medicine for real part II

so i have had a dry sore throat with non-productive cough, fever (okay i think it's fever, i don't actually own a thermometer), fatigue, and muscle pain for the last two days. hope it's not swine flu.

medicine for real

it's been a long day. at least i stopped myself from throwing up or crying in the bathroom.

then i went out and bought myself a pair of shiny shoes.

balance.

no better, no worse.

what i really need is to stop intellectualizing and just fucking do my work.

some honesty

there are probably better things to do on a friday night than having a beer by myself and writing this. i could probably try and be social (too tired) or study (also too tired). even though my life is already filled with too many breaks to "clear my head," i'm having a hard time getting myself together.

this week has been frustrating. i'm trying to make the best of it. what i've suspected for so long, that i am inadequate, socially awkward, and stupid, seems to be proving itself true. all the things i've kind of half-assed through are coming back to haunt me. i can't decide if this is motivating or spirit crushing. i've never wanted to curl up into a ball and cry more than i do now but for some reason i can't. instead i'll just finish off the 2nd beer of the evening and contemplate a 3rd.

it feels like there's so much for me to do. maybe too much. but then i start thinking if i have gotten this far--much farther than many others who have worked harder and wanted it more--then maybe i just need to pull myself up by the bootstraps and keep at it. rotations have shown me that the task of being a competent doctor extends far beyond med school and that i will forever be trying to keep up, learn, and prove myself to an escalating hierarchy of people. i haven't quite wrapped my mind around whether this is good or bad. i keep vacillating between commitment to this field and a strong desire to bail, if only i still felt like there was something which i could safely or at least competently bail to. any talent i once perceived myself to have is gone. most of the time i feel like medicine is the only thing i have left.

moving to long island, i felt like it would be an appropriate change of scenery and backdrop for personal change. i can say quite easily that i'm tired of the person that i am. i keep falling back into the same patterns but i realize now overnight transformations are more fantasy than fact. after ignoring all those occult strings that pull at me for a long time, i returned to reading my horoscope and tarot this year. all those predictions seem to indicate a good year for me. i am still waiting for it. my life, no, maybe more specifically just me, feels like it is diminishing.

and if i'm going to be honest, i might as well be honest. after ignoring it for so long, i realized how much i missed my ex. after so much stupid shit with men: some too serious for me, some too ridiculous, and some just kind of random--there is really only one person i think about when i think about these sort of things at all and i don't know why. it's been such a long time and i only knew him for a little bit and really, i didn't know him at all. seeing him after so long only goes to show how even those tenuous beliefs i had about him were wrong. it's probably a reflection of my own dissatisfaction that i keep returning to situations that cause me grief because i think i can somehow make things right. i really can't.

these are hard times and i can't decide if i am at a point of impasse or revolution.

and now i am on beer #3.

A Reminder

Work is love made visible.

And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.

And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distills a poison in the wine.

And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

-Kahlil Gibran "The Prophet" (pg. 33-34)

night driving

it's terrifying: watching the darkness unfold along the road, the slope of the tar skimming below my tires. the car pitches forward and swerves when i don't mean for it to. every street seems like staring into a lump of coal.

after the fear subsides, the night is so beautiful. the headlights peer out only far enough to illuminate the black roads and outline the trees. there is only me and this spot of light ahead.