Another Sunday

Today is Sunday. I'm on my own. My boyfriend hasn't come back to me. From next weekend two of my children will be with me on the weekends for two months while my 'ex' and his wife spend time in Europe. I'm glad, even though children can't replace that feeling of closeness that being with a partner brings. I've been going out with girlfriends but haven't really met anybody to explore 'possibilities' with. My confidence is down too. What do I have to offer ? Realistically, not a lot. If I could meet a man who would marry me and support me but had his own house and was prepared to see me during the day and on the weekends at his place then a relationship could work for me. I'm dreaming.
I guess I need to count my blessings. I am very fortunate. I have health, a roof over my head, just lonely that's all. Perhaps it's a normal human condition.
Tomorrow I start a course in aged Care. That will last about two months then I need to do four weeks work experience in an old people's facility, then I need to do paid work. The 'work facilitator' who is helping me to go in this direction said that if I don't earn enough to get off my benefit then the dental treatments will not be taken from me. Two or three night duty shifts on the weekends may tip me over the cut-off limit.

Back to my story.
Trainee nurse I was no longer. I rode my dilapidated old pushbike over to Mum and Dad's house in Williamstown. From there I explored my options. I needed to work so, with difficulty, I swallowed my pride and registered as an Enrolled Nurse. Because I had completed eighteen months training, I was allowed to do that. I worked for a couple of months at a hospital in the city, commuting by train. While I was there the enrolled nurses went on strike for a day. It was a state-wide strike and I had only heard of it by rumour. Nobody spoke to me directly, so I showed up for work. The Sisters sent me to some obscure place on the ward and I spent most of the day alone while they did the work which they had planned in advance to cover.
I left after a few months and then worked at a local hospital near Williamstown, and one of the Sisters there, a kindly older lady said that my name meant 'living in a forest' and that the description suited me somehow. I cycled to work; took regular sick leave and felt the stress of trying to fit in. Williamstown is an old port suburb twenty minutes train ride from Southern Cross station, which used to be called Spencer Street Station in Melbourne. The lapping water at Williamstown Beach never lathers up into a huge surf, but because Port Philip Bay is a vast expanse, and Melbourne being a fair way south on the globe, Winter time brings gales and rough weather; choppy water and unpleasant swimming conditions. Our dog drowned on North Williamstown Beach. I was away at the time, but Mum had taken him for a walk and swim and he got into difficulties. A man waded in to rescue the dog but it was too late. That dog was probably buried in the back yard, unless it was put out in the garbage, wrapped up. He wasn't a huge dog.
After a few months I decided to move to Collingwood, an inner suburb of Melbourne. I found a job and rented a flat not far away. I worked shift work. During the day we would have to feed the patients. One lady I fed regularly would never open her mouth. I would try to force the metal spoon between her gritted teeth but she would never give in. I would walk away annoyed and frustrated that she hadn't allowed me to do my job. That lady, along time ago, curled herself up into a fetal position and stayed there; became fused, rigid.
We flipped her gently from side to side every two hours. We treated the bedsores on her bony hips. Her rubber sheet was often covered with a fluffy or kylie; a padded draw sheet, to help absorb the urine from her incontinency but these were usually in short supply so she would be lying on a rough, cloth draw sheet most of the time. Sometimes we would place a rubber ring beneath her hip.
The ward had about sixteen beds, eight on each side on the ground floor. Windows ran down one wall, a double door opened out onto a cement and brick, partially enclosed verandah with a thin view of trees and grass within the courtyard.
At one end of this room were the utility rooms and bathrooms and at the other, the kitchen where the meals were brought to for distribution and where we blended up excess lunch food for the evening meal, several offices and storage rooms.
One evening shift, a big lady in a bed on the opposite wall to the fused up lady did a huge bowel action in bed. The Sister on duty had been a nurse during the Second World War. She wanted to help me clean up the mess. We changed the bed and washed the lady. As we were cleaning up in the room set aside for that sort of thing the Sister started to dry retch. I offered to take over but she said no. I started to giggle then laugh out loud. She smiled at me between her retching. I couldn't control my laughing and doubled over in hysterics. Then urine started to run down my legs.
I completed my shift wearing those urine soaked, grey thick pantyhose as if nothing had happened. That was not the first time I'd had to complete a shift wearing smelly wet tights with dampness inside my shoes due to hysterically laughing too much.
Quite a few of the older nursing sisters working at that rest home had been sisters during the second world war. On night duty I refused to sit in the same office as the sister even if she asked me to. I just wanted to sit by myself. Between rounds I would sit in another office to her and practice writing excerpts from books using my right hand. I figured that if I practised enough I could become ambidextrous.
In truth I didn't feel worthy to sit with a Sister and pass the time. I felt inferior to her but superior to others. The other staff, during the day and evening with the same or less training than I, I felt were inferior to me so I did not entertain the thought of making friends with any of them.
Instead I clung doggedly to the strained friendships of the past. I organised a night out to see a musical. Four people came along. I may have even not asked them for the ticket money. I invited a group over for dinner and the guys outnumbered the girls eight to two. My girlfriend had started burning her own flesh with lighted cigarette butts. He boyfriend asked where the food was and I pointed to a saucepan on the stove. I had become so paralyzed with not knowing how to serve the food that I had just left it on the stove. He stared at the stove for a few seconds then went over to it and served himself. I thought less of him after that.
My girlfriend fell pregnant and had an abortion. She was always angry with her boyfriend and didn't want to have his baby. Privately I didn't agree with abortions so ignored her needs if I saw them at all when she came to my flat after the event. Her boyfriend picked her up from there. They were living together. A year or so later they broke up. She moved into her own place. She would say to me; 'Three.' What does that mean to you Sylv?' I had no answer. 'One and one and one.' She would say grouping three cigarettes together. 'What does that mean to you?' My friend. She completed her three years nursing. She worked as a qualified sister, had a drivers license and a car. She kept herself clean and bought nice clothes, all things that made me jealous of her.
When I went to Tasmania she visited me, but when she moved back home to Gippsland we lost contact. I heard later that she died an accidental death from a prescription injection, one side effect being sudden death. My friend. RIP.

I left my job, moved out of the flat. Mum helped me do battle over getting the bond money back on account of a big red wine stain on the living room carpet.
I moved into a room in a flat above a shop. the other room was taken by a guy in the pub circle I frequented. A new acquaintance I met at one of the pubs helped me to move in. We drank a lot and smoked cigarettes. He got me to have sex with him. The lease holder of the flat was out. A cigarette butt dropped though a hole in the mattress cover and was lost amongst the kapok. It was an old mattress from home. We forgot about it. The guy wanted me to have sex again with him. I didn't want to. I became hysterical as he chased me around the flat not taking 'no' for an answer. I ran into the other bedroom and tried to close him out but he had his foot in the door. He eventually he led me back to my room for sex. I didn't enjoy sex. It hurt. Sometimes they couldn't even get inside me because my muscles were so rigid.
He dropped me back at my parents place. The guy with the lease on the flat contacted me in a fury. The place was filled with smoke when he came home. Was I trying to burn it down? The lost cigarette butt I'm thinking. 'Get out', He says. The mattress now filled two drums downstairs. My stuff was downstairs. Take it away now. He never wants to see me again. I hired a minivan to collect my possessions and moved back home.