How To Survive

A weekend to destress was helpful. Still not feeling at the top of my game, but I am remembering how I survived in times past: looking forward. Even if I fail out, I get to spend the weekend of April 22nd in Arkansas reconnecting with some cherished friends. And that's really something. Two months until that time. Two months to dig myself out of where I am and find my way again.

I've kept my mind pure since my last post. Granted, I've also been drinking heavily. Particularly after our recent pharmacology lecture on the effects of ethanol, I've appreciated much more the decrease in cognition that ethanol provides. Thank God for GABA. So perhaps in contrast to many other men, I drink to help myself avoid sinning. And to decrease anxiety of course. And a number of other reasons probably. Hard to tell (I'm currently drinking).

I've gotta keep my mind elsewhere. Study hard and daydream of another time and place. That's how I've survived in the past. If I become hopeless, I become depressed, and when troubles come, that depression can easily turn to anxiety.

Awful

Passed pharm with a 73. Failed pathology with a 65.5. Passing path with a 70.3 and pharm with a 75.5.

Anxiety is awful. So is depression. I just want to be back around people in America. It was hard enough to remember friends while they weren't far away. Separated by time and distance... I just don't know anymore. I feel like nothing, and also worse and worse.

If I had failed out when I first started med school, at least I would have only had around $15k to lose over it. Now it's multiple tens of thousands of dollars later, and I'm terrified of failing out. All that money lost. I've met people who've done that; they were coworkers that I trained before I knew anything about medicine.

I keep wanting to give it all to God, but it feels like when I first went to college. I don't know how. I'm saying the words, but it's not changing. And my thoughts haven't been pure either. That's an effect from the time and distance thing, as well as the grades. I just feel very very alone and no amount of texting or skyping does that much to alleviate the problems.

I know that there's a lot of potential sitting in me, but being martyred would be just peachy. Or just killed in a less dignified way. If God allows it, I won't be too picky.

Till then, I'll try to do better. And endure. Maybe suck less...

On The Horizon

It's that time again. Less than a week until exams, followed by exams, and then exams. And, naturally, Valentine's Day falls upon the weekend preceding all of it, just in case anyone had not yet been dissuaded from a world of happiness.

Honestly, I'm just trying to keep my mind clean. It's a daily struggle meow. It was easier in times past, but distance does tend to make the heart grow fonder. Okay, it's really just lust. It's way easier to objectify people when you hardly ever talk to them.

Anyway, pharmacology and pathology and foundations of clinical medicine. All will be tested soon. I have a much better grip on everything than I did on the last exam, partially due to the fact that I don't have a cold this time.

Uhhh.... that's all maybe...

Irritable

I've gotten more angry lately. Waking up for hospital rotations, getting less exercise, and having to be around people too much... I dunno, something took its toll. The guys I hang out with, the white guys, also happen to be obese. And it hadn't been a big deal until I had to hang out with them so much. But it's pretty genuinely repulsive, how much they eat. I hate to be judgmental, and I can normally kinda just say "to each their own", but even I am cutting back on alcohol the more I read about its potential negative long-term effects. But despite obesity being a killing thing in America, they go on fueling it.

That and the fact that there's a reason why they failed classes in the past, and failed their first exams this semester. We make fun of others in the class for asking dumb questions, but now I've stopped asking basic questions like "what's that the prof just said?" because there's always a follow-up question along with the answer, to make sure I got all the info or to explain something obvious. When our patience is being constantly tested by power outages and useless lectures, it starts to be tough to be polite.

I just want to be back in America. I know that it won't solve every problem, but it will solve a lot of them.

I don't want to find my relief in drinking. Drinking should be in celebration, not to drown sorrows. But the latter will happen if I don't figure something out...

No more rotations till next month. Exams a week from Tuesday (followed by exams in playing doctor class the following Friday and Monday).

I wish I didn't need to work out every other day. Or go to lectures. Or all of the things.