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[05 Aug 2009|10:25pm] |
In a very narcissistic way, I love rereading the pieces I've written in the past- especially if I haven't done it for a while. It's like admiring a piece of art, or running your hands over a sculpture or ceramic piece that you slaved over and had turned out especially well. You forget that you had created it, and when you discover it again, its shape and cadence are all new, all over again.
I was desperately trying to write my personal statement tonight for residency applications. I feel somewhat cheated that after the most awful application process ever (for med school), I have to do this shit all over again. Lee finished his a few weeks ago and had me read it. I'm embarassingly in awe of all the big words that he used in his piece. Like seriously. If you told me it was written by a Harvard grad, I would not have questioned you. I felt inadequate. (And proud that I had snagged such a brain!) I was searching for a piece I had written about surgery because I didn't know where to start. Why can't I just write on a piece of paper, "I LOVE SURGERY!" and turn that in? I'm sure the surgeons would appreciate that.
I remember a time when I would write, and words would just come to me. Or I would hold a concept in my mind, or some image I wanted to describe- and I would do this exercise where I could try to come up with novel ways to describe it. And then there were those times when I would type with my eyes out of focus, fingers flying over the keyboard translating directly from neuron to computer. I would pause and un-trance myself afterwards to read what my brain had been trying to tell my mind and fix the typos that had slipped in. I think it was the Celexa that killed the closet writer in me. Either that or it was the Happiness: happiness in the form of self-medication and a Rockstar. But I don't feel the drive anymore; I don't get the trance. I feel so... boring without my problems. I used to have dreams. I used to have goals. I used to have ideals. I also used to be sad. Have I settled for 2 car garage, house in suburbia, kids, and a life without New York? That makes it sound so dramatic, but it doesn't sound so bad anymore. Anywhere where Lee is by my side and anywhere where I can wake up next to him is fine by me.
So I guess that's it. I've been slayed by American ideals and my perfect man. Sigh?
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| (One of those annoying moments in my life) In which I try to define myself |
[13 Sep 2008|10:38pm] |
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I guess there's no helping who you're going to be sometimes. You can direct somewhat what you end up enjoying, but in the end, it's hard to deny where you fit into the puzzle of the world. Sometimes I wish I were less directed-- more of a free spirit and less like an arrow tied to a destination. Sometimes I wish that I could just wander the world, learn Spanish, live simply, and take care of people's everyday needs. And then I think of the growingly familiar feel of the OR, with the clunk-clunk-clunk of the OR lights going on and the quiet steady beep-beep of the patient's heartbeat. Sterile blues and baggy gowns and the leftover smell of iodine and Biogel gloves on my hands. Scrubs that never fit and the steady predictable snaps of hemostats and needle drivers, heavy German metal in my hands- the satisfaction of pulling suture and seeing clefting flesh pull together neatly into a perfectly approximated line.
"It hit me like a rock," Dr. Wallace had said, "I think it has to come to you that way."
A rock? I realized when I started grasping at OR time, as if the rest of my time was spent underwater and I had to come up for air. I used to hate it: all the standing, all the not-being-able-to-see. But damn, it's awesome once you actually get to do or see anything.
"Forget all of your problems; I'm going to fix just this one." It's a mantra I can live with. |
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[23 Aug 2008|08:39am] |
Sometimes I feel that I love him so much that it scares me. I know that I'm leaving myself wide open to be hurt by him, but between a strange mix of trusting that he won't hurt me and almost not caring if he does, I've left my heart an open door to him.
I have never felt this way about anybody before.
I sit around and I lie in bed and think, "This may be it. I could marry this man."
I wonder if he feels the same way?
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[04 Apr 2008|01:34pm] |
There's something unique and even a little bit fun about being crazy. Not all the time, but once in a while, I wouldn't give this up for the world. It makes me a little bit special, a little bit different from everybody else. The label frees me from having to try too hard to be normal; I know there's something wrong, so there's no reason to mask it. When I'm with other people that know, there's even less reason. Oh, Alice is sitting there alone staring off into space? It's because she's crazy!
I wish I knew what it was like to feel normal. I wonder if people with other chronic diseases wonder how it feels like to be healthy.
I made an appointment with the psychiatrist and the psychologist. I think I'm going to cave and try medication. I don't have time for psychotherapy, and the psychologist is ridiculously difficult to book appointments with. When will I have time to see a psychologist while I'm on rotations anyways? Might as well just pop a pill daily. And just in case Rockstar and I break up, at least I'll be stabilized first.
Ha.
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[04 Apr 2008|12:09am] |
Because I had to let you know and you're not online... I am leaving a note here for you!
MY WIFEY (JENNY) IS DATING SCG (SUPER CHRISTIAN GUY)!!!!!!
OMMMGGGGGG!!!!
My not-so-profound thoughts on that later ;)
Take care Francie-kins, I'm still bitter that you got me for April Fools. I was thinking, "Wow, such a turnaround! I wonder if I had tutored kids if I would have found it so profound..."
Yeah okay okay I GOT PUNK'D
XOXO,
A
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[30 Mar 2008|11:54pm] |
It's at this point again. I can't see inside his head; I have no idea what he's thinking. According to me, he's not satisfied anymore. According to me, I'm not getting what I somehow feel that I NEED from this relationship.
Here I am, acting all CRAZY and all "like-a-girl": needy, clingy, hoping for affection, tossing out lines and bones I hope he'll take... How many more "I want to see you"s do I need to throw out before he responds in kind? How many "Do you want me to come over?"s do I need to ask before he asks me to stay over?
I feel less and less wanted and needed around, as if we only spend time together if it's been preordained ("The guys are having dinner. Wanna go?") or if I ask.
It kills me to feel this needy. The last time I felt this needy, it was because the bastard didn't really care all that much. And when I dropped him- finally- that was part of the reason why. I don't need people to make me dislike myself; it's easy enough with just me in here.
I hate med school. IT MAKES LIKE SO DAMNED HARD.
I am Alice, hear me whine.
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| Here, I announce silently to the world |
[13 Mar 2008|01:02am] |
Should a struggle with depression be kept quiet? Is this a silent personal struggle, between man or women and his or her psyche? Or is it something that should be shared? Perhaps all struggles are to be kept to oneself.
There's a definite problem with awareness in relation to depression. My progressive-thinking, well-educated, science-minded friends have all been taught that depression is caused by a combination of outside stressors, intrinsic genetics, and psychological workings of the mind. A survey of the general population, as demonstrated by a class slide, demonstrated that most believe depression to be caused by weakness, poor upbringing and parenting, and lack of faith.
That's like believing that AIDS is a disease caused by ungodly living. I'm sure a large group of people still believe that.
It's not my fault. Even when I'm a complete mess, I never think it's my fault. Maybe part of it was traumatic childhood through my parents' constant arguing. Maybe part of it is that I'm in medical school and it's supposed to be stressful, but my constant return to this state (and the fact that I trust in science) makes me believe that depression is real. It is not my fault. It's in my head, but it's a chemical imbalance- with none of those air-quotes or eyerolls that accompany statements like that.
"Dysthymia." I remember when I finally made the decision to talk to Dean Moutier, our feelings dean, and she gave me her presumptive diagnosis. For some reason, it felt good to have a box; I was no longer alone, but in a box full of other people just like me. We all want to be different, but we all want to be like somebody else who is different just like us.
The San Diego Tribune wanted to do an article on depression, and there was a posting on the forum by a girl that had gotten featured in an internet video about medical students and depression: Would anybody like to be interviewed by this reporter so she can have a broader view of depression in medical students for her article? I didn't even need to think about not responding. Francie, Holly, Wenhai, Angie, Jon, Henry, Jenny, Nate, Kevin, Lee: the circle of people who know about my condition(? impairment? state of being?) is constantly expanding, but all of San Diego? Maybe nobody in my medical school class reads the Tribune, but if I had mentioned having a sister with psychopathology? If I had mentioned having one end of a severed relationship in New York? If I had mentioned missing New York and wanting nothing to go back? Any sort of masked anonymity given by the paper would have been moot. In as class of 122, twelve would have had enough of an inkling to know who Melissa* (*name changed for anonymity) was, two would be dull-witted enough to tell, and after that, nobody would be in the dark.
The period of time after you tell anybody about a problem like this- especially if they're perfectly psychologically normal, don't I envy them- is especially awkward. You don't know how to interpret them. Are they doing this favor or giving me this show of affection out of pity? Are they now avoiding me because they don't know how to act around me? Are they only talking to me because they're afraid I'll go over the edge? We hear about stigma, and the stigma is lifting, but it's lifting slowly and only in selected areas. Clear skies predicted for inland, however, clouds will be at the beach today.
Damn! Avolition. Avolition has really gotten me today.
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[18 Feb 2008|11:16pm] |
He, being the oldest person I've ever dated (not in terms of how much older he is than me, but the oldest at the time I am dating him), is more concerned than anybody about the future. Given that our futures will be set out very concretely sooner than we expect, we talk about this subject to no end.
I think we've discussed every likely city that I would be willing to live in that he would also be willing to live in. Since when did cohabitation get so difficult?
Ever since May 23rd, 2006, I've dreamed of the day I'd return to New York.
For him, New York is absolutely out of the question.
When am I supposed to start giving up my dreams for him? I have sworn for years not to let romance get in the way of my dreams. Is this obstinance? Or getting the best that I deserve? Getting my cake and eating it alone?
I'm too tired to write anymore -_-
P.S. I'd think about writing more, but I have so little time to myself nowadays...
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[30 Jan 2008|05:19pm] |
I'm used to relationships that take work. I'm used to relationships that hurt and fill me with angsty-ness and the desire to let my pent up emotions spill out on LJ. Andrew, because it was so... weird; because it was so sudden and I had just been in a relationship with somebody else for years. And then, it was Andrew because we were so far away from each other and I had no idea what to do.
I don't know if I'll ever feel that feeling again: that magic you feel when you find out the person that you like likes you back. That's not how it happened with the Rockstar, not really.
And of course, with SCG, it was the fact that neither of us wanted to date, but I was attracted to him anyways.
With Rockstar, it's so easy. It's safe and comforting, and waking up next to him in the mornings is always like magic, after I get past the initial why-am-I-so-groggy-and-why-is-the-alarm-going-off state. I turn to my side, see his sleeping face next to mine, and I can't help it. I kiss him lightly and wake him up... and then I tell him how happy I am to be waking up next to him another morning.
It's really saccharine, I know.
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[03 Dec 2007|10:04pm] |
Why in the world would you be afraid that I'd get bored of you? You are the hottest guy I've ever dated, the most ridiculous, the one that can keep me smiling and laughing despite the fact that we're both about to do amazingly awfully on our finals.
I thought it'd be a hook-up thing. You gave me a ride back from LA and all of a sudden it made sense: this is somebody I can really spend time with.
Thank you, our cupids.
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| A line to remember |
[29 Nov 2007|01:15am] |
Have you told Jon?
- No. But I think he knows.
How?
- Mmm... I dunno, well. He knows about the ski trip. And he made some comment...
I look at him as he trailed off, waiting for him to tell me the comment. As for the ski trip, the Rockstar is coming along with one of my first year friends, whom Rockstar very much dislikes.
What? What comment did Jon make?
- more nondescript sounds
Oh come on! Tell me!
- He said that I like you more than I hate Foster.
laughter, Really?
- Yeah. I had no comeback for that one. I was left speechless.
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[17 Nov 2007|03:54pm] |
How long can you stay secretly in love with somebody? Maybe it isn't a secret how I feel about him. I flirt with other men when he's in earshot, pointlessly, because I know I won't get a rise out of him. The rockstar, our anatomy TA; they both mean nothing to me compared to the depth of what I feel for him. Unrequited, hopeless, secret; I haven't mentioned it in so long that people must think that I'm over the entire ordeal.
But I'm not. Like it did with Andrew, memories return in tidbits: fragmented and frighteningly vivid: his warm fingers stretching the webbing between mine, when it first began with my shock in his fingers playing with my hair, feeling like a strange princess being led by the hand over dirt furrows in my satin slippers, the confusion of his arm pressing my body into his to be disappointed by the fact that he only wanted to take a picture with me--but it felt so nice, the intoxication of spending time with him... yet I play at nonchalance. I accidentally treat him with too much familiarity; I turn and avoid eye contact and feign aloofness.
Or now, I sit here and listen to music, thinking about him. And how pointless it is. And how I am just torturing myself.
And then how he is way too good and way too different for me. And how I would do anything for him. Anything.
Dammit, how does my life always get fucked up like this???
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[16 Nov 2007|01:18am] |
Why do I still want him? How can I still think he's perfect for me?
Why why why? How how how?
I'm retarded when it comes with falling for people.
He was sleeping on my couch today. We had been studying together, and as I was concentrating on the last few paragraphs of our Friday dissection, I heard his breathing behind me become deep and regular. I had turned off the lights so he could sleep, and I kept taking the opportunity to sneak back from my bedroom to watch him sleeping, keeping my hand near the empty can of peaches just in case he awakened and I needed an excuse to be there. He wasn't that cute while he was sleeping. Peaceful, but his face still showed the chubbiness he had gained over the summer, hiding the strong jawline I know used to be there; I had gone back and looked at pictures from our first year. What I wanted to see were his beautiful eyes hidden behind those eyelids--eyelids like curtains hiding what I wished to see, but hiding my covert creepy spying from him-- not the deep magical blue of one of my high school crushes, but a light blue like any other normal day, light blue like nothing to be awed about, given to changing slightly to blend into his clothing. I kept imagining those curtains rising, those wise sleepy eyes looking at me, and my gaze quickly going down to my hand as it quickly grabbed the dirty dishes. He was lying on his back the first time I checked on him, and then he had turned to his side, the concavity of his body facing toward me. I longed to curl up in the bowl of that warm spoon, or to lay a gentle hand on his sleeping forehead, or to run my fingers lightly through his tousled blond hair. I longed to violate him and lay a gentle kiss on his forehead; to think of kissing him on the lips would be beyond violation. But I can't violate him. I can't take advantage of my sleeping... friend. He's worth so much more to me. He is such a good man that I couldn't bear the guilt of violating him; I can't bear the repeated awkwardness of rekindling ambiguous friendship.
So I keep returning to my room, his sleeping body emblazoned into my mind and my emotions clamoring and asking for satisfaction.
Oh God, why?
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[14 Nov 2007|12:37am] |
I don't even remember what we were talking about. I do remember what we were eating. Fork-full of salad greens and Vons rotisserie chicken halfway to my mouth, I remember that it was a perfectly timed moment for me to blurt out, "My sister had an abortion." But I don't. My sister's experience should not be used for shock value. What would their reply be? There can't be an appropriate reply to such an inappropriate comment. I make a non-specific sound and Nate and Jenny look at me; I finish putting my fork-load in my mouth, and my mouth twists into the wry smile of someone who has looked temptation in the face and then shuts the door.
This is how I know I'm growing up.
I've never really talked to anybody about how I felt (and how I still do feel) about my sister's abortion. It's an awkward thought for my mind, mostly because there are closets of guilt involved. Guilt guilt, always guilt laces and poisonously sweetens my relationship with my sister. I don't remember if I was driving or if she was driving when she told me that she was eating for two. We were on the 210 going east, and my shocked silence lasted past Angeles Crest until whoever was driving changed lanes to exit and I broke the silence by asking how far she was along. She must have been driving. I would have crashed the car.
My parents didn't know for another few weeks after I knew. I had moved to UCLA for that summer, and it was a frenetic summer for me, filled with lab work, MCAT class, and studying. I came back one weekend and my parents knew. That Sunday there was an awkward lunch at Blue Fish when we ate delicious sushi and the son of somebody who works for my mother tried to implore me to convince my sister to change her ways. What ways? Isn't it her choice from here on out?
She had decided to keep the baby. I feared the consequences of a child in the family and felt cheated out of bearing my parents their first grandchild: an emotion that made no sense to me but I was forced to acknowledge. I was glad she had made the decision. One morning I saw her and her eyes were swollen. What from? From crying before she fell asleep. Crying about what? I had asked. What a useless question.
And then a few weekends later, she informed me that she was getting an abortion. I had almost forgotten the entire issue. My only phonetime was devoted to my then-boyfriend, stolen in the fifteen minutes it took me to walk to class from my apartment. My family had never called; I was either at work, studying, in class, or sleeping. My mother had gone crazy, said that she wouldn't raise another child; the child might be born deformed because my mother had given my sister a steroid injection before she had known my sister was pregnant. She had insisted upon the abortion. Bought by the easy, I didn't say anything. So much left unsaid: Are you sure this is what you want? You need to make this choice on your own. Don't let Mom tell you what to do; this is much too important. I was confused on my thoughts on abortion. If my mother thinks it is right, then...?
One weekend later and it was done. We didn't talk about it. Sunday night, and I returned back to my apartment at UCLA.
I wasn't there for her. I had barely talked to her. My then-boyfriend and I had emailed back and forth constantly; he from work and me from the lab, but I had never contacted my sister. It was the same avoidance I had used in high school, except now I didn't have the excuse that my sister and I weren't close. We were closer now, weren't we? Oh guilt, culpa mia, I failed her; I keep failing her.
That summer was a pinnacle in a 37S, a monument to my ability to work full-time and be brilliant. And what died? My relationship with my then-boyfriend. My sister's child. Or was it not yet a living being? And now I have this guilt, this burden of responsibility and duty failed. I should have taken the MCAT some other time. I should have quit my job. I should have done something.
Anything but be another silent accomplice.
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[13 Nov 2007|12:15am] |
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I’m in my room, looking for a sketchbook with some empty pages. I know I have some old sketchbooks up here somewhere, and I grab two hefty spiral-bound books off the shelf. Curious about what I have sketched in there before, I sit down cross-legged on the floor and open them up one by one. One is from art class in junior high; the other is from even before that. My old drawings are atrocious. How could anyone have seen such budding artistic talent in them? My inherent laziness shows up even then; if not forced to discipline myself, I have always just drawn what has come easiest to me. There are dozens of imagined faces, eyes, and women in strange dresses with beads in their hair. Fantastic animals, witty trees with names like the “Chocolate Tree” and the “White Board Tree” flanked on either side by the “Dry Erase Marker Tree” and the “Eraser Tree” undoing on the first what the second had created. A perspective drawing is spare; a ball bounces off a sidewalk as shown by elementary bounce lines, and a child’s assumedly plaintive voice cries from within, “Mommy, my ball has bounced away…” Teachers had always said that I had so much promise; where were they getting this from? I turn pages and pages and it’s all the same. I’m disappointed in my past self, remembering how I had proudly showed off my sketches and my wit—“Look! The Marker Tree is drawing on the White Board Tree and the Eraser Tree is erasing it!”—I’m extrapolating that the affirmation I had gotten must have been disinterested and forced. There’s a blank page and then a full page sketch, done boldly in dark pencil. A whole heart is bursting out of a chasm, energy and heat radiating from it in intrepid squiggles; the cliffs jaggedly thrown down with a confidence I know I cannot recreate. There are no erasures. Every mark was made swiftly, without foresight. “Wholeness in the Chasm,” the piece is entitled. 5/14/02 – AY. My senior year of high school. I turn the page to a roiling confession. It is the counterpart to the drawing before it: a melting heart fractured into three, its contours and jagged edges shaded technically; pregnant raindrops fall from a scribbled sky and run down its broken sides; a flower grows out of a rock and gracefully hangs its head and weeps; a bird sits on a long branch, alone: “A BROKEN HEARTED DALI – 5/14/02 AY,” it is inscribed. If I die, I would like to be known by this work. Awed, I turn the page to a self-portrait. I’m slouched in my computer chair, sketching myself in the mirrored closet doors. Scrawled across the top: “The true meaning of sadness.” Following it are two studies: “THE FLOWER THAT WEEPS” and the bird sitting on its long branch, entitled “LONELINESS.” All dated 5/14/02. “Damn! I was depressed.” I am alone so I let the exclamation escape out loud. I turn back and study my drawings: bold pencil strokes. No erasures. I know this confidence. This is the concentration; no—this is the fever and single-mindedness of the affliction. Unfocused upon all else, the eye claws into the blank cream whiteness and directs the hand to create. There is no hesitation; there is no premeditation; my hand knows where every stroke should go and my mind realizes it afterwards. I know this type of drawing. Five years later, the same energy has emerged again. I enter into a uncontrollable trance of self-loathing and blankness and when I emerge, I fix the details. Without my affliction, there is no madness; without the madness there cannot be art. I am still no artist. But will this be the first to go?
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[10 Nov 2007|02:07pm] |
"Those Sunday afternoons when you complain that you can't reach me, this is where I am- with a book."
It's more of that desolate Californian brown that I detest, the dry dirt furrowed deeply by flowing water: miniature canyons imitating San Diego's landscape, interrupted by struggling clumps of yellowing weed; except these furrows are running toward the ocean, ending at broken slate forming ragged promontories of cliff. We sit at the edge of one, and I am again in awe of conversation with him.
The sun has finally broken today, and it has captured me. The sound of my voice is grating against the peacefulness I feel; I stop talking and lie down, left arm flung over my face to block the sun's direct rays. Out my squinted eyes, shielded by the sunglasses that have sat unused for the last few weeks, all I can see is sky. A cloud looks like New Zealand, but I have no idea if those other islands exist. The ocean roars softly, muffled by air, and I can hear my watch ticking through it. Such incongruity: the steadiness of its counting of seconds, the steadiness of my breathing, broken by the irregular timeless consistency of the surf.
All Saturday mornings should be made for this.
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[08 Nov 2007|12:28pm] |
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Sometimes I find myself wondering what I believe that wouldn't change because of a guy. Now that I've been single for a reasonable period of time, I've begun to realize that many of my beliefs and interests have been simply absorbed from all the people I've dated.
Wow, isn't that sad?
There's definitely something to be said about being flexible, but flexibility needs to end somewhere. For example, there's the issue of children. The biological children thing has always been an issue for me. In some sort of arrogant way, I want to believe that my life is meant for something larger than two children and a lifetime in suburbia. It’s what my parents built, and I want to reject it, but the temptation of comfort and familiarity is still there. I want to live in a challenge; I never want to be tied down; I want to make a difference; I am hopelessly idealistic. I will raise my children in a city; I will refuse to have biological children—maybe I’ll adopt; I will have no children at all.
And then most of the guys I’ve met and dated want their own children. These are the times when I start thinking that I do too. Now that I’m single, the guys I meet that don’t want children scare me; what if I end up thirty-five years old and feel a need for biological children that my chosen life-partner does not wish to have? I feel like every day I need to make a decision. Who am I? Am I self-serving? Can I be selfless? My medical school requires every student to complete an ISP, or Independent Study Project, in order to graduate. I’ve always thought that I wanted to do an intensive focus upon underserved medicine or do some sort of project through Free Clinic: something that helps people who need it. And then about a week ago, while talking to a friend about my passion for snowboarding and how I would love to just be an adaptive instructor and be a snow-bum at some mountain, I realized another possibility: I could use my two ISP months in my fourth year to live up in Mammoth during the winter and do research at their adaptive sports program. What a brilliant idea! I could do my research and ride in all of my free time. I could be the crazy out on the weekdays after snowstorms and the avalanche crews. I could provide adaptive programs with hard scientific research on the impact of work upon disabled children’s outcomes. I told P about this idea; I was sitting on a folded out futon, wearing my gray fleece sweatpants—the ones I usually wear under my snowboarding pants, and he was leaning against a wall across from me, looking uncharacteristic in well-fitting jeans and college sweater, one leg bent underneath him socked foot against the wall. P thought it was brilliant. I thought it was brilliant. But then I told him the dilemma: I have no professional interest in working with autism or in pediatrics. If I have to do a research project, shouldn’t I do something that furthers my professional interests—something that would help me get the residency I want? P laughed at me: “I have never done anything with the purpose of furthering my ‘professional interests’” Thinking about it, neither had I. That’s why during college I hadn’t done any pre-med stuff. Our conversation is fairly loud; I wonder what the interviewee P has staying at his place is thinking about that. Yes, I’m in medical school and I didn’t do pre-med crap; had he? The collateral issue I hadn’t mentioned was this: who would my research help? Adaptive programs are expensive. Equipment is expensive, lessons are expensive; it’s like any other regular snowsport. Who is coming up to the mountain for adaptive lessons? It’s the parents with their disabled children from privileged backgrounds, exactly the people I want to believe don’t need yet another person to serve them. Damn, most of the world serves them, why should I? What sort of motivation does a project like this have? My motivation is primarily to have fun; that is why this idea is so brilliant—to experience life working near a great mountain before I ostensibly go off to help the world one patient at a time. Doctor-Alice to the rescue! God, sometimes my idealism makes me sick, mostly because I feel it all in my head. Maybe I’d hate living in a mountain town. Or maybe I’d decide not to match for residency but instead become an adaptive instructor. What a waste of an education. What a waste of the incredible architecture that has been built up at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars inside my cranium. Is happiness worth the loss of idealism? Is giving up (what I believe are) my principles worth having my own children? These are the principles: having biological children is a beautiful but unnecessary and essentially self-serving project. I could be of greater use to the world without children. Many children already exist that need good homes, so those should be raised before more children are brought into existence. Those are essential truths for me. And I have no idea where it puts me. There are little decisions everyday. What will I do with my time? I fail to serve anybody but myself in my everyday life, so I will think about how I can help people in the future instead. If I don’t feel that drive to help people now, how will that change with a medical degree? God, sometimes I hate thinking. I hate believing something this difficult and I hate that with a push of fate I could choose to go against everything I do believe.
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[08 Nov 2007|12:34am] |
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We’re dissecting the extensors of the forearm. Nate and I have teamed up on the right side of the cadaver; he’s sitting in a swivel chair wielding scalpel and forceps with the hand in front of him, and I’m standing by our dissector reading directions. “I greatly prefer the pelvis,” I comment. The extremities section so far is just rote memorization of muscle attachments, nerves, and vasculature: bifurcations, common tendons, nerve plexi; it’s all too much for me. Nate stops dissecting, scalpel paused above the half-skinned palm: “Yesterday at my preceptorship, my preceptor saw a patient with a pus-ey discharge coming out of her vagina. My preceptor thought it’d be appropriate for me to be there while he examined her.” “He thought it was appropriate?” asks one of my lab partners. Of course it’s appropriate; why would Nate think it was otherwise? I’m remotely amused that this woman had pus-ey discharge coming out of her pussy. “All I can say,” Nate continues, “Is that I’m really not too impressed.” I realize in a bit of surprise what I should have known: Nate hasn’t actually seen a vagina. Of course he hasn’t. My friends laugh, and I play at laughing along. Jenny quips, “Well I guess someone isn’t ready to get married.” “Well, some things are meant to be felt but not seen.” My mouth quite literally drops open. Now my laughter is somewhat horrified. My labmates think this is hilarious, but I know- almost for a fact- that neither of them have any sort of experience with men, at least any that would involve men looking at their vaginas. Oral sex, people? I want to make some sort of comment about male chauvinism, about men using women for their own enjoyment, and some golden-rule sort of retort along the lines of: “Would you want some woman saying that about your penis?” But I don’t. I never think of these things quickly enough. I’m thinking about this again when I’m Nads-ing my hoo-haa that night for no reason. I put a mirror on top of the toilet to help me get the green goop on. Was the patient Nate saw groomed? Would it have made a difference? I have to admit that female genitalia isn’t the most attractive thing I’ve ever seen. I pull off clumps of Nads-matted hair off in strips and there's blood.
One night in high school, my mom came home from work to tell me that she had examined the most beautiful vulva that day: “It was perfect, just like a rose.” Disgusted, I had yelled, “Mom! I don’t want to know that!” and had left the room. Maybe she had wanted to start some conversation about sex; maybe she thought that I would have admitted there on the spot that oh yes, my labia minorae are asymmetrical—is that normal? God, I hope Nate changes his mind. Otherwise, his poor wife…
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[07 Nov 2007|09:42pm] |
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Everything is going so well and then some random slip of fate hits you in the back and then there you are again, knocked flat on your face, sinking into the swampy labyrinth of the past, and clicking through Facebook to find pictures of him.
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[05 Nov 2007|11:30pm] |
Sometimes I feel more lost than anything else in this world. I close myself and imagine myself solitary in a boundless desert, holding a blue Nalgene in one hand and a broken compass in the other hand (because there's nothing that signifies "lost" more than cliche and use of cheesy symbolism), as emo guitar-driven rock music plays and the camera zooms in for a tight shot and then spirals outwards until I disappear into the scattered brush of the desert.
What do I want? What do I believe? I feel like these things should have been figured out ages ago.
What do I love? What things about me are so certain that I know that they will not change for the rest of my life?
Am I a happy person? I think that I am a depressed person that sometimes finds patches of sun, like right now. Right now cloud and mist have enshrouded San Diego, but I am my own personal patch of sunshine.
Am I a Republican or a Democrat? Do I not care much about politics but want to care because my friends care and I want to care because I feel like I need to know something or care something in order to be some sort of meaningful citizen of this world? Am I really a lazy person who wants to care about something because that's what good people do?
What am I passionate about? Do I want to do primary care medicine? Or do I want to do primary care because that's how I feel I would be most useful to society?
Does my worth to myself defined by my utility to society? Surely not, but my worth to myself certainly is not defined by how happy I can make myself be.
Do I chase happiness and hope that I will not be selfish but instead find happiness in doing the hard things in life: caring for the uncared for, being that person for the person who has nobody, being the physician who works in order to survive?
When I think about these things, I am reminded again and again about how immature I am and how unready I am for a relationship. I'm adrift. Where do I start? How do I answer these questions?
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