Fear, Pressure & Failure

I am very aware that I am a hard pill to swallow, at least that is what I have gathered about myself from other people. I am very, very flawed and hold a lot of baggage. This is the story of how I lost a friend…

I had just graduated from nursing school, and well, the NCLEX anxiety got to me horribly. I, in all honesty, do not remember much of anything. I remember going up the elevator to test, and the next thing I knew, I was projectile vomiting on the sidewalk outside. I obviously failed my first attempt, which then spiraled into a set of emotions I couldn't handle. All throughout nursing school, or really for my whole life, I have always heard people tell me the same things: “You are too emotional.” “You stress out too much.” “She is always crying.” “She just says whatever comes out of her mouth.” I won’t lie and say that they aren’t all true. I do stress myself out way more than I would like. I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I feel I have to control the environment around me just to be safe. I am messy, loud, and impulsive.

In nursing school, I really connected with two people, and I thought they would last forever, and they might have… After I failed the NCLEX, I went tubing with some friends from school. I had brought my own tube which the signs everywhere said not to, but I was so excited I mean it had cup holders and a cooler in between the seats! I wanted it to be a perfect fun time! I had been the only one who had gone drinking down the river before and wanted to share it with those around me. Well, long story short, the tube popped, and no one knew what to do! From my perspective, I was communicating with everyone to generate ideas, but I didn't receive any substantive feedback.

In the spirit of honesty, my tone gets a lot louder and harsher when I am stressed, and I get extremely frustrated when I am the only one speaking, trying to find a solution. I brought the unapproved tube because I wanted things to be perfect, and when it popped, my friends' silence triggered the exact same NCLEX panic. My volume went up, and my tone got harsh because I felt like I was the only one trying to keep the ship from sinking. I was trying to find ways to get out, since we didn’t have our phones and no one was passing by! To be honest, I don’t even remember how long and bad the ordeal was. I do remember feeling guilty for yelling, and I immediately apologized. From what I gathered that day from conversations with everyone, things were okay.  The next morning, the place is cleaned and cleared, and days later, I am met with the aftermath of a laundry list of my flaws and a broken friendship.

My drive to fix the crisis in the river inadvertently pushed away the people I cared about, leaving me in silence. When my NCLEX anxiety spiraled, and that river tube popped, my survival instinct was to get loud, get harsh, and force a solution because the silence around me felt dangerous. It made me think of Sarah in the Bible. She wasn't inherently a malicious villain; she was a woman living in deep panic, facing what felt like ultimate failure. Just like I grabbed the reins on that river because no one else was speaking, Sarah grabbed the reins of her own destiny by forcing Hagar into the picture. She couldn't handle the silence of waiting on God, just like I couldn't handle the silence of my friends on the water. We both used control as a shield—and we both ended up watching the relationships around us fracture because of it.

Sarah was dealing with years of infertility in a culture where a woman's entire worth was tied to bearing children. She felt the heavy weight of shame, the sense that time was running out, and the fear that God’s promise wouldn't come to pass unless she intervened. I was carrying the immense weight of just failing the NCLEX, dealing with projectile-vomiting levels of anxiety, and hearing the lifelong echo of people telling me that I am “too much.” Both Sarah and I were acting from a place of deep emotional exhaustion and the terrifying feeling that things were spinning out of our control. Sarah couldn't sit in the painful quiet of waiting anymore. So, she engineered a plan: she forced Hagar into the situation to make a family happen on her own terms. It was a desperate attempt to control an uncontrollable circumstance. When we are terrified, our survival instincts tell us to grab the steering wheel by force. For Sarah, it was manipulating a human relationship. For me, it was dominant, loud problem-solving in a moment of crisis. Sarah’s plan worked initially (Ishmael was born), but it completely fractured her relationships. It bred deep resentment and harshness, ultimately pushing Hagar away. Sarah ended up hurting others because she was hurting and panicking. I apologized immediately, but the damage was done. The tragedy of the “control mechanism” is that it almost always breaks the very things we are trying to protect.