My last day of nursing school was last month. It was so bittersweet to say goodbye to the profession I thought I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing, but...ultimately, it was the right decision.

I have always enjoyed helping people, and when I was in high school, I decided that whatever I ended up having as a career, I knew I wanted it to be a 'helping' career. At first, I thought I might become a teacher. Teaching runs in my family, and I thought a high school english teacher may be a good fit for me. But for several reasons that I won't get in to, it just wasn't. So then I took a little bit of time off from college to figure out what else might make me happy. And I stumbled upon nursing.

I don't think I ever really sat down and said, "Yes. I'm going to become a nurse." At least, not in the beginning. It was more like, "Well...nurses help people. I'm not really sure I'm smart enough to be one, but we'll see how these pre-requisites go..." I got through all of them with above average grades, and actually began to think I might be capable of becoming a nurse.

There was one slight problem, though. I wasn't 100% sure I wanted to be a nurse. I just kept telling myself that nurses help people, I'd always have a job, and they had nice salaries with good benefit packages. And before you start judging me, I'm aware that those aren't good reasons for why you should go into the nursing profession, but I'm just being honest. And I also told myself a thousand times over that even if I wasn't sure I loved it now, I would love it once I got there.

Once first semester started, I got a bit of a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Now I was doing it, I was a nurse for real patients, and...I wasn't loving it. Or even liking it. Although the theory classes were okay and I was pulling good grades in them, I dreaded every clinical day. But because I wasn't ready to give up on it just yet, I told myself, "Well, this is just a nursing home, once you do clinicals in a hospital, you'll love it." And that is how I got through first semester.

Once second semester started, I began my labor and delivery clinical. I for sure thought that this would be something I enjoyed doing. How could you NOT enjoy watching a human life enter the world, and getting to be the person that helps this new tiny human and his or her parents through their first few days of life?

And the thing is, there were parts of it I really did love. I DID love watching babies be born. If anyone had looked at me too closely in the operating room during the C-section I saw, they'd have seen me crying behind my mask because it was literally the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I loved cuddling and comforting the newborns, and helping first time moms learn that no, you won't break your precious new baby. But there were other things, things I won't specify here, that really turned me off to nursing, that made me really dislike the clinical despite all of those great moments. So I withdrew from my clinicals that semester and decided to go part time, and try them again in the spring, hoping things would be different then.

By the time January rolled around, I genuinely thought things were going to be so much better this time around, and that I would get through both of my clinicals with no problems, but...I'm sure you guessed by now that that wasn't the case. Hate is a very strong word, but I borderline hated my clinicals the second time around. And that's when I had to start facing the fact that...maybe I wasn't meant to be a nurse.

It took me a long time to come to that conclusion. Or more accurately, to be able to acknowledge it and accept it. In my mind, not becoming a nurse was equal to becoming a failure. For the past three and a half years, my family and friends thought I was going to walk away from all of this schooling as an RN. I had spent so much time and effort and money on this. I was only one year away from graduation. In theory, I could have graduated in December if I'd played my cards right. In May, I could have sat for my LPN boards. So I'm sure by now you're saying, "But you're so close! How could you give up now??" Believe me, I know better than anybody else how damn close I was. And I will do my best to explain just how I can walk away from it, despite all of those things.

I had put so much of my worth into becoming a nurse. I'd been telling myself for years now that I would finally be worth something once I got that nursing degree. Once I could put RN after my name. And I told myself that was the only way I'd be worth something. I also wanted my mom to be proud of me. I'd put her through hell as a teenager, and I wanted to give something back to her. I wanted her to be able to say, "My daughter is a nurse," and finally give her something to be proud of. Like despite everything that happened in the past, I got through it and redeemed myself.

All of those things put so much pressure on me to finish this degree at all costs. In the beginning, it didn't matter to me that I was absolutely miserable while taking the classes. I'd get that degree and be worth something! I'd be valuable as a human being, and that was all I wanted and all that mattered.

But then somewhere along the line, I began to realize that a degree or a profession is a twisted, unhealthy measuring stick for your self-worth. Being able to put two letters after my name wasn't going to automatically change who I was and make me this person who was now ten times more worthy of, I don't know, anything and everything. I can still be worth something even without that degree.

Despite this revelation, I briefly considered trying to finish anyway, but then I remembered that this was the year that I'm supposed to be doing things that scare me, and this definitely qualifies. I have strayed so far off of the path I mapped out after high school graduation. Six years ago, I thought I'd have a bachelor's degree with a teaching job by now, and instead...I don't have a degree OR a career. And I'm 24. That terrifies me. Some days I wonder if I'm making a huge mistake here, but...I don't think I am. I'm doing what I know in my heart is the best for me. And I've spent so much of my life doing the exact opposite of what's best for me, so I think it's important to do what's right, right now, even if it leaves me so unsure of my future and what it has in store for me. Sometimes life involves taking chances and risks and trusting your gut, and that's exactly what I'm doing. And in the end, I think I'll be just fine.

They say hindsight is 20/20.

One week ago yesterday marks a pretty significant day in my life. It was the day when I finally decided I really didn't care who knows I'm gay and decided to sort of just announce it on Facebook. I toyed with the idea of even doing that, because honestly, is it something that necessarily needs to be announced? Not really. But I'd been telling one friend here and another friend there for a few months now, and thought the rumor mill may be starting to pick up speed, so I figured I might as well just set the record straight - or gay - once and for all. Which was about damn time, according to some of my friends who were among the first to find out over the summer, but part of me wanted to continue putting it off until, oh, I don't know, the 23rd of Never. 

But I knew I couldn't do that. Not if I ever wanted to truly be happy and live a real, authentic life. And it's not that I'm ashamed to be gay. At least, not anymore. Back in sixth grade, I realized that while all of my friends were developing crushes on boys, I noticed the girls instead, and I kind of didn't know what to do with myself. So many weird changes were going on, as they do at that point in your life, and at first I just thought maybe I wasn't ready to like boys yet? Because that makes so much sense, obviously. I remember feeling the pressure to, though, because even though I felt absolutely nothing for him, I jumped right on the bandwagon for one of the most popular and cutest boys in my grade, and his name was Brett. I wrote his name on all of my notebooks - and well, really, that's as far as it went, because he already had a "girlfriend" - and I made it clear to all of my friends that I thought he was sooo cute. But really, on the inside, I had no idea what all the hype was supposed to be about. Sorry, Brett. Don't worry, it was clearly me, not you.

As middle school progressed, I figured out there was a name for these feelings I had, and I'll admit, I wasn't all that happy when it finally clicked in my little head that I might be different from most other girls in what felt like a pretty fundamental way. I even got a little angry, because I heard how the words "gay" and "lesbo" and "fag" were tossed around by other kids in such a cruel manner, and I didn't want to be ridiculed like that. Middle school was already difficult enough as it was, thank you very much. So I made a conscious effort from that point forward to just try and push these feelings as far down as they would possibly go, hoping they'd just disappear, and ignored them as I entered high school.

Try as I might, every now and then these feelings would surface and cause some turbulence, but all in all, I did a pretty good job of hiding them throughout high school. At least I thought so, anyway. Though I never even dared to think about having a girlfriend, I never had a boyfriend either. But I chalked that up to the fact that I just wasn't pretty enough or thin enough or whatever enough to have one. I told myself if the opportunity ever arose to go on a date with a guy, I'd take it, but (thankfully) one never did. I refused to attend every homecoming and my prom, and avoided anything else that may potentially be awkward to attend without a date, in order to avoid having to feel these feelings I desperately didn't want to feel. But I quickly learned that the older I got, the more difficult it became to ignore how I really felt.

I'm going to pause this little story for a minute to say that I had absolutely no problem with other people who were gay. I truly believed deep in my heart that love was love and gay, straight, bi, whatever - it was totally fine and acceptable and I celebrated that. I literally only seemed to have a problem with it if, and only if, it concerned me. 

I think one of the biggest reasons I didn't want it to be true that I was gay was because I didn't want to disappoint other people. I didn't want to shatter the image of the life I thought my mom had already envisioned for me - a husband, kids, the white picket fence, etc. - and I was so, so afraid that I would lose some of my closest friends if they found out, because sadly, not all of them believed that being gay was okay. And I didn't really have a lot of friends to begin with, so I didn't feel like I could afford to lose any, which means I kept my mouth shut and my feelings suppressed.

Do you know how toxic it is to constantly avoid feeling things, though? High school was a pretty dark time for me because I had a hard time suppressing just my feelings of being gay. I suppressed alllll my negative feelings as much as I could, which caused them to fester and then bubble up to the surface and explode like a volcano once I couldn't keep them in any longer. It was a long, dark, lonely road, and it hurts now to think that it all may have been preventable if I'd just been true to myself from the get-go. 

That's how things continued, more or less, for the next several years. Fast forward to the end of 2014 and that's when things started to change a bit. It was becoming near impossible for me to continue denying the fact that I was gay, and I had started the process of becoming okay with that. It was actually a pretty short process for me. Being gay had become much more socially acceptable, I knew of a few other people who were gay - it no longer felt so abnormal, and so I basically just said to myself, "Well. This is what it is, Becca. It's been ten years (though I can pinpoint things as far back as preschool that may have foreshadowed this) and I doubt your feelings are ever going to change, so you can either choose to accept them and have a chance at a happy, healthy life, or you can continue down this self-destructing path and who knows where you'll end up." I picked option A, and almost like it was magic, I found myself being 100% fine with being gay. 

But then bam, nursing school hit me like a ton of bricks, and that was literally all I could focus on from January until May of 2015. At first I thought that might have been a good thing, but once I took my last final and found myself with overwhelming amounts of free time on my hands, everything came flooding back. I felt like I was about to burst at the seams if I didn't tell someone, anyone, that I was gay. I absolutely could not keep this secret to myself anymore. But of course, it couldn't be that simple. I mean, it should have been. But it wasn't.

I finally told someone for the very first time on June 1st, 2015, and while I felt so much relief...I kind of panicked about it a little too much beforehand, wherein I made a really stupid, impulsive decision. That's another story for a different day, but let's just say it didn't go as smoothly as I'd hoped telling someone for the first time would. But from that point forward, it slowly became easier to tell people - and I managed to learn to do it without panicking first! Hooray.

I lost a lot of friends and close relationships over this, but I will never regret being honest about myself with others. I decided that if they have a problem with the gender of the person I may choose to love some day, that's their problem, not mine, and I need to let it go. (Who else now has that song stuck in their head...) And while I did lose friends, I've gained so many more over the last few months who truly accept me for me, and couldn't care less. I am so grateful for them.

Anyway, fast forward to February of this year, and the only person I still needed to tell before officially announcing it to the world was...my mother. Every time I even thought about telling her, I got a knot in my stomach the size of a softball, and it made me feel physically ill. For the longest time I thought that maybe I would just never tell her, but I was tired of feeling like I was lying by omission (so help me if I had to sit through one more award show season and comment on all of the guys on the red carpet), and I felt pretty guilty that a decent amount of my friends already knew, but my own mom didn't. So on February 4th, I typed out a text - yes, I told her through text, because there was a snowball's chance in hell that I would be able to do it in person, don't judge me - kept telling myself that if she loves Ellen DeGeneres and her wife, Portia, that she could still love me (I have weird rationalizations, I know), and pressed send. Annnnd cue the hyperventilation. I couldn't breathe, and began to panic. Shocking, I know.

When I finally received a text back, I couldn't bring myself to open it. I called my best friend Marisa while crying almost hysterically, and she helped me calm down enough so that I could actually read it. And the verdict was...she didn't care. I was no different to her now than I was before, and she still loved me. This got me all worked up again, but this time out of relief. All the years of anxiety and shame flooded out of me, and this weight that I didn't even realize had been sitting there lifted off my shoulders. I finally felt free.

Going back to the very beginning of this post, I don't think I could have predicted how the last decade of my life would have turned out by choosing to ignore an important piece of who I am, but I wholeheartedly believe that the majority of the problems I dealt with in my past could have been avoided if I'd just learned to accept myself about 10 years sooner. But while it makes me sad, I don't regret it. Those experiences shaped me into the person I am today, and I'm confident that they'll serve a purpose somewhere in my future.

I feel like I have a brand new lease on life, and I almost don't even recognize the person I was just weeks ago. Now, I'm not saying things just automatically became 100% better, because that would seem ridiculous and you probably wouldn't believe me even if it were true, but do believe me when I tell you that I am not the same person anymore. I am happier, and the world doesn't feel so dark. There is new hope, and for once, my future looks pretty damn appealing, and I can't wait to see what it has to offer!

The CrossFit Open. That’s pretty much all my box has been talking about for the past few weeks. (Maybe even a month now? Who knows. It feels like forever.) When I first learned exactly what the CrossFit Open was, my brain jumped right onboard the Absolutely Fucking Not train. I humiliate myself enough in front of everyone at my gym all the time, no need to do it on a larger scale. Plus, it’s not like I’d actually be able to do any of the WODs Rx. Hell, I doubt I’d even be able to do any of them scaled. So while everyone else has been prepping and getting all excited for the Open to start, I’ve just been off in a corner, minding my own business, happily unregistered. 

But then, a couple of days ago, one of my coaches was talking about how she was excited to see how she’s improved over the past year, and that the Open is a great tool to use as a progress marker. She also said something along the lines of, most people who didn’t sign up this year will regret not doing it come next year because they will have nothing to use as a baseline to see how far they’ve come in a year.

So for a split second - and I mean split - I considered registering for the Open. I’m curious to see how far I will have come in a year. But then I remembered: Humiliation. Embarrassment. Shame. Embarrassment. Have I mentioned humiliation? You get the idea. And I again decided that the Open was just not for me. 

Fast forward to today, where my coach posts an article on Facebook written by the man who came in just about dead last out of last year’s 272,000 CrossFit Open competitors. As I was reading it, he expressed all of the same fears I had. One, I can’t do it. Two, I don’t want to be made fun of. Three, everyone will think I’m wasting my time. Those all pretty much hit the nail on the head. 

But then he talks about how, despite all of those things, he did it anyway. Even though he was nervous and afraid he would make a fool out of himself, he tried, and he posted his scores, no matter what. I have to say, I have a great amount of respect and admiration for this guy. How could I not?

As someone else who also has last place reserved at their box for just about every workout, I'm still not convinced that I wouldn't regret registering. And I know this is supposed to be the year of doing things that terrify me, and this definitely qualifies, but...I just don't know. So, to be continued...

It's kind of ridiculous how controlling and dominating my thoughts can be sometimes. I had my first day of my labor and delivery clinical today, and it consisted of nothing more than a tour of the unit and some computer training, so pretty low key. No big deal. Tomorrow is just learning the postpartum and newborn assessments (that I already know and have performed on real patients before), and performing a head to toe assessment for our instructor to prove our competence. Also a pretty low key sounding day, right?!

And yet, my brain is working itself up to make it seem like this huge fucking deal when I know - I know - it's not. I've been doing physical assessments for a year now, and the one for tomorrow is even a short, sweet, to the point version. It should literally be a non-issue. And yet, for whatever reason...what if I forget half of it? What if I look stupid? What if I do things out of order? What if I do things wrong? What if my instructor thinks I'm incompetent and she won't let me work with patients? And let me just add, I've worked under this same instructor in a clinical setting before, have had to prove my competency for her before, and she deemed me able to work with patients. So how fucking ridiculous am I being right now? Don't answer that.

This is anxiety at its finest, ladies and gentlemen. It will convince you that you are absolutely, without a doubt incapable of doing the simplest of tasks. It will tell you you're not good enough, that you don't belong anywhere, that you are worthless. Pond scum. The scum that sits on pond scum. And it can be relentless. Like tonight. I can feel a stomach ache starting to build up from nerves when there is LITERALLY NOTHING TO BE NERVOUS ABOUT. It's so frustrating!!!

Sometimes I'm so tempted to just give up, and ask why me? Why do I have to struggle through all of this shit while others will never know this type of crippling anxiety in their lifetime? But I've learned that doing that will only make you crazy. So I just have to believe that at some point in my life, this will serve a purpose. Don't ask me what that purpose looks like because fuck if I know, but it's better than thinking this is all for nothing. It has to be.

New years don't typically carry much clout with me. I never thought that midnight had the potential to be as magical for me as it was for Cinderella, and so January 1st, 2016 really might as well have been December 32nd, 2015. No difference.

But then, much to my disappointment, shit hit the fan just days into the new year, and I found myself thinking that 2016 was starting to look an awful lot like 2015. Spoiler alert: I really don't want a repeat of last year. That's when I began to realize that even though I didn't think I viewed 2016 as a potential for change and opportunity, I subconsciously kinda sorta did. Well then.

2015 was an anxious year of firsts for me. I started it by beginning nursing school in January - and not just the pre-reqs, but the classes where I'm actually responsible for real patients (!!!). In June I told someone for the very first time an important secret I'd kept to myself for the last decade. In September, I joined a CrossFit box despite not having an athletic bone in my body.

But 2015 was also really scary for me due to all those firsts. What if I'm not smart enough to be a nurse? There's a difference between being smart and being nursing smart - what if I was incapable of bridging the gap between the two? And then, assuming I did somehow find the ability to adequately learn the nursing theory, would I be competent enough to take care of my patients like they deserved to be taken care of? What if I missed something vital on one of my patients that had dire consequences?

As far as exposing my secret goes, I think that was the most terrifying thing I've ever done in my life. Thankfully, I got some very good, reassuring reactions to it before I got some heartbreakingly negative ones, but it's still a secret to some very important people in my life, so that's stressful. And where CrossFit is concerned...I think 'holy shit' sums it up nicely. I love it, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't quit it for anything, but hot damn. Could I have picked anything more difficult? I would argue no.

And for the big elephant in the room - it's no secret that I've dealt with depression since I was a teenager, but for the last couple of years it's been a particularly horrible bitch. It has unfortunately required a few hospitalizations that I'm not at all proud of, but it is part of my past, and this thing is part of who I am for now, so I guess all I can say about that is, it is what it is.

When things started to spiral downward just days into the new year, it was kind of like a slap in the face. If I didn't want a duplicate of 2015, I realized I was going to have to do things differently. I couldn't just continue in my old habits and expect a different outcome. That would just be stupid. And in the interest of not being stupid, that means...time for a change.

I'm tired of being held hostage by the "what ifs" that cloud my head. I'm going to try my best to realize that yes, there are still so many things I don't know when it comes to nursing, but it's time to be brave and go out there and help my patients to the best of my ability. I've learned the basic things I need to know for my next two clinicals, and I won't be alone, so I CAN do this. I need to dig deep and find the courage to be brave enough to tell my family the truth about me, so I can start to live authentically. When I see a WOD that intimidates me, or walk into my gym and see all of the super fit, amazing athletes getting ready for class or already working out, I need to be brave enough to do the WOD anyway, or work out alongside them anyway, even if I feel like I don't belong there. Because I will never become fitter or improve my skills if I don't try. And as far as the beast of depression goes...I know I'm going to have to be brave enough to reach out to my friends and family when I feel like I'm drowning with the surface nowhere in sight. That's going to be really hard and painful for me, but it will be necessary.

It's going to be difficult and overwhelming, and I'm sure it's going to just downright suck at times, and I know I won't be able to do it completely by myself. But it's time for a real, honest change. I'm hoping to use this blog to document my successes (and inevitable failures because hello, CrossFit) while I'm trying to be a braver Becca. I don't know quite what that's going to look like just yet, but I figure this is a good starting point. So here's to my year of being brave.