Providence

It is four o clock in the morning.

Right now, I am thinking whether I should be moving to another house. You see, my landlady here is complaining about the spike in her electricity consumption the following month. She was wanting me to pay the difference between her usual and her current consumption. This got me to think that I should just move to another house.

In the process, I found myself very reserved in trying to come up with a decision. This is just contrary to the way I made decisions and how quickly I acted on them in the first few months that I was here.

There were numerous events in my life which led me to go on this suicide mission. I remember telling my mom that I would like to go to Manila and take up medical transcribing back when I was a sophomore in college. Of course, my request was denied. At the very first few times that I went on duty at the health centres and hospitals in Zamboanga, I already knew that I do not want to be a nurse. I chewed up third year like a man and it went by like a breeze. At that time, I still wanted to quit nursing but there was nowhere else to go. I sat down, behaved, and I let time pass by. Then came the last year of college. I remember my clinical instructor telling us that it was the year wherein we would experience what it is really like to be a nurse. Aside from the usual tasks of taking the patient’s vital signs (blood pressure, pulse rate, temperature, and respiration rate), handing out medications, and giving primary care to our patients, we were now made to assist in operations and deliveries.

My assignment in the operating room was to hand out instruments to the surgeon, and making sure that everything goes smoothly. It sounds simple enough but the pressure and the details involved with it are overwhelming. I am not a very detail-minded person. I do not have manual dexterity. I only work well under pressure if I like what I am doing otherwise, I would crack. I can not focus on many things at the same time. My concentration breaks up when I am nervous and during operations, I am not nervous, I am petrified. All of these obviously did not work for me. This was the most significant event in my life because this event finalized and sealed my notion that nursing is not for me.

The events that followed were quick and spontaneous. I first bought a ferry ticket to Manila. My plan was to show that ticket to my parents when I break out the news to them that I have decided to quit nursing. My friend and I also were planning on contingency measures in case my parents did not agree to my plan. Part of that contingency measure was running away. Fortunately, it never came to that. My parents were of course reluctant but gave in at the end.

During that time, there were a lot of things running in my mind. From the time that I was packing up and doing online research on the call center industry to the time that I was on a ship on my way to Manila, I felt an invisible hand pushing me forward and not letting me look back.

During the first few days that I was in Manila (the most crucial days in my life), I made decisions like a good general does. I took calculated risks, and I made things happen. I dealt with the consequences and made the best out of everything.

Those first few weeks, I rode the MRT, the bus, and the jeepney like I was a country mouse in the city. I made my way through the busy and unsafe streets of Manila, asking strangers for directions. I even remember not knowing how to use the elevator. I was interviewed by various people, asked to do several things, and was even asked to beg for a job. I was (for the first time in my life) made to feel how it is not to eat three times in a day and not to have ready and easy access to food and water. I did house chores (which I never did).

In a matter of just a few weeks, I managed to do a lot of things that I never would have done in my former life. But I was able to do it. I was able to successfully do what a country mouse would never do. And behind all of that was God.

Today though, I feel as if I am back to my old self again. I am again plagued by indecision and cowardice.