurses and doctors. I love the cases I get to be involved in. I even love the patients, the funny, yelling at me, kind and grumpy. I’m honoured that I get to be apart of people’s lives who may just be having the worst day ever. Honoured that I get to use my life experience and my journey to maybe help them with theirs. I’m honoured that people come and let me take care of them.
So there, I’ve said it. I love my job.
I guess there’s no taking it back. :)
