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.

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.