Expecting big revelations is the hope of youth. Little secrets seem bigger now. Small realizations are all the more precious because they are fleeting, they light up the sky like transient lightning, illuminating your surroundings for a moment. But not blinding.
Some of my fellow residents were chatting with me today, and we were talking about restaurants. Somehow, it came up, that S only really would ever tolerate going out to eat at about four different places (Chipotle being one of them). Prior to this year, people would ask what went wrong. Today, it was all turned on its head, and everyone was more curious as to what had brought us together in the first place.
That's where the soft glow lit up through the gloom. Medical school, ugh. It's an odd thing. I love residency almost as equally as I disliked medical school. It makes no sense, because it should all be part of the continuum. But somehow, during those four years, I felt a constant pressure to keep my mouth shut, to hold my thoughts as my own, to make no big waves. I was indistinct, a speck of dust, a smudge on the windshield, and it was with great effort that I strived to be that inconsequential.
And in that state, all turned inward, compromising, resigned even, in that state, of course it would come to pass that I would settle. Of course.
None of this is a tale of woe. As soon as I earned my wings and became a physician, as soon as I started residency, I immediately became true to myself again. I was lucky, because to crush someone's personality for that many years in their 20s can be a permanent thing. It was not difficult at all for me to reacquaint myself. And everything I innately knew about myself, finally, after a long drought, others started to know too.
But it's just the flash of a camera, a temporary flicker of light. Some days, you feel known and understood, and you feel quite fortunate indeed. Other times, not so much. Life- I am getting used to it.
Some of my fellow residents were chatting with me today, and we were talking about restaurants. Somehow, it came up, that S only really would ever tolerate going out to eat at about four different places (Chipotle being one of them). Prior to this year, people would ask what went wrong. Today, it was all turned on its head, and everyone was more curious as to what had brought us together in the first place.
That's where the soft glow lit up through the gloom. Medical school, ugh. It's an odd thing. I love residency almost as equally as I disliked medical school. It makes no sense, because it should all be part of the continuum. But somehow, during those four years, I felt a constant pressure to keep my mouth shut, to hold my thoughts as my own, to make no big waves. I was indistinct, a speck of dust, a smudge on the windshield, and it was with great effort that I strived to be that inconsequential.
And in that state, all turned inward, compromising, resigned even, in that state, of course it would come to pass that I would settle. Of course.
None of this is a tale of woe. As soon as I earned my wings and became a physician, as soon as I started residency, I immediately became true to myself again. I was lucky, because to crush someone's personality for that many years in their 20s can be a permanent thing. It was not difficult at all for me to reacquaint myself. And everything I innately knew about myself, finally, after a long drought, others started to know too.
But it's just the flash of a camera, a temporary flicker of light. Some days, you feel known and understood, and you feel quite fortunate indeed. Other times, not so much. Life- I am getting used to it.
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