Futures

It's hard to reclaim a blog once you've given it to someone. I used to blithely tell people about it, probably hoping they'd get to see a bit more of who I am and be intrigued enough to pursue a friendship, or at least to let them into my world enough to share a conversation about things that are important to us. I've discovered, though, that this is a double edged sword, and that I edit my thoughts according to who reads them. It entirely defeats my purpose.

I'm tired of that.

And right now I'm just tired. And done editing because my ex may happen across my thoughts. Because this is mine.

I have talked a great deal with trusted friends about the dynamics of breakups, in light of my own, and one asked me this question (or one very similar to it--I'm running on east coast time as my flight just landed, so it's 4 am for me and we know I don't function very well in the wee hours). The question was dual; who do you think will move on first, and if it's not you...how are you going to feel about that? How will you respond?

I got to test that theory tonight. It's been such a long day...somehow, my plane ticket landed me back in CA a full day early. I scrambled to find a ride and it was very late when I finally made it back here, to my cold and dark and frankly creepily deserted apartment (I suppose it would be more creepy if it wasn't deserted), super grateful for the friends I have. A quick and ferocious running of the wall heater to warm things up, a run and jump into my bed piled high with blankets...and a last-minute, sleepy scrolling through of facebook on my phone, because the city lights coming through my window take some getting used to after days of dark and quiet nights.

He's dating another girl. I didn't quite understand it at first--apparently he wasn't satisfied at just changing status...it required a post. Just in case we missed it earlier, as I had. That was...poorly done. Though it did finally prompt a blocking of all further updates that I had been considering, and should have done just one day sooner, it was still shocking. On multiple levels, as well, which was an unexpected and unwelcome development.

What a mess. There's a great deal of me that believes he has every right to be happy and move on, and hopes well for him. Being alone is a hard thing. I personally hate it. For all the time I need to be by myself, I don't do well without someone to love and be loved by. I got away with being alone in college because I wanted to wait for the real thing, and I didn't really know what I was missing--I suspected it, but I wasn't quite sure. Now I know. So if he can move past everything and be happy...how could I not want that for him?

But.

The shocked part, the raging part that will not let me sleep is not so easily persuaded. Her? Really? The same girl he told me was just a cool new friend, and then described his hours of conversation with, and how excited he was to find a "soul-twin like her," that now there were "two people who really understand me--you and Dani?" The one who sounds like all the good parts of me, but without the flaws? The one he connects with so effortlessly that it's almost like they can read each other's minds? I actually hope I'm wrong, and it's a different Dani. I hope so very selfishly because I wanted to believe him when he said that he could have other deep relationships with other girls; and, I had hoped, without conducting them in a way that would make slipping into a relationship with them this easy. Because four months. Seriously. You do not go from a ish-two-year relationship and start dating someone four months later unless you have that kind of base built, the kind you shouldn't be building if you're in a long-term relationship with someone else. And that was always a point of pain between us--his "base-building", per se. So I really hope it's a different Dani...although in the end it doesn't have anything to do with me. Which makes it easier, somehow. It was just a nasty surprise.

It just leaves me so tired. I think my dreams of finding a soul-mate broke when I realized that something vital was missing from the future I wanted so badly with him. Soul-mates--I don't think they exist anymore. You can't have everything. Like mom says, there are no Manicorns. And so I have to remind myself that it's very simple, now. I don't need much. Just someone to quietly and fiercely love me at the end of the day, unwavering, who is kind to me no matter what life throws at us. Someone I can trust with my heart unreservedly, without fear of the future. I've discovered that those are two things I cannot live without.

Driving the Differential Diagnosis Strugglebus

I have no idea what I could possibly write about tonight. But that title is just too good. I'll think of something.

...

Still haven't thought of anything. In other news. I went climbing on Friday night, and my fingers are only now slowly responding to mental commands. One of my patients has C. diff, and if you've never smelled that, well, consider yourself blessed among men. I just did a late-night run to Taco Bell, which is funny since it's not even 9 pm yet. I have the occasional awkwardness meter of a high-school nerd. My senior resident is making me work on Thanksgiving. I have a dream of me all fit and sexily defeating bad guys and whatnot and tried to start running against last night to make it come true...suffice to say that the dream died at about a mile when my lungs felt like they were icing over and caving in. Now I'm defeating test questions from the comfort of my own couch, in my tee shirt and sweats. I will try and be a superhero again tomorrow.

knotted

I'm not sure how I got pulled into it--heaven knows there are so many things I should be studying--but before I knew it, 40 minutes had passed and I was still lost in clips of various Disney movie ending scenes. It sounds ridiculous even in my head, being a grown woman and all, but somewhere halfway through the dance at the end of Enchanted, where Patrick Dempsey starts singing "So Close", I completely lost it.

Such stories just seem to set us all up for heartbreak, don't they? It's the sheer perfection of it. Both people always have, of course, obstacles that stand between them. They have to fight for each other, be the hand outstretched when everything is falling apart, and balance the other's weakness--and maybe they don't know how, at first, maybe they have to learn--but in the end, it works, because they are right for each other. At the core, they fit. They match. They learn how to love each other best. And because they do, it doesn't matter what life throws at them--they can handle it.

Nothing in any of these movies sets you up for the reality of two people who fall in love anyway before realizing that they don't fit in ways they must. Nothing in any of the stories I've ever heard gives any idea of the unbearable decisions that have to be made when this happens. They don't talk about hyperventilating in the shower or nights spent alone or the loss of futures and dreams. They don't prepare you for how difficult it is to find hope again. I don't think anything can.

The Fat Entitled Whiner

I was talking to dad today during a leisurely breakfast here at the hospital--both things are sadly far too rare, and so I was thoroughly enjoying myself as we talked about interesting cases I have seen here in LA. He works with other medical students as well, in his practice, and so I get to hear stories about interesting people he comes across.

He was telling me about a young female resident that reminded him of me, and her experience with a patient. A young illegal immigrant from Mexico was hit by a car and came into the hospital with bleeding in his brain, eventually requiring surgeries to place a mesh and several months in the hospital. The mesh became infected, but not all problems can be fixed, and the danger of him having it removed was greater than the danger if it stayed--and so he was placed on expensive antibiotics to control the chronic infection in his brain, and would have to be on them for the rest of his life.

But he was illegal--no citizenship, no insurance--and so the authorities contacted the mayor of the small mountain village where he came from to determine how to get him home. It turns out that the mayor had a burro, and so he would travel down to the city and collect the man from the airport when they shipped him back. All the resident could do was send the man to the airport with 6 months worth of antibiotics, and let him go home to die.

I was telling dad about the dichotomy that exists in my mind when I hear these stories. On one hand, the little girl in me wants to save everyone--on the other, I have paid thousands and thousands of dollars for the right and ability to save people, and in uninsured cases like this, the rest of the hundreds of thousands of dollars it takes to do so are also coming out of my pocket. That's not right, any way you look at it.

And then there are patients like the one upstairs, who has been here for almost a week for "chest pain," weakness, more chest pain, back pain, neck pain, nut pain, paralysis, brain pain, trouble breathing--you name it, he has it. Oh, and he's "allergic" to Tylenol and Motrin--only Dilaudid and morphine will work, Doc, I'm in so much pain, can we increase my dose? I just wanna feel better, Doc, I'll stay here as long as it takes. I'll do whatever it takes. Including eating on the days we schedule his testing, twice, so that we have to reschedule them for the next day. We all know he's full of crap; of course he wants to stay here. Here is where the medicines are, here is where the nurses are at his beck and call--here is a several-thousand-dollars-a-night hotel is his for the asking. So every day he comes up with new excuses, and threatens to sue us if we send him home with all the "symptoms" he's having--and policy being what it is, we're not allowed to tell him how easy it is to test if people are faking, and that he's failing miserably. If I had my choice, I'd've kick him out on his butt yesterday, with pleasure.

If money is just lying around to be wasted on lardy, unhealthy, duplicitous people like this man--and it's not, but for the sake of argument, let's assume--then I'd much rather spend it on the man who is going to die alone in his village while the man upstairs eats himself to death.

Arrhythmias and Surly Black Men

My resident was explaining EKGs to me tonight, taking advantage of the first slow on-call night we've had since I've been in LA. After several successive calls with over 12 patients admitted, today was a deep breath in the middle of a hectic week. The most exciting thing that happened was our first admit, a large and angry black man who (after questioning whether my residents did anything useful besides paperwork) answered most of our questions with surly and progressively louder "I don't know! It doesn't matter!" exclamations, and who also decided while in the ED that he was hungry, and promptly left against staff instructions, dragging his IV pole and his partially hospital-gown covered bare cheeks behind him to find the cafeteria. The last I heard, security was searching for him. Seriously. I have no idea where he is. I hope he eventually comes back and reclaims his underwear.

Anyway, I digress. I was learning EKGs in prelude to questions I know are coming, courtesy of my attending, who is ever so excited when I have at least one question to ask him about each patient. He likes to know that I am invested and curious, and he's also feeling out his teaching style for students and likes to have conversations stimulated by inquiries. He is very sweet and makes me laugh, like yesterday when he was telling me about a research project he did while in medical school. Apparently, there were large rats that he and his colleagues used for experiments, and he was frankly creeped out by them. "The rats, you see, the rats are very large and I do not like to handle them," he told me in his heavy spanish accent, "but you have to, you know. They are very smart, and so you must caress the rat, yes, caress it like this, and then, yah! You must grab it very quickly! So I got on my big leather gloves, and I was caressing, caressing the rat like so, and then I grabbed it (with a violent motion) and I grabbed it so hard that I damaged one of its lungs. We discovered that when we opened it up later." Horrifying, yes, but ridiculously funny to watch.

 The EKG session, though, was the highlight of my day. Compliments from residents are not a daily occurrence for me, and so they mean a great deal. While Ben, my senior, was explaining how to determine results from the strips, I answered one of his questions with clarification from something we'd discussed last week. He laughed, looked at me and exclaimed, "God, that's why I love you! You're just like a sponge. You remember every single thing I teach you." And that's what makes him such a good person to learn with--not only does he rock at teaching clearly and concisely, but he encourages and doesn't make a big deal out of my mistakes. He and Andie are about the best thing I could wish for on this rotation.

Heroic Nudity

She's called the Veiled Virgin by Giovanni Strazza. This is what I love about how marble flows.

Finally, after over a week, I have had an adventure in LA. Let me sum up for you the highlight of my evening at the Getty Villa Museum's college night. 

"In this funeral fresco, added white paint accents the figure's heroic nudity." 

I did a double take. Wait, what? Sure enough, the figure in the Greek and Roman museum exhibit fairly glowed moon-bright with all of his painted glory, he was certainly nude, and...I suppose if you looked out of the corner of your eye and squinted a bit, he did look potentially hero-esque. His abs were very chiseled, and he had a strong profile and wavy hair, but his languid reclining position sort of killed the strong hero-image for me...and I kept getting distracted by trying to imagine a situation where a naked stranger coming to my rescue wouldn't have overwhelmingly awkward overtones.

What if it really were that simple? What if all you had to do was slather yourself in white paint, run stark naked into the middle of the city and strike a pose, and passersby would stop, point, and scream, "Look! There goes a true hero!" Everybody would get all excited, and that was all it took--you and your accented heroic nudity were an instant big deal. Ross informs me that, if we replace the paint with gold, I've basically described the premise of Immortals. Nowadays, the pointing and screaming would end with a shiny pair of handcuff accenting your heroic wrists.

The Villa was an excellent adventure and very good for the beauty-loving part of my soul...although I can't think there's a part of my soul that doesn't crave lovely things. I wandered through the halls fairly in awe of the intricacy of artistry from all those thousands of years ago, some rivaling anything you could find today for their lifelike depictions of those long dead. I loved the gallery of full-sized statues--it's amazing how marble seems to flow and come alive, how the illusion of transparency comes from solid stone. There was a carved girl with a slight smile on her face, about my height, and it was easy to look at the marble and see the individual that the artist took such pains to replicate--how he delineated the individual strands and curls in her hair, curved the pattern on her drapes, and how he made the stone of her skin shine. It was lovely.

Also, we exited through the Herb Garden--130 feet of every herb known to man. I was so excited that I couldn't decide which way to go first. I assumed that the true enjoyment of such a place was through the olfactory senses, so I picked sprigs of almost everything and was perfectly happy.

LA

The city of angels isn't quite what I expected--probably to be expected, since I haven't seen much of it past the skyline from my temporary apartment. I'd like to go down into it, explore, talk to people before I make up my mind, but the chances aren't as readily available as I'd thought, and I don't quite feel up to the task of wandering solo and keeping myself in one piece.

White Memorial is proving to be enjoyable, for the most part. The most noticeable difference so far is how the residents interact with me. Back at LLUMC the species can, at best, be described as pleasant but detached and aloof. We address them as "Dr. White" and "Dr. Shuminahumina", and it's all very correct and such even though the only difference between us is sometimes barely a year and a half. Here, my residents quite emphatically told me that they are to be addressed as Ben and Andie, and that the abandoned wing they use as a clubhouse is now the "Ben, Andie, and Alyssa" hideout. They're encouraging and they laugh with me when I mess up and then tell me how they've done worse. The other residents I run across actually make it a point to introduce themselves, and they always use their first names. They assume me into their world. It takes a graceful spirit to do that, and I'm grateful.

There are more of us here than I thought there would be, as well. Last night was such fun! I wanted to cook, so with Ben acting as bodyguard we made our first foray out into the world to find a grocery store, a pot, and some cooking utensils. There ended up being seven of us in this small apartment...Debbie, who scared the bejeezus out of me when she stumbled into my room on the third night, after I'd gone to sleep, to take up residence in the other bed; Alicia, who I'd never really met before and who has the most lovely head of hair; Zach, who has fantastic taste in girlfriends; Ben, who warded off all the scary LA people; Jonathan, who has a kind spirit and great kitchen ethics; and Jessica, who just joined out class and whom I like very much. That's always so much fun for me, to be able to feed people and just be surrounded by goodness and contentment.

The only downside is that I have to work tomorrow...after this, I get my Sabbaths off, so I'm resigned to sucking it up and doing my best. But most everyone has gone back to LLU for the weekend, and this little apartment is very quiet. Not so, unfortunately, the street band playing outside. Oy vey. Sleeping will be difficult tonight!

Peanuts

So many times over the past few weeks I've thought, "I must write about this." Those moments have been frequent--not all happy, and some heartbreaking--and yet the nights have been late and evenings heavy with the loss of sleep and press of responsibility. Soon enough, I find that there are too many stories clogging up my veins and it's impossible to pick just one. I prefer a single event, really--I love bringing out the hilarious potential and learning how to recreate a moment so that I can share it as I saw it happen--and OB GYN is amazingly full of the ridiculous. If you like your awkward comments about vaginal fluids, Carrie will provide them. If you're a fan of "That's what she said!" moments, shoot, the OR is a never-ending source of entertainment. And the fun never stops on night float, which I was lucky enough to experience with Carrie and Lisa, who made the never-ending hours so entertaining.

I suppose the most important and joy-filled moments of my life in the past few weeks have been the babies I got to catch. Oh, I watched many deliveries, including several crash C-sections and one OR delivery of twins, but night float is an entirely different story than the daylight hours. Dr. Barrera is the resident in charge of us, and the very first thing he did on that very first night was to take me into a room, gown up, and show me exactly how to catch a baby, hands over mine. She was a beautiful mess, that little girl, and while everybody else was calling out phrases like, "Start the Pitocin" and "Hand me the clamps," I was just holding on to her and babbling like the most besotted moron--"Hello, precious. Aren't you the sweetest thing, just look how perfect you are. Hi, sweetie." It was one of the best moments of my life, followed at the end of the shift by another delivery in which Dr. B left me completely in charge of getting the baby out, plus one helping hand from the senior resident as she let me get used to the force necessary to move the baby where it has to go. All told, I caught four babies on those four nights, and each one was a new and beautiful thing.

It was during that week of night float, after days on end of 14 hour shifts and short nights, that I realized I was happy. Even with all of that, still excited to go in the next day and see what else would come along.  I went in today and discussed OB residencies with Dr. Hart, who I respect and enjoy very much. I think I've found the way my life is headed, and after several years here and most of my life in school, that's a very good feeling.

Good things in life.

It's been a month, now, and I have not been doing well at transitioning gracefully back to being single. In the last several days, however, things have been turning around, and I'm excited enough to want to share. So. Here are a couple of stories, in order, of things that have made me smile.

Last week a random girl around my age stopped me, in the locker room at the pool, to ask if my hair is naturally this color and tell me she loved it. And, naturally, that is quite flattering to hear--brown is not generally admired, unless you have got some crazy curls or other outstanding feature to go along with it. This girl, however, loved it enough to snap a few pictures for her stylist to color-match. I noticed that she seemed eager to talk, but I was feeling rather anti-social, so we went our separate ways. Several days ago, however, I ran into her again, in the same place. We struck up a conversation, and it turned out that she's dating a 4th year med who is on away rotation right now. She seemed lonely. And very sweet. I offered to swap numbers because neither of us like to go to church alone, and she accepted. That's a pretty big deal for me, making a new friend. It doesn't happen easily.

On Monday, our orientation let out early, giving us a couple of hours to study before going to the sim lab to practice birthing babies with the models (SO. MUCH. WEIRD. FUN.). As I left, I overheard some of my classmates talking about getting coffee and studying together. One of them was Lisa; super sweet and pretty, a great sense of humor--I enjoy her very much. I remembered walking out and wishing I had friends like that, here. When I got home to study, however, I found that the landlords had a crew in to replace the carpet upstairs. Besides the ungodly racket, they were also playing Spanish music at full volume. I was craving chips and salsa in about three minutes, besides harboring homicidal thoughts, so I texted Lisa and asked if I could join her study group. Honestly, it was super fun, and the most normal I've felt in a very long time. I've missed being in a group like that, and I'm excited about hanging out with them more, possibly. Another big step for me.

This morning, I was standing out in the hospital hallway with a flock of 3rd years just waiting for orientation. We remind me of a bunch of ducklings--it's almost absurdly funny. Anyway, I was looking down and twirling a folder in my hands, and somebody gripped my upper arm. I looked up, and it's Dr. Lavery smiling at me. He's an attending for NICU, and probably the best physician I've worked with since I've been in medical school. He gave me a "Good morning!" and left me laughing behind him. It meant a lot to me that he would stop me and get my attention just to say hello.

There's more. I'll write about it later. I was just on my feet for 15 hours and I am exhausted.

Tennessee fall

This day is the sort where I wish I were back at Southern, in the early autumn when the rains have begun but the leaves aren't quite changed and falling. The sort of day when it's been raining already, all through the night, waking you up to thunder prowling around the hills and the promise of more rain, and yet more, falling slow until the sky seeps into the ground and fills the creeks and puddles to reflect back to itself. The kind of grey sky that keeps to itself but never relents, simply changing shades as the days moves onward. I wish it were the sort of day for jeans and boots and hoods, hot drinks and warm blankets, quiet slow sleepy conversations, and movies and books and cooking and the sound of rain coming through the open windows.

I wish it were that sort of day, because it is only on those days that I find being lonely to be bearable. When the day feels darker and cooler, than the need for comfort is appreciated--reflection is elicited--quiet is natural under the sound of the rain. Not so, here. Not when every day is relentlessly sunny and the heat drives even the most fervent of outdoor enthusiasts to hover over their AC--loneliness is so much harder when the outside is so damned bright. Where you look out the window and the disconnect is so large it doesn't seem possible to reconcile. Grief doesn't fit into these California days, and I find myself hating the juxtaposition. Just now, I wish for home and rain.

Insomnia

I think I'm lonely. I'd forgotten how it steals sleep, how it feels to be willing to do anything to make it not be so.

I just figured this out. I've been lying here trying to figure out where this intermittent insomnia has come from, over the past few weeks since this phase started. Third year--it sounds so ridiculous. Like a joke. It should be impossible to be at this point in my education, my life, because I just got here. Yesterday. Two years later, I don't know anything yet, but there I am, in the hospital for 12 hours a day, seeing patients and generally pretending to have approximate knowledge of almost everything. And I like it. I like that my day begins and ends with kids--I like that fact that the interns and residents seem to enjoy my presence, for the most part. I see things I've only read about and I learn from attendings who want to teach. I have full days and friends on the wards, and I have connected with several classmates whom I truly enjoy. I leave tired but happy, and it should be enough.

But at the core of it, I still feel a vague nagging feeling when I get back to my empty house, of wanting family and friends around--not for intense interaction, but for that effortless, comfortable feeling of being near people who love you. The house seems very silent on most weekdays. My roomie is sometimes there, but more often has already gone to her boyfriend's by the time my key slides in the lock--I won't see her until tomorrow, most likely. My own boyfriend is on a surgery rotation, and by the time he finishes, it is late and there seems to be very little time for the kind of connection I'm missing, and that is difficult. The friends that are here are on other services, and their hours vary wildly, while most people not in my year are gone for the summer. As a cherry on the top of the litany, my birthday is almost here--and they have always been difficult for me. They tend to compound the feelings of loneliness for a myriad of reasons, and it seems this year won't be any different unless I work very hard to change that. I am trying, but my efforts aren't always the most intelligent.

(Short story I will regret tomorrow: At the risk of sounding self-pitying, I will tell you that one year I felt solitary enough to text a random friend, tell him that I was a year older, and that he should call me. The saving grace of this short story is that, in the middle of trying to figure out whether or not I should send such a pathetic text, he actually did call, of his own free will and volition, unaided by the guilt I was about to heap upon his head. That phone call went a long way towards making me feel remembered and connected, and I have always appreciated him for it.)

I suppose the point to this, if I were capable of making any coherent point past midnight, is that I'm finding third year to be sometimes quiet and sad and solitary, more days than not. It's been hard. I've not had the best of luck in finding a big enough variety of people to help shift the feeling away...and I am very much hoping that the discussing of said touchy-feely stuff, here, will do something towards letting me sleep instead of lying here listening to my AC drip. The house feels very empty.

Monsters

I am only days away from 25--practically a grown woman--but I can tell you this. When I walk up to my door at night, I still imagine monsters. Dark slinking ones, like mixtures between giant dogs and demons. They could be crouching on the parking garage roof just above my head as I turn my key in the door, or lurking between the dark cars as I scurry through them, or dashing just behind me when the faulty motion sensor light flickers on and off. It doesn't matter how ridiculous the idea is in the broad light of day. I still imagine monsters.

I don't know where they come from. I've never seen a legit horror film that I can recollect, and my reading material, while touching on the macabre, has never ventured into the gruesome and horrific. But I've never seen any pictures that look worse than the things my mind dreams up when it's dark and I'm alone.

The only thing that works, when I am climbing out of my car in the dark and flinching at every sound and shadow, is to claim the darn things. Make them mine. It's the only way I've ever known to make a nightmare stop, is to decide that whatever the evil thing chasing me may be, it is mine, and we are friends. Every dream in which I've ever made that decision has drastically altered, and I was surprised to find that when I apply the same principle to the imaginary things that frighten me in the night, it works just as well.

And so I found myself doing it tonight. Instead of imagining the possibility that some awful beast might jump down at me from the roof as I'm trying to get my key in the lock, I pretend I'm safe because whatever is there is actually looking out for me. And it works. I don't feel nearly as nervous when I make the transition from imagining fear to imagining security. The world doesn't seem so scary when the worst things your imagination can come up with are protecting you.

Anyway. I realized that I was doing it again tonight, and I laughed, because let's face it--I'm too old for this. But it keeps life interesting.

Grief

I have questions tonight. Where is the line between loving someone in the hard times, and the self-preservation of your own soul that is hurting? How do I make the decision between "You are struggling and you need me here" and "Your struggles are hurting me and I need time and space to grieve"?

I've been realizing the self-editing my blog has undergone since I started gathering readers who actually know me--who are players in the day-to-day that is my life. I can't tell this story, because she will worry. I can't express this level of self-doubt, because they will agonize about things beyond their control. I can't be unhappy about this, because he will wonder why I didn't tell him I was hurting.

It's started to feel a little controlling.

I don't do well with control.

So, my stories are back. Regardless.

I was so, so excited to see Ryan tonight. It's been a very long day--a hard one, filled with studying from the first hour. The mind can only take so much learning through the course of a day before you start losing things you read in the morning--for every new thing, an old one is pushed out. And I was--am--weary of it. Not in an I-could-sleep sort of way. More like an I-don't-want-to-think-anymore-FOREVER sort of way. My roomie said it best, in her Haitian accent as she threw herself at my chair, wild-eyed; "Don't want it study no more--don't want it med school. DON'T WANT IT." A refrain I have taken up over the last few days.

On my way over to his house tonight, I stopped to get some chips from Chipotle. Never have I found chips so high in caloric content--never have they been so, so worth it. And I was thinking about some thrilling (for the hopeless romantic in me) conversations Ryan and I have had over the last few days, about our future--together--and I wanted to share them with someone. I called my mom.

In her defense, she was tired. I woke her up from the half-sleep that comes before you are actually gone for the night; and so when I told her that we talked about going looking for rings, and all the excitement that comes from planning such things, rather than the mirror of the excitement that I was feeling, what I heard were reservations. About almost everything, including the fact that I decided I want to get married at home, which I personally thought was fantastic. It was a bit of a let-down and I wasn't expecting it.

It got harder, though. I got here to Ryan's, and he was busy studying. I'd had visions of tackling him to the floor and taking just a few minutes to talk to him, kiss on him, and generally just take a deep breath with him before jumping back into the endless parade of pharmacology that has been my companion for the last two days. I wanted it--I needed that time. It sort of kept me going for the last five hours, thinking about that.

I could tell he was distracted the moment I walked in the door, but he let me pull him over to the couch and I leaned back in his lap as we talked. Unfortunately, what do all medical students end up talking about? School. Grades. How much we should have studied and didn't. And I hate that. I hate that we did it, and I hate that he feels he failed at life today; for anyone who hasn't been crushed under that feeling, let me say, it makes life bleak and black. And it got to him, the feeling of failure, I think--and the next thing I know, he's pushed me up and off of him and walked away, gone back to studying. He told me he was angry at how little he'd accomplished, and how he had wasted his day and so he didn't have time to focus on me, and how much he hated that. And it's true. We are so short on time. But it still hurt, to be so abruptly dismissed, and I could feel it; and even though I knew it wasn't at me, it didn't matter. I just stood there and felt so absolutely rejected, and lost, and suddenly very, very tired. I didn't know how tired until now.

I'm still grieving about it. I feel like there was such potential for joy in this evening, after a day of dreary sameness, and the three of us tonight didn't take advantage of it like we could...and that feels like the loss of something precious.

Late

There are so many gradations of loneliness. As an introvert, I've had that inexplicable longing to be with people--as long as I don't have to interact too heavily. As long as I can just be around them, knowing they love me, and soak it up, much like a cat does in a pool of sunlight. It's harder to find here, but still possible. I enjoy so many of the people, and I'm slowly feeling more and more like some of them are becoming mine. I've missed that.

There's also the loneliness that drove me out into the dark on so many nights, way back when, sitting on curbs by the gym or swinging in a deserted playground. The one that misses someone to touch souls with--someone who recognizes you as what they've looked for, and loves what they see. I didn't even know the source of that lonesomeness until it was met and matched--and that is beautiful in itself.

But this kind is different. This one I can't get away from, this soul-deep, aching isolation. My roomie is sitting across the living room, and it still feels like I'm the only one for a hundred miles. I just spent a few minutes with my boyfriend, and I left his house feeling like I was still solitary, in some far unreachable place. The few precious minutes I got to talk to my sister were wonderful, but they were too short, and when I hung up I felt like I'd only scratched the surface of so many things I wanted to share.

Fear isolates. I'm afraid of what's expected of me, and that I won't be able to handle it. That I will fail to do what I need to do. And I isolate myself because of that fear. My support system is either back on the east coast and sound asleep, or here and in the middle of the same stresses and problems that I am in. So what you get is a sad, pathetic girl who cries herself to sleep because she can't convince herself that there is anybody else alive in the world.