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.
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Saturday, September 14, 2013
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.
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.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
intelligence
It's strange to be here, in my second year of medical school, and still feel I don't belong. That I'm faking it, that it was a mistake that got me here in the first place. I had a conversation about a classmate, yesterday, who I dislike because he writes me off. I've also said some very un-inspired things in his presence. It was pointed out that he is very serious and intelligent and if he thinks I'm not up to that level, he's the sort of person who wouldn't consider interacting with me worth his time. True; but it hurts. I've had that said about me several times, and I'm afraid that they're not wrong. More afraid of that than anything else, I think.
And so, when people tell me I'm smart, it makes me sick. I don't feel it, so it's just more pressure to be something I'm not, and most likely not to succeed in doing. Test week depression, perhaps, but there are so many intelligent, quick people here--and I don't think I fit in that category. I know I don't work hard enough to be here--this will be the third day of testing, and I didn't study much at all yesterday afternoon. I was just sick of it, and I don't know how to study better, but that's not good enough. It feels like proof that I'm not good enough, while at the same time making it seem like completely my fault. What am I saying? It is completely my fault.
Agh. And see, here I am spewing venom in my own general direction, and I should be studying. I only have one hour left. And there should be no venom.
The counselor told me that I have to remove the word "should" from my vocabulary, that the way I use it is self-destructive. I feel destructive right now. Quite. I'm so tired.
And so, when people tell me I'm smart, it makes me sick. I don't feel it, so it's just more pressure to be something I'm not, and most likely not to succeed in doing. Test week depression, perhaps, but there are so many intelligent, quick people here--and I don't think I fit in that category. I know I don't work hard enough to be here--this will be the third day of testing, and I didn't study much at all yesterday afternoon. I was just sick of it, and I don't know how to study better, but that's not good enough. It feels like proof that I'm not good enough, while at the same time making it seem like completely my fault. What am I saying? It is completely my fault.
Agh. And see, here I am spewing venom in my own general direction, and I should be studying. I only have one hour left. And there should be no venom.
The counselor told me that I have to remove the word "should" from my vocabulary, that the way I use it is self-destructive. I feel destructive right now. Quite. I'm so tired.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
I think I might always be tired
It is I; I am here
Breathe softly in your trembling ear
Whisper past each icy tear
"Come back to sleep"--but dark things wait--
Creep in like cold and chill and fear.
Having trouble sleeping. Woke up in a cold sweat with the sheets soaking wet all around me. Had to strip the bed in the middle of the night and sleep in a heap of blankets that ended up being rather cozy.
Breathe softly in your trembling ear
Whisper past each icy tear
"Come back to sleep"--but dark things wait--
Creep in like cold and chill and fear.
Having trouble sleeping. Woke up in a cold sweat with the sheets soaking wet all around me. Had to strip the bed in the middle of the night and sleep in a heap of blankets that ended up being rather cozy.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Autopsy
I have literally failed at life today, in every possible way.
For starters, I saw an autopsy today as part of a requirement for my Pathology class. It. Was awful. Quite assuredly the worse thing I have ever experienced at any time during my dealings with all things medical. Including TV, drunk driving don't-end-up-like-these-mangled-scraps-of-humanity promotional videos, and odd bits of horror movies I've been unfortunate enough to stumble across.
It got to me. The smell was the first thing, though not the worst. It's fleshy and raw and meaty, I suppose, and the scent of blood just tastes like iron and rust in your mouth. I still can't get the taste out. The most disturbing thing about the smell of fresh death was that it was so horribly familiar. I've never been around anything like this--I've never even been hunting, been to slaughter houses, nothing--and yet I knew that smell. I don't know why, but I hated it.
I walked into the building sick already. I'm one of the types who don't eat for days when PMS hits, because the smell, thought, or mention of food makes me feel nauseated. And so I literally whimpered when I woke up this morning and realized that, yes, this was one of those days. They tell you to eat before you come in--well. That's funny. And so that blast of cold air with death in it hit me in the face, and I saw all these bodies in various stages of butchery almost immediately, and it took everything I had not to black out right then and there. I think I pulled it off pretty well, all things considered.
Autopsies are obscene. They cut her open with kitchen knives and used massive garden shears on her ribcage, and then they just started pulling things out, lungs and vessels, her liver, her heart. God. I think this really got to me more than I realized--I'm sitting here crying because I was so horrified and all I wanted to do was leave, but I couldn't. It's required. Why the hell they require something like that is beyond me. And it's gross, and I can't even apologize about it, because it's been trapped inside my head all day, and I want it out.
They weren't like cadavers, you know. Those don't look like people anymore. These do. Just stupid people with tattoos and scars and nail polish. So you have to desperately remind yourself that they aren't people anymore. Just lumps of meat, no more than a cat or dog lying dead in the gutter.
I don't think anybody realizes what autopsies actually look like. They're not that nice neat metal table with the body all pristine and sewed up, or laid open all clean like those idiotic TV shows. There's blood and fluid everywhere, spattered on masks and dripping on the floor, and pieces of stuff, and did you know that people don't die with their eyes closed? Her eyes were blue. At least they were until the coroner's assistant pulled her face off and folded it under her neck, ripped her scalp off her skull and took her brain. God. I couldn't watch that part. The smell of bone being sawed just added to the whole experience, if you know what I mean. But you don't. Of course you don't.
There was a massive fat black lady next to us. I don't know why she died--perhaps gunshot wounds. I didn't look very closely. When they rolled her over, all her fat moved and it looked like she would sit up at any moment. The coroners were making rude jokes about her. Maybe that's their way of dealing with what they do. I suppose you get used to it after a while, but it made me sick.
Towards the end, the people working on the body lifted it up to put a block under the back. They'd cut everything apart that was holding her together in front, and her shoulders flopped back to form a 90 degree angle where one normally doesn't exist. That was the worst moment, for me. People don't do that. They don't move like that unless they're so, so broken. I had to look at something else, hard like trying to memorize Braille, hard to remind myself that I could still breathe.
You keep thinking it will get better. That the worst moment had to be first walking in and seeing a person flayed open like a fish, thin wrist hanging off the table and dripping blood so slowly. And then you think, no, the worst moment must be watching one side of her face cave in because they just went through her neck to her throat, under her skin, and ripped something out--I didn't look closely enough to tell what. Surely that must be the worst moment, and it will be over soon. But then you realize the worst moment is when you accidentally look closely at the bag they've used to cover her brainless head, and realize it is actually semi-transparent, and that her twisted used-to-be-a-face is staring back but it's all wrong because they didn't pull it tight enough over her skull to fit the place it used to be; and then you finally get it, that there will always be a worst moment coming up until you get to walk out the door, so just expect it and look away when it comes.
I came home and scrubbed my hair twice. After that, I did almost nothing. The entire afternoon. Some of it was the I'm in physical pain, and that never helps concentration, but after this little exercise with words I'm starting to believe it was simply my lack of willingness to think about this morning. All afternoon it's felt like my mind has been shut down, just stopped, like I was trapped in honey or amber. And so I lost myself in stories, in being around people, in not thinking. It's been so discouraging and I was beating myself up pretty badly for my appalling lack of motivation--but it sort of makes sense now, for the first time. I've written about it, cried fairly hard, and for the first time in hours I feel like things are starting to move again--and that I might be able to sleep (and I'm hungry now). Still a bit bewildered by it. Still trying to process. I'm not done yet, either. I can feel it. My mind is still stumbling around it. But I think this was my problem today. Maybe my mind just shut down for a bit to protect itself.
I know a girl I met in a lunch line started crying when she tried to tell me how her autopsy experience went, so this isn't completely nuts. Steph told me they gave her a kid, and she didn't know if she could have gone through with it--but they switched her so she didn't have to watch. I don't know. I don't know why I had to experience that. Most people probably don't have my reaction, but still. At this point I can't see anything redeeming about watching a body being torn down piece by piece.
I'm so tired now. I couldn't sleep before--you might notice by the time stamp that it's almost midnight, and I generally turn into a pumpkin at about ten. As therapy, this has worked pretty well. But man. I can still smell it. I hate that. I just want to sleep.
For starters, I saw an autopsy today as part of a requirement for my Pathology class. It. Was awful. Quite assuredly the worse thing I have ever experienced at any time during my dealings with all things medical. Including TV, drunk driving don't-end-up-like-these-mangled-scraps-of-humanity promotional videos, and odd bits of horror movies I've been unfortunate enough to stumble across.
It got to me. The smell was the first thing, though not the worst. It's fleshy and raw and meaty, I suppose, and the scent of blood just tastes like iron and rust in your mouth. I still can't get the taste out. The most disturbing thing about the smell of fresh death was that it was so horribly familiar. I've never been around anything like this--I've never even been hunting, been to slaughter houses, nothing--and yet I knew that smell. I don't know why, but I hated it.
I walked into the building sick already. I'm one of the types who don't eat for days when PMS hits, because the smell, thought, or mention of food makes me feel nauseated. And so I literally whimpered when I woke up this morning and realized that, yes, this was one of those days. They tell you to eat before you come in--well. That's funny. And so that blast of cold air with death in it hit me in the face, and I saw all these bodies in various stages of butchery almost immediately, and it took everything I had not to black out right then and there. I think I pulled it off pretty well, all things considered.
Autopsies are obscene. They cut her open with kitchen knives and used massive garden shears on her ribcage, and then they just started pulling things out, lungs and vessels, her liver, her heart. God. I think this really got to me more than I realized--I'm sitting here crying because I was so horrified and all I wanted to do was leave, but I couldn't. It's required. Why the hell they require something like that is beyond me. And it's gross, and I can't even apologize about it, because it's been trapped inside my head all day, and I want it out.
They weren't like cadavers, you know. Those don't look like people anymore. These do. Just stupid people with tattoos and scars and nail polish. So you have to desperately remind yourself that they aren't people anymore. Just lumps of meat, no more than a cat or dog lying dead in the gutter.
I don't think anybody realizes what autopsies actually look like. They're not that nice neat metal table with the body all pristine and sewed up, or laid open all clean like those idiotic TV shows. There's blood and fluid everywhere, spattered on masks and dripping on the floor, and pieces of stuff, and did you know that people don't die with their eyes closed? Her eyes were blue. At least they were until the coroner's assistant pulled her face off and folded it under her neck, ripped her scalp off her skull and took her brain. God. I couldn't watch that part. The smell of bone being sawed just added to the whole experience, if you know what I mean. But you don't. Of course you don't.
There was a massive fat black lady next to us. I don't know why she died--perhaps gunshot wounds. I didn't look very closely. When they rolled her over, all her fat moved and it looked like she would sit up at any moment. The coroners were making rude jokes about her. Maybe that's their way of dealing with what they do. I suppose you get used to it after a while, but it made me sick.
Towards the end, the people working on the body lifted it up to put a block under the back. They'd cut everything apart that was holding her together in front, and her shoulders flopped back to form a 90 degree angle where one normally doesn't exist. That was the worst moment, for me. People don't do that. They don't move like that unless they're so, so broken. I had to look at something else, hard like trying to memorize Braille, hard to remind myself that I could still breathe.
You keep thinking it will get better. That the worst moment had to be first walking in and seeing a person flayed open like a fish, thin wrist hanging off the table and dripping blood so slowly. And then you think, no, the worst moment must be watching one side of her face cave in because they just went through her neck to her throat, under her skin, and ripped something out--I didn't look closely enough to tell what. Surely that must be the worst moment, and it will be over soon. But then you realize the worst moment is when you accidentally look closely at the bag they've used to cover her brainless head, and realize it is actually semi-transparent, and that her twisted used-to-be-a-face is staring back but it's all wrong because they didn't pull it tight enough over her skull to fit the place it used to be; and then you finally get it, that there will always be a worst moment coming up until you get to walk out the door, so just expect it and look away when it comes.
I came home and scrubbed my hair twice. After that, I did almost nothing. The entire afternoon. Some of it was the I'm in physical pain, and that never helps concentration, but after this little exercise with words I'm starting to believe it was simply my lack of willingness to think about this morning. All afternoon it's felt like my mind has been shut down, just stopped, like I was trapped in honey or amber. And so I lost myself in stories, in being around people, in not thinking. It's been so discouraging and I was beating myself up pretty badly for my appalling lack of motivation--but it sort of makes sense now, for the first time. I've written about it, cried fairly hard, and for the first time in hours I feel like things are starting to move again--and that I might be able to sleep (and I'm hungry now). Still a bit bewildered by it. Still trying to process. I'm not done yet, either. I can feel it. My mind is still stumbling around it. But I think this was my problem today. Maybe my mind just shut down for a bit to protect itself.
I know a girl I met in a lunch line started crying when she tried to tell me how her autopsy experience went, so this isn't completely nuts. Steph told me they gave her a kid, and she didn't know if she could have gone through with it--but they switched her so she didn't have to watch. I don't know. I don't know why I had to experience that. Most people probably don't have my reaction, but still. At this point I can't see anything redeeming about watching a body being torn down piece by piece.
I'm so tired now. I couldn't sleep before--you might notice by the time stamp that it's almost midnight, and I generally turn into a pumpkin at about ten. As therapy, this has worked pretty well. But man. I can still smell it. I hate that. I just want to sleep.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
November holidays
My family's thanksgivings are different; I suppose you could say odd, or downright bizarre. One year we set someone on fire with Roman candles--another we played Rock Band so loudly and so badly that I think the neighbors complained. We've burned a field for the fun of it. And an old barn. And possible a house, although that was more a summer adventure. But you get the picture (fire). There have been bloody dog fights and embarrassing excursions to Jungle Jims. Something, always. When I called this morning, Grandma had already dropped the turkey on the floor and someone flooded the basement with a hose they left running outside, so it sounded like everything was shaping up rather nicely.
Thanksgiving was lonely this year. I called in and skyped with everyone, and dad showed me his cracker loaded with aunt Lori's Famous Cheeseball and some fresh jalepeno jelly. My little brother Alex talked to me for an hour last night about scuba diving and pornography and how difficult life is, sometimes. Aunt Paula took the phone and told me they'd been talking about my boyfriend and decided he had to go--stuff like that. Home stuff. Uncle Gary made aunt Lori angry because he ate all the crust off of her apple pie. Mom sent me a box with jars of canned tomato juice and dilled green beans, my favorites. Aunt Lori and mom showed me grandma, trying to move the turkey again, and giggled about it when she couldn't see us. The uncles were grumbling about the flooded basement and we decided to blame grandma for that, too, since they like her and she can get away with it. And guess what? They saved me a place at the big table this year. I've been trying to sit there since I graduated college, and this year there was finally an empty seat.
I thought that was actually a bit cruel.
I was disappointed in today. I keep thinking I'm going to recreate Thanksgiving like we do at home, and I'm starting to realize that until I have my own home, and my own family, I'm not going to be able to do that. It just won't work; I shouldn't have expected it.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Small things
Somewhere close, a dog is crying in the way dogs do when they feel that life is too sad not to voice. It's getting to me--I want to find it and love on it. Something in the sound is just so lonely. Forsaken. It tugs hard and something in me wants to respond.
Or it could just be a weird 'were type of animal trying to lure me out into the dark because it sounds pitiful and I just want to cuddle it--and then, as soon as I leave the safety of the light, it'll grind my bones and pickle my spleen and use my femurs as toothpicks. You just never know around here.
Demetri, the neighbor I complained about? We're doing better. He's still, at times, a world-class douche (think music at 2:00am), but now that he has a name and a history, it's easier to find a way to connect with him that isn't quite so uncomfortable. (Did I really just type that, and he really just turn his music on at a half-million decibels? Yes, yes he did). Anyway. He has a puppy. This little light tan pit bull puppy. And I know it'll probably grow up and be this vicious nasty biting thing because Demetri's little boy hits it and everybody is always screaming and unhappy in that house, but for now, it's just a puppy. And when nobody's outside and the puppy is in the yard, I'll sneak over and talk to it in puppy-speak through the fence. And it will wiggle everything behind its nose and lick my fingers and generally we're both just happy.
Speaking of little squishy things and happy; I did my first exam on a baby. And he was the most chubbly wubbly baby ever. And he LOVED ME. They warn us to be quick because babies will generally scream during exams, but every time I leaned over him, he just stared at me and smiled. It was so funny, too, because I was attempting to listen to his inspiratory strider (think wheezing), but he would see me and calm down and it would stop. The doctor threw up her hands and said, "You've healed him! He can go home!" It was great.
In other news. I was pretty desperate, these past few weeks. I skirt depression so often, now, and it felt like I was trying to claw my way out of a hole, and every bit of progress I made was lost just as quickly. I mentioned this before. Anyway, I had my first appointment with the new therapist. I like her. We worked out a basic plan for things I can incorporate into my life that will make me happier and feel more...human. Not quite as dark--more myself. I'm hopeful.
Or it could just be a weird 'were type of animal trying to lure me out into the dark because it sounds pitiful and I just want to cuddle it--and then, as soon as I leave the safety of the light, it'll grind my bones and pickle my spleen and use my femurs as toothpicks. You just never know around here.
Demetri, the neighbor I complained about? We're doing better. He's still, at times, a world-class douche (think music at 2:00am), but now that he has a name and a history, it's easier to find a way to connect with him that isn't quite so uncomfortable. (Did I really just type that, and he really just turn his music on at a half-million decibels? Yes, yes he did). Anyway. He has a puppy. This little light tan pit bull puppy. And I know it'll probably grow up and be this vicious nasty biting thing because Demetri's little boy hits it and everybody is always screaming and unhappy in that house, but for now, it's just a puppy. And when nobody's outside and the puppy is in the yard, I'll sneak over and talk to it in puppy-speak through the fence. And it will wiggle everything behind its nose and lick my fingers and generally we're both just happy.
Speaking of little squishy things and happy; I did my first exam on a baby. And he was the most chubbly wubbly baby ever. And he LOVED ME. They warn us to be quick because babies will generally scream during exams, but every time I leaned over him, he just stared at me and smiled. It was so funny, too, because I was attempting to listen to his inspiratory strider (think wheezing), but he would see me and calm down and it would stop. The doctor threw up her hands and said, "You've healed him! He can go home!" It was great.
In other news. I was pretty desperate, these past few weeks. I skirt depression so often, now, and it felt like I was trying to claw my way out of a hole, and every bit of progress I made was lost just as quickly. I mentioned this before. Anyway, I had my first appointment with the new therapist. I like her. We worked out a basic plan for things I can incorporate into my life that will make me happier and feel more...human. Not quite as dark--more myself. I'm hopeful.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Ducks and stuff
More updates. But first, some pictures.
There was a boy in my life this summer. Actually, we just celebrated our one year anniversary. I was pretty excited about it. Thought I'd share. I'm allowed to do whatever I want, on here. -grins-
There was also a duck.
Yes, this duck. I called her Duckers. Because I'm all original and crap.
There was a boy in my life this summer. Actually, we just celebrated our one year anniversary. I was pretty excited about it. Thought I'd share. I'm allowed to do whatever I want, on here. -grins-
Yes, this duck. I called her Duckers. Because I'm all original and crap.
She's the only duck I've raised who actually thought she was People.
You would not believe how this thing ATE. I was actually sort of jealous.
Our turkey was sitting on chicken eggs, and the ducks got into the nest, and, well...it's complicated.
I'm getting spoiled...won't know what to do without a summer of ducks.
Oh, and I learned how to wakeboard. :-D
Now that the pictures are out of the way, my study break is up. Besides, the other stuff I'm inclined to chat about doesn't really go with ducks and lakes--it'll hold for another post. Perhaps tonight, while it's still fresh.
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