Displacement

I cry at TV shows.

Listen, I had to take psychology for nursing school. I know that I am displacing my feelings and emotions from a stressful job. I’m a nurse at a pediatric hospital. I know your first response is, “I don’t know how you work with children.” How do I know? Because that is every single person’s response. Even today at the grocery store, the clerk asked me why I was off on a Monday. So the conversations starts:

“I am a nurse.”
“Oh a nurse! Where do you work?”
“At a children’s hospital.”
“Wow. I don’t know how you work with sick kids.”

But here’s the thing, I don’t know how other people do their jobs. I don’t know how you work with numbers all day. I don’t know how you deal with executives all day. I don’t know how you serve drinks all day. This thought process works for everyone because we are all made to do or be something that is intrinsically US.

So how do I work with children all day? I love it! I chose it because I knew that was where I belonged. In high school, I would spend the summers working at day camps for kids that focused on theatre and dance. Even in my first career as a dancer, I paid my bills by teaching dance classes to children. It’s where I always put myself. It makes sense to me.

But even though this is a calling to me, I still have days where I need to let some feelings go. So I watch terrible medical dramas where the doctors put their stethoscopes on the wrong way (I have no clue how they hear anything) and where you couldn’t find a nurse anywhere in sight. I attach myself to the characters and I empathize with what they are going through, and I cry when they are heartbroken. This is like therapy for me.

Strange? Probably. Effective? Absolutely.