I stepped away from being a nurse.

In the 1960s, America opened its borders to foreign-educated workers, many of which, were Filipino Registered Nurses. Wave after wave of (mostly) women came in, taking care of a population that hardly gave thanks to their efforts. Specifically, in the ’60s, many of my people were subjected to the same racist standards as other people of color, and yet, this didn’t stop their pursuit for more opportunities.

See also: Why are there so many Filipino nurses in the US?

My mother came into Texas winter of 1993 after another immigration wave in the ’80s made its way across the states. She was in America a year before my father and I settled alongside her. Her first impression of this land was cloudy and cold and dreary, only later realizing that the muted dark tones in the fashion were part of the aesthetic of the season. Her first meal was at a Luby’s-like buffet, where American excess was placed before her, and a member of her cohort mistook butter for vanilla ice cream. Because she had to still take her NCLEX and wait for the results, her first job was babysitting. Moving into a small border town where her only sense of community were the equally-new nurses, they took care of one another even though they came from different regions, even though they spoke different native languages. We still celebrate holidays with these aunties –this time, more adapted to the culture they have been plopped into.

Nursing was explained to me as my mother’s way to experience more opportunities outside of a country torn by political and socioeconomic unrest, a means to a well-cushioned end, and a decision born out of logical necessity rather than anything as privileged as feeling or passion. Something that was never meant to be permanent. Her overall plan is to retire home again, once my brother and I have established ourselves in lives just as cushioned as hers had become. Eventually, she learned to love this tool of hers, learned to stand strong in the face of adversity, find kinship in other immigrant women, learned to find her voice, and became a badass mother on top of the emotional labor it takes to be a nurse and wife.

Before she had even arrived in America, my mom spent a couple of years in Saudi Arabia. She was gone so often that when I first saw her again as a two-year-old finally stateside, I did not recognize her.

Growing up, I was shielded from my parents’ struggles and had the freedom to be a child — to navigate my own journey in a world that was vastly different than theirs. But this did not stop my mother from thinking of me as her own mini-me. Ever since I was a toddler, I had a tendency to flourish under authority. Whether this is oldest-sibling psychology or not, I became the lesser problematic child. I fed into my mother’s notions of being exactly like her by inheriting most of her mannerisms and constantly looking to my parents for validation. School was a breeze as I followed directions and knew the academic system inside out. I fell inside the ‘Gifted and Talented’ wormhole while continuously procrastinating until the next deadline, on top of doing the minimal amount of work to stay. However, I lacked much focus outside of making the grades and therefore never signed up for extracurriculars. (Literature Mag and Newspaper were, thankfully, in-school courses.) Because of these hidden-in-plain-sight bad habits, I found myself directionless after high school. I mirrored the application processes of my peers but really didn’t have much of a plan.

When I got into university, my parents stepped in, suggesting the tried and true occupation of nursing.

“Anak (child), it would be so easy for you!”

At that point, I chose to bite my tongue and rely on their approval rather than an inkling of where else I’d be more true to my own passions. I gave it a half-assed shot and failed a semester of nursing school due to lack of motivation. I blamed my mother for feeling pigeonholed into the major. I had trouble wrangling in the subconscious (and oftentimes venomous) hurt I felt which eventually manifested in me lashing out towards my mom. I may not have had a ‘rebellious teenager’ phase, but my angst was to the point that I even handed back my Associate diploma to her, whispering between clenched teeth:

“This isn’t mine, it’s yours.”

She cried of both happiness and sadness that day.

But, outside of my parents’ thoughts and feelings on the matter, failing one semester during that Associate’s program hit my ego pretty hard and launched me forward with renewed vigor. I ended up graduating from my bachelor program as Summa Cum Laude while simultaneously working nights in ICU. Everything on my mental checklist, I eventually reached: I was hired newly-graduated with a cushy salary, a challenging environment, great coworkers, and most of all –that ever elusive ‘parental pride’ –yet for some reason, it wasn’t enough.

I spent every shift dreading the next, cried on my drive home more often than not, (despite glowing reviews from coworkers,) and my weight stayed at a dangerous 85lbs. I thought this was my normal. I thought this was how the rest of my life was going to look like, minus the few moments of light where I spend time on vacations or lavish dinners and shopping sprees that came with being a financially independent woman in her 20s.

During this time, my mother became a source of comfort. Somebody to open up to about the struggles of being a new nurse, someone who knew what it was like and worse. She too, had cried in parking lots after heavy shifts, thought herself a failure, and still came home to keep caring. But part of me felt like she kind of enjoyed the kinship found through my suffering –not because of some perverted sense of humor, but rather, because we were finally bonding again after having lost our connection since I started college.

Around the time I was hired, I became part of the founding team for a nonprofit chapter which helped me dive deeper into my natural inclination toward storytelling, advocacy, and curiosity. It opened up a whole new world by going through an older one, revealing some of the cycles that I have to break for myself and of those around me, cycles that have been put on us by the past to heal our present and demand for a better future. I crossed (and continue to cross) paths with cultural practitioners, educators, and fellow storytellers. A fire was lit in my belly.

Filipinos don’t have to be nurses.

My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer around the same time hurricane Harvey hit, flooding my hospital and sending our staff elsewhere. Thankfully, nobody at the hospital was lost due to the calamity and my mom’s cancer was caught at Stage 0, kept at bay with a simple lumpectomy and a few radiation sessions. But, to stare down the barrel of what my life could look like if I stayed in nursing –the stress of her workplace, a partial factor in the growth of the tumor– made me realize that I was steadily headed in that direction. But on a different side of the same coin, I also realized I had the privilege to change that direction.

To find success elsewhere.

After my last shift at a reassigned hospital at the heels of hurricane Harvey, (without any orientation,) I took stock of the fact that I am my only responsibility. I have no kids, no debt, no one and nothing to actually answer to but myself.

What am I struggling for?

I prayed to steady myself and made the decision to put the profession down. I had given it my blood, sweat, tears, and the last 8 years of my life. But something else had been quietly calling to me.

The day I quit remains vivid in my memory. I held it together when I handed in my resignation letter, when I briefly talked about my reasoning, when I walked through the parking lot and got into my car… up until I called my mom. I wept, softly hitting the steering wheel with white-knuckled fists, asking in breathless and watery whispers over and over–

“Are you proud of me? …Did I do enough? …Did I make the right decision?”

Looking back, I realize now that the reason I finished the schooling and did the thing was to repair the relationship I have with my mother. I was meant to go through my own personal hell and back in order to humble myself, to truly understand the sacrifices my mom made and the fear that she had for my now-uncertain future, in order to realize that her life was not for me.

Growing up, I had always been compared to my mom, she had always thought of me as so similar to herself that I’m sure my decision shattered her in a different way than when I handed her my diploma because this was not a decision made of resistance and anger, but of independence. Of love for my own path. I may have been financially independent, but looking to her for comfort and approval kept me from stepping out of the lines she drew for herself, not realizing that I was trying to stay inside them ever-so-perfectly, as if her immense pressure to provide for a family was my own.

I may never be a nurse again, I may get back to it in a different sense, who knows. But for now, despite the tradition, in spite of the oncoming shortage, and in light of my own privilege, I write.