Want and Need

The sun was sinking tonight, painting everything unreal shades of pink and gold. It glinted just the right way off of the sign, flashing "Down on my luck, please help" right into my eyes. The silver reflection from the marker juxtaposed with the cardboard was startling.

I don't know how old she was. Late twenties, early thirties. She didn't smile once in the few moments I watched her, and she leaned against the Wal-Mart sign like it was the only thing she trusted in the world to not give out from under her at any moment. My car was stopped only three feet from her scuffed shoes, but she never really looked up.

Then again, neither did I.

I didn't know what to do. I had no money. In situations like this, it's easiest just to ignore the humanity separated from you by a sheet of glass and a lifetime of choices. Some of the choices were yours. Most weren't. She and I were so close, and a continent apart.

Suddenly, I wanted to roll down the window and say hi, break the barrier of silent judgement. I wanted to ask if she was hungry, if I could take her somewhere and feed her. If she had a cat. If she needed a place to stay. What her story was. Maybe just give her my number in case she needed someone to call and had no one else. Perhaps it was a crazy decision--but most of my life has been rational. Too rational. And this felt right.

I should have acted faster. The resolution had just formed when the car horn blared behind me, and I realized that the light was  green and I was the target of half a dozen impatient drivers, strung out behind me in an irritated line. I hit the gas without thinking and began to move.

Her eyes darted up at the noise and met mine. There wasn't any mystical connection there--they were just tired eyes. But she was a person, and I drove away from her, and I didn't have to.

I don't know how to explain this, exactly. I didn't want to help her out of a guilt complex, because she has less than I do. I didn't feel like I owed her anything. I just...wanted to. Because she needed it, and because I could. Because I am sick of being focused on myself.

And I drove away. But there will be a next time. It won't be quite the same--different person, different circumstance, different story. Maybe it will be in a library instead of a street corner. Perhaps a coffee shop, or a strange place where I'm not supposed to be.

I hope I'm ready for it.

Transition

Awareness.

It is always emotion that drags me out of oblivion. In those brief seconds between sleeping and waking, I struggle to separate reality from the vague remnants of a dream.

This morning, the emotion was loss. I don't know why.

It's so sudden, the transient moment between darkness and daylight, and it fades so quickly. It leaves me to begin my day with questions.

What would I have changed, if I could live yesterday over again? What do I regret, what do I cling to, what leaves me excited about living today? What have I learned? What unexpected gifts were handed to me? What direction am I going, and why? 

What will joy look like today?

*This is super rough and I'm dissatisfied with what I got across, and what I didn't. I shall try again tomorrow.  Until then...

This mechanical pencil won't stop squeaking

Word.

I wish I could leave it at that. But actually, brain to paper has never been difficult. It's getting it stored in an easily accessible, relevant way that's so time consuming.

In honor of turkey day:

Mirror, mirror, next table over...

They sat in the cafeteria at the next table over. Both moved slowly, although she was more ponderous, taking her time to stagger across the floor, each step looking like the first stage of a nasty fall from which she only caught herself with difficulty. Her purse dragged the ground and her shirt draped around her like a bedsheet.

I only noticed them when she spoke.

"These damn Adventists. I don't understand this cafeteria system. They can eat meat, you know, just not pork. It doesn't make any sense that they would only have vegetarian food here. It's so stupid that they let their religion leak into their food choices. And we have to suffer for it."

I lifted my head to look, surprised and a little irked. I couldn't tell you why, although the fact that she looked like she had never suffered for lack of food a day in her life might have had something to do with it. She continued.

"Now look at what you've done. You went and left your chimichanga in the serving line. No, don't tell me you didn't! I had to go and get it while you were galavanting around in the halls like a fool. Don't you even think to tell me I didn't have to go get it." Her voice was bitter and harassing, deeply disppointed and scornful. Over the next half hour, it never changed.

At this point, I took a hard look at the man with her. He looked normal, heavyset, about the same age, and infinitely good-tempered, perhaps on the simple side. I never actually heard him speak the entire time we sat there. She would pause, occasionally, and there might have been a small frission of sound in his vicinity, to which she would reply, "You think? That's ridiculous. PA's shouldn't be allowed to practice in hospitals. The last time we were here, one almost made you overdose on your medication before I caught him. And I told the MD that he didn't know crap and shouldn't be allowed inside the doors."

A few minutes later, her voice rose again. "And that idiot physician only had half of the lab report, and if he'd taken the time to do his research he would have realized that there was nothing wrong with her mitral valve. I tell you, this hospital  could use with a little shaking up. I'm going to make a stink about it. I think there's a place you can do recording, and I'm going to record our conversations and prove that they don't know what the hell they're talking about. I'm going to put it in the newspaper. Not knowing a mitral valve was normal! I knew about it before they did."

At this point, I almost couldn't concentrate on my PDX notes. The hospital wireless is too slow to stream music, so I couldn't drown her out with my headphones, and I was indignant. Where did this woman come off? "Uneducated" was the kindest description I could think of.

I keep writing this in the past tense, but I'm still sitting here, and so are they, and I'm having a hard time studying. She keeps getting louder, and by now, she knows more than all the specialists in this hospital. They're all stupid, little better than techs, who know less than nothing, in her liberal opinion. I'm a bit angry.

I think that I am not going to medical school for four years, and through residency for another handful, and paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars, for people like this to think they know more than I do. Or even have more common sense than I.

But that leads me to the real problem, which is not the obese lady with the loud opinions.

I think I must be very arrogant. I think I must pretend I'm not better than other people. Because sitting here, listening to her, I feel like I am.

Ugh. That's ugly. Much worse than her tone of voice.

If she'd grown up in my place, with my family, privileges, education, what would she be like? If I were her, where would I have come from, and how would it have changed the way I think, and speak, and see the world? An entirely different worldview, completely independent of any inherent fault or virtue.

I could be her. So easily. And yet I think I'm better than she is, as if through some intrinsic goodness.

That's utterly ridiculous. Appalling.

I don't like seeing my flaws.

Charlie

Charlie is dead.

Charlie, with his pants that were too tight, and his socks that came too high. Charlie, who didn't know what it was like to laugh moderately. Charlie, who awkwardly and cheerfully flailed his way down the river in an innertube, white legs gleaming brilliantly, like marble in the sun. Charlie, who so loved to air the French he knew, and who delighted in quizzing us on vocabulary. Charlie, so patient with his fatherless grand-daughter, loving her, raising her, making sure she never knew that the life she had was not ideal. Charlie, who would get up in church and talk on and on, but so earnestly that you couldn't fault him for going over time. Charlie, who with all his funny mannerisms was a father when he didn't have to be. Who drove our bus on mission trips and played cards with us and grazed his way down the potluck table and could never go anywhere without making at least half a dozen U-turns and who never got mad at me when I practiced my skills lifting his wallet. Charlie, who always kept a pocket full of mints that he would furtively pass around to us in the back of the sanctuary, his guilty smile hiding in his grey mustache.

Charlie, who is dead.

My mind instantly internalized it, shoved it aside, behind stacks of things to do and obligations and stuff. But grief shouldn't be something to be ashamed of, and I didn't want to do that to him. He's more important than that. It took me until the middle of Physio class later that morning, when I suddenly remembered him sneaking three of us out of work to go pick oranges in the jungle, and his funny giggle at how we'd outwitted "the grown-ups." Then the rest of the memories came spilling out, so fast. And I realized that he was actually, truly gone.

And then the tears came.

Oh, Charlie.

Soul

"When you get to know someone, all their physical characteristics start to disappear. You begin to dwell on their energy, recognize the scent of their skin. You see only the essence of the person, not the shell. That's why you can't fall in love with beauty or looks. You can lust after it, be infatuated by it, want to own it. You can love it with your eyes and your body, but not your heart. That's why when you really connect with a person, any physical imperfections disappear, become irrelevant."

I used to wonder how the soul of a person would look if the outside were stripped away, and only the core of who they were was left standing there, simple and unaltered, unadorned.

This is the answer.

You only have to look at your closest friend-- the one who knows you inside and out, who can sing your secrets to sleep, who has their heart tucked somewhere in your hand--to realize that you don't see the shell at all. You couldn't describe their attractiveness based on their physical qualities alone, couldn't ever actually be sure what a stranger would observe, because you see so much deeper. Their soul shines through and obliterates any imperfections.

I love these discoveries.

Sometimes I look at these individual hearts tucked into my palm and marvel at who they are and what they've become. The truest thing I could ever say of a friend would be, "Your soul is beautiful."

And they are.

Respite

Test week is over.

I passed biochem, which means I don't have to do medical school during the summer. It was significantly iffy for a while.

This is me.

Imagine those eyes a bit wilder, imagine you've been up at 3:30 am studying every morning for the last week, imagine you are too tired to sleep. Assume your right arm is five degrees colder than the rest of you, assume your back is knotted from tension, assume you just had your first real, hot, sit-down-to-eat meal in three days. Pretend your house is trashed, pretend you are too tired to sit and do anything but look at it, pretend that you actually forgot your own name for a full six seconds today--heck, pretend anything you like, as long as you pretend that now it's over for two whole days.

This is me.

Thank. God.