Flight

I rather feel like I'm living someone else's life.

I think I like this person, though. She's occasionally moody, sometimes uncertain, but always gleefully surprised by the good things that drift into her life...or come crashing in, dancing in, or walking in like they have always belonged. I've been told she's interesting. Good.

The quality of this post is going to be sketchy. This other person who I am is currently sitting in the airport. It's half past nine--there are two hours before my second flight takes off. I have another layover in Charlotte, NC, and then I'm with Mom, and Mandy, and home.

It's bewildering.

Am I really done with the first half of this year? Did I really survive this past test week? Am I actually going home for the first time in months? Twelve hours from now, will I be landing on the East Coast?

I can't quite process it.

But, I'm so glad.

Home.

Three lefts do a right make

I really like this picture. The colors just make me want to jump in, swirl them around, make things, play music. I guess that's a pretty good indicator that I mostly live in the right half of my brain, with occasional forays into the other side so that I can make sense of the world. I like the unexpected, the vibrant, the emotional side of life. It's all color and possibility, desire and laughter. Even the sad moments are washed in the darkest purple hues, like the sky just on the midnight edge of twilight. Oh, the structure of the left is comforting--it makes sense, helps me know where I am and where I'm going, and why. But I like scribbling over the black lines and filling in shades and adding texture to what is linear and concrete.

This week, I feel like medical school has forced me to live on the left side. And I hate it. Not the schooling itself--not what I'm learning--but the fact that I haven't found a way to make the intense days feel balanced. Instead, they are black and white words on a page, words without rhythm or rhyme, no music or flow, hour after endless hour. That's why I highlight so much, I think--trying to bring in color to make sense of patterns, to create a simple work of art that both halves can understand and, hopefully, commit to memory. Here's to hoping it works.

Jiminy

It was late. I had been in pajamas all day, studying and intermittantly wondering in despair if I was going to fail, and then being completely unconcerned at the thought that I might. I'd also been considering the advantages and disadvantages of using caffeine to keep myself awake--but that's a story for another time.

I'd decided to go to bed. Teeth brushed, fingers run through hair, face scrubbed. I've got my routine, you know, and I like it--mindless and relaxing. Sometimes I'll look down and noticed with pleased surprise that I've just trimmed my nails. When I get into the going-to-bed routine, things just happen, and I accept them thankfully.

Anyway, I digress. I'd just hung the towel back up on the rack when, suddenly, all hell broke loose above my head. It was something like what I imagine would happen if you turned a fleet of baboons loose in an elephant cage--a lot of thundering back and forth, high-pitched shrieking, things hitting walls. When Alex began to scream, I dashed towards the stairs, thinking, "Gotta be a cricket."

We don't do much unnecessary housekeeping, here. There are too many things to study--at least, it's a wonderful excuse. So the tiny little spiders that live in corners and around doorways have been hanging out and getting frisky, if you know what I mean--proliferating, replicating, reproducing, multiplying. Whatever makes you happy. It is a well-known fact that crickets eat little spiders (and when I say that, I mean that I made it up and thought it sounded good. Making the hypothesis fit the evidence). And so, as the spider population has exponentially multiplied, so have the crickets. I do kill them whenever I find them--bugs in general do not bother me (reference the spiders) but they sing at night and it irritates me. If one ever breaks into song and dance in my bedroom while I'm trying to sleep, I'm going to get all cytotoxic T-cell on his thorax. Anway. I digress again. When I last left off, I was dashing up the stairs, realizing that those screaming voices were all calling my name.

I pop through the door and, sure enough, mayhem. Steph is wildly waving a textbook as she jumps and screams, Alex is shouting at her to put it down because he paid for it and a $200 book is not for smashing insects, and Danielle is running back and forth, yelling something incomprehensible. Utter chaos.

I smashed the cricket. Took maybe four seconds.

Peace restored. I went to bed.

Yep. Swag.

(Swag being a term Steph keeps using. I don't actually know what it means, but I think it's somewhere around pretty awesome? Before living with Becca, and then in this house, I would never have thought that the ability to rid the world of a 2 cm bug constituted being "swag", but apparently it's a rare commodity. *Shrugs.* I do what I do.)

Wild catch

I haven't been angry in such a long time. Not truly angry. No rage, no slow burning that flares up into a wildfire without warning. There aren't many things in my life that can set this off--and the ones I know, I take care to avoid. With my temper, it's important.

Why is it happening now? I don't understand.

One of our professors has done a mediocre job, I believe, in presenting his information. His lectures are vague and his powerpoints are the only study material he provides--and they're mostly pictures, a presentation ripped from another school. Even when I take notes, it's difficult to go back and decipher what he intended us to take away--oh, the concepts are clear enough, but the details? So I decided to come to the review this morning instead of studying, hoping rather strongly that it would be useful, and give me a clearer picture of what we're to be tested on in a few days.

It's worthless. Apparently, he's been letting questions pile up in his email, and now he's answering them--even the ones that don't pertain. I listened to his several-minute explanation of an obscure point, only to follow up with, "But you don't need to worry about this. It's not going to show up on the test."

Rage. I was so surprised that I only managed to catch it with the tips of my fingers before it flared up into something uncontrollable.

I don't know why.

Perhaps it is because time is slipping away from me now--and he's wasting it. I'm caught between feeling like I should stay in case something useful happens--but I have to study--I don't know what to do.

I shouldn't be angry over this. I should just...study.

Catching up

This is just a quick update on my life. I don't have time for anything good, exciting, or creative--actually, I take that back. Here's something I sketched in between Immuno lectures. One out of three, possibly.

Breathing out ghosts, and crunching in leaves
Watching the ice tracing lace on the trees
Seeing light in the dark, cast through windows on snow
Watching the flakes fill up tracks as we go
Rewriting the world that we all thought we knew
Winter softly descends as I stand here with you.

Now that that's out of the way, we've already established I have no time. Also, I am sick. It was just a cold, and then I was getting betterish, and now...worse. No fun, because tomorrow starts my up-at-half-past-four, study every possible spare minute pre-test week marathon. And I've already gone through two boxes of tissues. Somebody, please, shoot me...

On a better and brighter note, for those of you who don't know, I am somebody's girlfriend, quite a wonderful somebody, in my humble opinion, and I have been so for...one month and one day and three hours, seven minutes... Not that I'm counting, of course. But even so. And he brought me these amazing little clementine-like oranges, except they're sweeter...I might get sick more often. Agh, it sounds so unimportant, putting it like that...but he's...important. Very much so. I'm quite pleased. No, that doesn't cover it either. I'm...obviously unable to put into words how much it means to me. I need to sleep, perhaps.

Also, my mother and little sister have discovered skype, and it's wonderful. I can't wait to go home for Christmas.

Goodnight, moon.