Hug me, love me, pay attention to me!

The sea's only gifts are harsh blows, and occasionally the chance to feel strong. Now, I don't know much about the sea, but I do know that that's the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong, the measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing the blind, deaf stone alone, with nothing to help you but your hands and your own head.          --Into the Wild

I've thought about this one quite a bit lately. The meaning changes as I do, an interesting indication of inward growth that I wish I had a bit more time to process--but there is no more time to process anything anymore. Already a lot rattling around in this mind of mine, and more yet to come.

Anyway, I think I'm going to stencil it on my wall. I've taken the liberty of carefully etching my favorite sayings onto the walls around my bed, desk, and above my bookshelf. It's a relaxing, undemanding, and rewarding use of my time--and it makes me feel like I belong. Perhaps narcissistically, the first thing to go up was a verse of my own poetry, followed by a quote from Gallileo and another from a man named John Shedd, about ships and the sea. It's a lovely cursive script. When I've done enough, I'll show you.

Maybe its just me being hormonal and emotional, but this marks four weeks since I was last with family or close friends, and I'm starting to get lonely. I want to be hugged, to touch someone, some kind of tactile mark of affection. I like the people I'm with, but I feel like I'm in a little bubble made of my own reservations, and I can't break it. Nobody touches here. Just little things, like a hand on a shoulder--it would be shocking but amazing. And yet, nobody touches here.

On of my absolute most favorite memories is sharing a couch with so many of my people that we couldn't move without the entire pile shifting, our own Pangea, taking so much effort to break apart. When Mariah hugs me, I know I have been hugged and but good. Cassie sits so close that our knees touch as we talk. Amanda puts her hand on my arm to recapture my attention if it wanders for even a moment when we're talking. Jon ruffles my hair when he passes. Andrew always greets me with wide arms and a wider smile. Tara bumps shoulders when we clean vegetables in the sink. Annalisa squeezes close as we laugh together at the camera. Alex surprises me with hard goodnight hugs when I need them most. And Becca snuggles next to me on the bed as we talk about our lives and choices, good and bad.

I needed those. I need them here now, too, except how weird would that be? Walking up to a complete stranger--or worse, someone I halfway sorta know. "Hug me, please. Love me!"

*laughing* So Andrew's line--"I'm here now. Love me, pay attention to me!"

(OH yes, before I go, please tell me your favorite things, quotes, anything to do with words. It might make it up on my wall, which would be awesome. Since I'm all INFJ it'd feel not quite so alone if I had things I could physically see, everyday, reminding me that there are other people out there in this world and that, sometimes, they're remembering I exist, and caring even a little bit. You can pick through the angsty PMS-speak there and just tell me some good quotes, too.)

Sun fun

I would love to have something to write about besides school. Unfortunately, the funniest thing that's happened outside of that sector of life, I can't tell you about it. Thought the skinny-dipping story was rated R? Not by half.

Sabbath was a riot, though. The Azure Hills church threw a pool party at a member's house--or casa grande--or resort, whichever you choose. There were several layers of pools, fountains, hot tubs, freaking fire pits built out on the middle of the water, paths and plants, a separate pool with a grotto above which you could dive off, a long slide...and an open outdoor area with it's own kitchen, bathroom, sauna, and pizza oven. Complete with changing lights for ambiance. Down below the house was a massive rink with bumper cars lined up, right next to the massive paddock with horse stalls beyond. In the middle of an orange grove. On a hill overlooking the valley.

Did I mention that he owns a movie theater?

Well, he does. It was lovely.

It was grand.

"The sea's only gifts are harsh blows,

and occasionally the chance to grow strong. Now, I don't know much about the sea, but I do know that that's the way it is here."

That's one of my favorite quotes. I'll finish it later. Maybe you can figure out where it comes from before then.

I'm mulling over two different things I could talk about tonight. The most recent one actually lost the win. Way too embarassing. Trust me when I say, you don't want to know. I didn't want to know, but maybe it would have been better if I figured it out before everyone else did.

I hate the weather here, and I hate the drivers, and I hate how awful last Friday was--but for the most part, I like the people and at this point, one week in, I'm actually relishing the challenge. They say that we can't learn everything they throw at us. Well, I used to think I was stupid, because I didn't get the best grades. Turns out, I was just lazy. Now I can't afford to be, and so I've pushed this last week. And everything stuck.

It's not so special, because most of it I've seen before, but it's there now, waiting in my head. And I can't help but wonder what else I can do. It's like a climb, where your arms are shaking and your fingers feel like they're falling off--the point where you know you're about to bite it and hit cliffside. But you don't. You push into it and through it and suddenly you're scaling a face even though it doesn't look like there's a thing there to hold on to. When that happens to me, and then I actually do get onto the part of the rock that really doesn't have anything, I think, maybe I can do it anyway. Because I just did this. Bet I can. Why not?

I've never really applied it to scholastics before. It's worth a shot, anyway.

That's not what I was going to talk about. I'm tired, and my mind is rambling. Maybe tomorrow.

Antimatter...exists without mattering?

This was the first truly hard day I've had since coming here to LLU. I suppose that in three years I'll look back and laugh because it wasn't that bad at all--but it is now, and let's be honest, that's all anybody usually cares about.

It was the first day for my group to dissect in anatomy lab. The different stations switch every week, and today I was the primary dissector. And I thought I was going to waltz in there with all of my dead person experience and do the whole shock and awe thing. They weren't going to know what had hit them. I knew all of the muscles already, the innervations, the works--I'd been up at half past five to study them. I was going to clean up those muscles and present a bright and shining example of quality cadaver to the next group. Basically, I knew what I was doing and I was going to be awesome.

Somewhere, someone is laughing.

I'm going to call our cadaver Jean, because that's the most interesting unisex name I could find in 15 seconds of googling. I'm not allowed to tell you anything about it but I can tell you that Jean had had too many Twinkies prior to expiration. YOU try getting down to deep muscles in a neck that has a triple roll of fat on it! I couldn't find anything! There weren't even decent fascial planes! I tried blunt dissection, I tried sharper blades, but the muscle was sticking together, and so the others start poking around, and you can't poke a cadaver; they turn into ground beef. Which is what ours did. We had a 4x4 inch square to dissect, with four muscles to find and half a dozen small veins, and we got nothing. I got nothing.

There weren't enough people around to help. One of them let me stand behind her for 15 minutes and wait, only to finish with what she was doing and tell me she had a meeting to go to. Another promised to come three times, when he finished, and never showed. Finally, I literally grabbed on of the doctors by the arm and dragged him through a crowd of grasping hands. He poked around, slaughtered the one structure we had found, and said we had to start again on the other side. Because not finding the structures is not acceptable.

By this time, we've been in lab for three hours (the first hour not being dissection). My group is sick of my screwing up. Other tables have left, loudly congratulating themselves on their fine work. And I'm furious at myself, and my blood sugar is dropping (they call it hypoglycemic here!), and when I'm angry I cry, so I'm trying not to get too watery. It was a mess. I snapped at Aldo hardcore when he made fun of me. I'm really not a good person.

Long story short--tried the other side. Not much more luck, but we managed to snag the last TA before all the other doctors abandoned the lab and went home. I wonder if their consciences were at rest--that was a dirty trick. Anyway, for the next hour he worked on Jean. He did find several things (although I would describe their existance as more of a hypothetical than a literal event), and I'm very grateful he did.

Finally, as he was winding down, I stood up. I was calculating that it had been almost nine hours since I'd eaten when the room tilted right. I ended up staggering down the hall to the snack machine, and I'm absolutely sure that had I not gotten something sugary and stuffed it down at that precise moment, I wouldn't have made it back into lab. I was that close to passing out. We'd been there for four and a half hours before I gave up and left.

Basically, it was awful.

Pretty much, I screwed up.

Does it matter? In the long run, I doubt it. But it matters right now.

This is the start--this is your heart.

It begins in less than a dozen hours.

I want to dance in front of my mirror to salsa music. I want to hide under the covers and sleep and dream forever. I want to stay up late and never let this night end.  I want to go back to yesterday and make the jump, leap off of that cliff. I want to dash around with my camera and capture every second of the rest of my life, daring to be scandalous--cause a scene, flirt with disaster, take the risk and be as real as I can, even if nobody else gets it.

But, I've got to be at least a little bit adult about it. So I'm going to take the second option, in part. I'm going to bed. All of a sudden I'm very nervous.

dog bark because they are dogs.

The best doormat I ever saw said, "Ask not for whom the dog barks; it barks for thee." I want it.

The dark and dreary midnight knell
Sweeps across the field and fell
To echo on the cold stone walls
That circle crumbling ancient halls
And sighs across the empty well

Shelter for phantom mourners only
Sere and hollow, cold and lonely
The knell resounds up a vacant stair
That ends its climb on empty air
And dies where the chapel used to be

Twice tolled it was when the knell sang last
For steady lad and pretty lass
Together they lie on the graveyard hill
But hand in hand go roaming still
And rustle the drapes as they wander past.

I got a little lightheaded at the sight of blood again today in wards. I can't tell you how afraid that makes me. I think half the problem I have is that I'm worrying about it being a problem. But I want this. I want it so bad that it scares me. And I can't afford to be squeamish. It irks me. Irks is such a good word.

I also locked myself out of the house tonight. I ended up sitting outside in the dark for two hours, waiting for my roomie to get back. My blood sugar was low and she didn't have her phone on her, so I ended up being angry at just about everybody involved. And then I got super irritated at myself for being upset with anybody but me. Because it was my fault, and mine alone. Sometimes my temper...

Also, I'm lonely here. I don't even know who I miss, or what I miss, or what I want. Sometimes I think I hyped medical school up in my mind, and it's not the way I imagined. Of course, we haven't really started yet. But there's no guarantee that I'll feel like I belong any more then, than I do now. So I'll probably be writing a lot more verses of creepy stuff.

Also, I watched an episode of Grey's Anatomy, because I wanted to know what the junk all of the hype was about--and let me say, the size of their ER is ridiculous. People are basically stacked in the ER here at Loma Linda. I am very literally having to employ some sort of weird spidey sense to be able to constantly move out of people's way without looking.

Nail-mageddon

For me, it started when she scampered off to the bathroom. But I guess it went back past there. It might have begun during yoga, as the teacher used her creepily soothing voice to murmer impossible contortions for us to try, and the "calming stillness" was broken by the labored gasping of people doing things the body was never meant to do--but maybe not. It might have been even earlier, just as I labeled the "J. Jones" to the sketch I'd finished in Specialty Panels, just before the Orthopedic Surgeon came down to speak. Maybe then was the first time that I saw her rub the toe of one foot against the other--but if that was the beginning, I don't remember. I just remember the bathroom part.

Steph and I were sitting in Courtney's living room, chatting it up after a long day of classes, wards, and exercise. Steph said her toenail was doing funky things and she wanted to take the nail polish off--at least, that's what I think she said. When my mind hears things pertaining to personal prettifying, it shorts out.

The next thing we know, there's a wail from the bathroom. It went a little something like this.

"WwwwwaaaaaaaaAAAAAHHHHHHMMMMMMMYYYYYYY TOE IS COMING OFF!"

Well, whaddaya gonna do when you hear something like that? Of course, I was fairly sure her toe was not actually going to plink off onto the floor, but it sounded interesting. So I scampered on after Courtney to check it out. Of course, we rounded the corner to find her dabbing at her foot with this tissue stained bright red--but that was just nail polish. Only a little heart-attack worthy. But even if it had been bleeding out like a ruptured anemic femoral artery, we're going to be doctors someday. We know just what to do.

(I can hear Brian Reagan in the background--"Somebody get some leaves!")

But, her toenail was really coming off. And she's freaking out, because apparently (and I didn't know this, but maybe it's a common female sentiment?) her toes were her pride and joy. And she does have pretty nails. But now the big toenail was half off, and she's tugging at it and her eyes are huge and she's hyperventiliating just a little, inside. Courtney and I sit down on the floor and settle in for a good time, and we're telling her all sorts of things and I'm lecturing on how toenails work because that's all I've seen my whole life, in dad's office, and she doesn't care because life as she knows it is ending. It was so funny.

She ended up taking our advice and not ripping the whole thing off, but began cutting off the parts that would come. So now she has this...island of nail in the middle of her toe, just connected on one side. And the look on her face--I generally consider myself a compassionate person, but I was howling, because is was so dang funny. I was trying to be serious, in between assuring her that it would indeed grow back before medical school graduation and that, yes, somebody would love her even without her toenail; but I'm afraid I didn't succeed. Because she always says that you can't have pedicures because people die of the fungal infections they get, and this happened because she had some place cut her nails, and now all of her worst fears are vindicated. And she doesn't want to die.

This story was so much funnier in person. I'm sorry I can't adequately translate. I'm just very tired, and it's been a very long day. Suffice to say she wrapped it up with this massive bandaid that could have plugged a leak in a tire, and we're going to RiteAid tomorrow to lay in a year-long supply so she can keep it covered until it grows back.

Goodnight.

*Still laughing.*

Iron

I rest my case about California drivers--you know, the case about them being insane and having no common sense when they get behind the wheel of a car? Our big plan was to drive to the beach today. It's supposed to be about an hour and a half from here to Santa Monica, but when you drive during rush hour, and get sideswiped by a merging manaic who forgot that, oh yeah, he should probably check before he changed lanes, and pull off into the ghetto, and get lost, and wander in circles following a GPS with lingering unresolved childhood issues--well, then it takes about an hour longer. I couldn't tell you how I know this.

The pier was a riot, though. The girls made fun of me for wearing these cottony cargo pants that I love so very very much, instead of a dress, but when we pulled up and it was 69 degrees, they were laughing out the other side of their faces (which never made sense to me. Where does that saying come from, anyway?). It was cold. Glorious. I haven't been cold since the middle of July--every time I go outside, I melt. Everybody else was huddled in our blankets, but I got rid of my shirt and just ran around, loving the goosebumps and shivers and the lack of heat.

The best part, I think, was the giant...playground, I guess you'd call it, that was in the sand next to the pier. You know how you used to swing from ring to ring on the little kiddie setups? Imagine a row of rings 120 feet long, and 25 feet tall. There was this guy with a cast on his leg, but he got on one ring and started swinging, and I swear he just took off down the row. Looked incredibly effortless--you could tell he'd done it before. And since he never touched the ground, it didn't matter that his leg was broken. I wanted to be him, for a moment.

I also wanted to try it really badly. And I didn't. Mostly because I'm a coward--but also because there were scores of people around, and already on the rings, and let's be honest, I couldn't have reached them anyway.
Sometimes I hate how short I am. Clothes don't fit right, it's almost impossible to lose any weight using accepted means, and dating anybody over 6 ft is a problem--not to mention people think I'm about 14.

Of course, there are worse things. I stumbled across a picture gallery posted by a man who's in Somalia right now, working at one of the refugee camps. I didn't used to cry, you know. I had more self-control than your average Himalayan monk. But once you let something in, and let your heart get cracked into pieces to fit even more inside, it becomes a habit. And it was hard to be confronted with the reality of little kids who survive for a week on what I eat for a meal. It was appalling and heartbreaking, and I hated myself for being warm and well-fed. But I'm glad I found those pictures, because in a round-about way it made me absolutely sure that I am where I'm supposed to be. I can't do much now, but I will. I will finish what I started here, and I will go and feed people, and fix them, with my own hands, no space or stuff or selfishness between us. I will.

Tracing planes

Today I have watched 10 episodes of worthless shows, consumed a 1/2 pint of ice cream, and downed three bowls of soup, half a loaf of bread, a glass of milk, and four Midol. And it's a good thing I didn't have my favorite chips, or else those woulda been toast. Enough said. Being a girl is not always grand.

I'm still itching to do something meaningful with my life. I snuck out by the pool tonight, after it was closed, and rolled up my pants, left my socks and converse in a pile, and stuck my feet in the jacuzzi. I laid back on the concrete and watched the stars (the few that I could see) and just tried to listen, and get a feel for where I live now, and how it speaks. And I watched these airplanes come in, one about every two minutes, tracing the same path across the sky. I wondered who the people were, and where they were going, and if any of them thought to look down on the lights and wonder the same thing.

I don't think I'll ever quit wondering, wandering, pondering. But that's not enough. I was watching a plane on a collision course with a star, and I thought--I want to be out and going and doing. It'll happen soon enough, I know. But the waiting is hard, once I've got myself in the mindset for change.

I feel safe out at the pool. Crazy fence is too high to jump easily, so it's like being locked into my own secure, watery world, even late at night (stop freaking out, mama). Besides, I always figure that if somebody with evil intentions ever has designs on my life, virtue, or heaven forbid, my debit card, I can always drown them in the pool.