getting back

as my training period in central california comes to a close, i've realized that a lot of my unhappiness and unrest comes from being so tunnel-visioned.  the "light at the end of the tunnel" certainly puts most of these struggles ("struggles") into perspective.

i want to think that i will come away from residency a little bit more kind.  even though i've had jobs and some (albeit very unique) life experience prior to choosing this profession, i realize that some of the baggage of my past that i'd refused to address turned again and again into small fires that smoldered behind me, dissolving bridges into smoke.  but as i learn to forgive and to nurture, i experience that universal, cliche-sounding truth: that you cannot love others until you love yourself.
my heart is so full at the moment.  i have never felt more content.  even reacting to things like not getting along with people at work, or doing something for my patient that was not evidence based, or feeling like i am just never enough -- these seem to fade more and more.  the storms that one creates in their minds, completely driven by nothing other than self-criticism and self-loathing.  to be able to step back, let all that go, immerse oneself in love and creativity.  like the entire world is open to me (even though i know it is but a fraction of a fraction).  how privileged i feel....!
i am grateful to live in a time, in a geographic location, where people can feel safe to explore their personalities and preferences, where they can feel empowered to speak up for the benefit of their families and communities. 
i am grateful i have the resources, physical and not, to drift seamlessly between cultures, cliques, environments.  daily i meet patients who were not and will never be living with that type of privilege.  i feel deep humility.  who am i to deserve these wonderful things?  (and i can't even get some diagnoses straight...)

i heard one of my pregnant patients, at 9 months, was in an MVA and had a pole go through her chest.  both her and her baby boy are alive.  incredible.  i live in an age where an event like that is not a death sentence.  that is mind-blowing.

i had my heart broken in the worst way (the worst way in my own limited personal experience, haha).  but from there i had the courage to continue my training and to pursue a second boarding.  everything about this career has been humbling, but in the best way.  it's given me meaning.  it's helped me realize that though others strive for fame, fortune, reputation...that's just not me.  and that's okay.  people need the background players as much as they need the visionaries and the leaders.  and there is nothing shameful about being the harmony to someone else's melody.

i think the difference about what's going on lately is getting to connect.  Connecting with people with whom i have no doubts, no worries about judgement, no shared past negative events.  sparks of joy  in the most mundane.  getting to dance again.  exploring medical knowledge and ideas with little fear of repercussion.  it is never the same as the friend-cocoon i grew up with....though in a way, it is far more freeing.  i used to be so resentful about not having that safe friend-family.  it took me a while to realize that permanence is not a prerequisite for family.

i don't want to analyze too much, just enough so that when the next rough patch comes, i can read this and remember: yes, yes life is good.  and if i am kind, i will be enough.

"if you don't know how to be alone, you will always be lonely."

we were ankle deep in water, black as ink, and yet so clear as to see the grains of sand beneath.
the sky was truly as black as the velvet described in innumerable poems throughout history, with the stars splayed out in chaotic glory.
and only a lone cell phone light to guide our way.  though the waves were crashing a mere hundred yards from where we stood in the water, the water beneath us barely made a motion.
i could feel my feet being gently sucked into the depths of the wet, dense sand, espeically as i gazed up into the heavens above me.
what a glorious time to be alive!  on the california central coast at night, alone yet not alone, enclosed in our space yet part of the entire gigantic world...

la cerveza mas fina

i haven't been reflecting enough.  The last two years have been so full of incredible experiences and lessons.  i am afraid i haven't been learning from anything.

i am always afraid of being mean.  i think certain aspects of my job bring it out.  especially on my colleagues.  i just have so little resilience when it comes to stress.  i see it in my personal relationships too.

the last couple years i fell very deeply in love.  or, how i imagine love is, anyway. these days, i feel the loss almost more painfully than when the breakup happened; perhaps more painful because of its slow and insidious onset.  but that's actually not what's been bothering me lately.  the thing that's bothering me is that my thoughts are intruded more by memories of another person, a person that made me feel like shit when i was with him.  why am i perseverating on this douche canoe, whom i'd barely spent any time with and supposedly gotten over a million years ago, rather than this gentleman with whom i'd been in love?  that's the thing that's been really making me feel like shit.  i wonder if i'd been wrong about what love is all along.  maybe i don't know what it really feels like, so my relationship with him was me telling lies to myself.

or maybe, and more probably, the intrusive thought has nothing to do with the actual person, but the emotional milieu from whence it came.  of course my mind would trail back to douche canoe, because that was the last time i'd felt so low, and so empty.

i'm completely obsessed with this show called rick and morty.  there was one episode where rick's relationship with an alien hivemind was shown to be self-destructive and enabling.  in the end rick is dealing with the breakup in the only way he knows how; alone in the garage, destroying things and trying to destroy himself.  i know in a way it's just so cliche, so nauseatingly self-indulgent....but fuck all if i didn't identify with that episode.  hit me right in the sternum.

ugh. going to go drink.

pillow talk

so underrated.

if you're lucky, you'll find yourself in the dark sometimes.

it is nice to say hello once in a while.  why don't you visit more often?

this thread-count is like sandpaper.

with the help of my snarky friend Insomnia, i can't help flipping around on my too-big-bed, digging up the bones of relationships past.  why did i fail?  why wasn't i enough?  this mattress is seriously too empty.  i want to throw it out my window and sleep with my head on my desk forever.  instead of a refuge, it's become my cage.  i lie here, unable to crack my back the way i need to, hyperaware of the superfluous space of a queen mattress.  painfully aware of the reason i got one in the first place.

i'm chained to it.  a bed of glass.  cutting into me.  won't let me go.  it's too hot.  it's too cold.  when i reach out, there's nothing there.


i brought it up with a housemate, the other day in the living room.  how i don't feel safe here.  safe to be myself.  in this space, in this residence.  she listened with an empathetic voice but i could see her reflexively move away.  i went upstairs and planted myself on this goddamn torture chamber covered in fuzzy japanese blankets and watched the comedy central roast of james franco twice in a row until i passed out.

now i remember why i don't visit.

there is no beauty in sadness. only more of the same.

The sound of the setting sun on a road of gentle change.  The fading footsteps of your loved one.

I was driving south at sunset, leaving the East Bay with its memories of a tormented young adult squandering the promise of the world laid before her.  The sky was ablaze in magenta and coral light, spilled shamelessly across the deepening blue.

It was beauty, and I was leaving, and it felt so familiar.  The familiarity was what broke my heart.  I was always a shy little coyote, always slinking away with my tail tucked from the most brilliant moments, romances, friendships, opportunities, into the dark and the cold.  It was what I deserved, wretched thing I was.  The twilight horizon on the road ahead of me suddenly felt too heavy to bear.  I wanted to jump out of the car, and leap into those intense clouds of color behind me.  I was overwhelmed with grief.  It felt like getting run over by an 18-wheeler would be worth being in that light for a mere split second.

"There she was," passerby would think to themselves, as they drove past my road-kill-carcass on the median the next day.  "At least she's out of her misery."

wounded animals

She had the voice of a seasoned blues singer.  Cracking, sore, adamant.

It had been a good forty-five minutes that I had hunched by her side, carefully sewing up her wrist. The effort she made to end her life was not very successful, to say the least.  The usual noise of the ED was muffled in this room, door shut and curtain drawn.  All that was left was the metallic click of my instruments, and her throaty voice.

I barely looked up at her face while I worked, but I could feel her gaze burning into my forehead.  I was afraid to make eye contact, lest their sadness appear too familiar.  I asked her what she had to live for.  Whether or not she was close to her family.  If she thought they would miss her if she died.  Each answer was a variation of the same: "I was cold.  I was so cold, and I felt useless, like nobody cared."  

I shared with her some stories.  She replied, "They don't understand people like you and me."

Her skin was paper thin, fragile.  Every bite of the needle felt like it would rip her to shreds.  It took some revision, manipulation, hemming and hawing to place 12 stitches into that large jagged laceration, and three more elsewhere.  I wanted to leave her with as little memory of the event on her body as I could muster, in my limited experience with repairs.  Time had stopped in that small white exam room.  There was nothing in the universe but our conversation, and the heavy silences in between.  We were Moses and the burning bush.   We were Adam and God.  We were the darkness and the universe, bitter and sweet, despair and triumph.

Shortly after i finished her lac repair, my shift ended.  I never saw her again.