By Fall Out Boy

Sometimes I wanna quit this song and become an accountant now
But I’m no good at math and besides the dollar is down
Plant palm trees on Lake Michigan before it gets cold
I gotta feel the wind chill again before I get old

I wanna scream I love you from the top of my lungs
But I’m afraid that someone else will hear me

You can only blame your problems on my world for so long
Before it all becomes the same old song
As soon as we hit the hospital, I know we’re gonna leave this town
And get new passports and get get get get get out now

All the yes men said no comment
My mouth got going wrong way and all the calls started to roll in
The time my dad caught me a horse shoe crab
And I asked him if throwing it back into the sea would bring our luck back

I wanna scream I love you from the top of my lungs
But I’m afraid that someone else will hear me

You can only blame your problems on my world for so long
Before it all becomes the same old song
As soon as we hit the hospital, I know we’re gonna leave this town
And get new passports get out now

Tell that boy I leave you alone
Like a storm, I turn my love
That’s in the profit of both in the business of show

I wanna scream I love you from the top of my lungs
But I’m afraid that someone else will hear me
Woah I wanna scream I love you from the top of my lungs
But I’m afraid that someone else will hear me

You can only blame your problems on my world for so long
Before it all becomes the same old song
As soon as we hit the hospital, I know we’re gonna leave this town
(I know we’re gonna leave this town)
And get new passports and get get get get get out now
Get get get get get out now

From their 2008 Album ‘Folie à Deux’

The world around me grows dark as if an eclipse has fallen.
I’m losing focus…
Confidence is out the window…
What am I to do?

The light at the end of the tunnel grows faint.
I am reaching out to it but something is holding me back.
I turn around but I see nothing…
The invisible as got a hold on me.

I feel everything building up,
Enclosing me in a dark, empty space.
I give up and I start to fall…
Drowning in something I can’t understand.

But then something grabs my hand.
I look up and I see the bright light.
He pulls me up to the surface.
He is my Saviour…

I never saw it, but it was there. I was too busy living in my own world that I didn’t notice the time where some people lost everything.

I can’t even imagine what it feels like to have to come home to a pile of ashes.

Could you?

How do you overcome such a tragedy of losing, literally, everything?  How do you go through such an obstacle?

There was a fire that destroyed a lot of homes here in my city.  One of those unfortunate people is my colleague, who hasn’t come back to work for a week now since she doesn’t have her uniforms anymore (here in the Philippines, nurses still wear the traditional white uniform with the cap).  The fire burned everything down.  All she had were the clothes she had on her back and her things in the bag she was carrying that night.

Thinking about it, I could never put myself in those shoes.  I don’t mean to sound materialistic in any way, but what about all those memorabilias that you had?  Photographs, keepsakes and your personal basics…?  Everything gone just like that.

I shudder at the very thought.

Back to reality.

I’ll start my series here, in the most recent episode in my life – it’s really not as if there was something majorly exciting about my life before this, so you’re not really missing anything. As I said before, I was back. I recently took a vacation away from work (I’m pretty sure even workaholics have heard of this word before, though I don’t consider my self as such) for a couple of months. I honestly thought it would be longer, but fate, it seemed, was not on my side.

I work in a local government hospital (no point in pin-pointing what hospital exactly). I used to be a volunteer over there (which basically means you work for the sheer satisfaction of caring for the sick and the wounded; Need more translation? You work and work and work and you get no compensation for it) and now, after a year of doing all the work, they get to pay me a small amount for my services. It isn’t much to celebrate over, but hey, it’s better than nothing, right?

I immediately had to start my week in the night shift which starts at ten in the evening until six in the morning the following day. Good thing, I had someone with me to help as I was supposed to handle twice the number of patients that you can count in one hand. I didn’t find it hard to find my game up and running. I was only out for a couple of months, so nobody really thought that I had to be oriented to the area once more.

I knew what was coming since I still had to work in the same department as I had before (in my case, I work at the Surgery Department), so I knew that it wasn’t going to be a particularly easy-going or pleasant shift (when you work in the government hospital of a third world country, it’s never easy-going – ok, maybe once in a while it is). More often than not, you have someone under your watch dying on you. Trust me, after a fair few deaths under your shift, you cease to feel this ache in your chest whenever you hear the cries of sorrow of those who were left behind. I’m not an unfeeling human being, but this is the nature of our work. We see sick and dying people eight hours a day, five days a week. As the saying goes, “Life goes on…” It might sound harsh, but that’s life for us.

I don’t mean to introduce you to the gloomy reality of my world, but despite the morose feeling, I was pleasantly surprised.

Life has given me a fair few pleasantries to give me hope that, in the future, I will be happy, not that I intend to not be.

I found out that I missed people. I missed how I was with them. When I’m with my colleagues, I am an easy-going person, not particularly hard to please. And as hard as I tried to deny it, I also missed doing my job. I missed doing my responsibilities that are entailed in my title – I’m talking about the R.N. title.

I was even more pleasantly surprised to know that people missed me, too. I didn’t realize that. I thought I was insignificant enough for people to forget after a couple of months away.

At the end of my first shift back, I was happy. I didn’t expect to be. I was excited even, to go back to work again.

As I look back, I ask myself why I felt that way. Working in a hospital with more patients than one person could ever handle would normally translate to stress, frustration and disappointment to myself.

But then, I figured, at the end of the day, all you really need to think about is the people you have around you. If they’re almost just like you, usually calm, collected with enough sense of humor to keep you up all night. Then there’s really no need to worry.