Psych Rotation

Psychiatry is fun. For one thing, this doctor is very busy and very good, so the students do not actually participate in patient encounters beyond observing. This is extremely relieving. I am doing my core rotations, but I met a student who is doing this as his elective rotation, which means that he has already completed his first year of clinicals. Conversing with him all day alleviated many fears, as he advised me on how I should live life a little bit while in Houston rather than stress myself out so much over studying. He went to the same school in the Caribbean, so he understood the bad isolationist habits that we all developed there.

Thanks to him, I also realized that with my current schedule, I can be finished with rotations and applications by next year in the fall, and match for residency is not until the following spring. So if all goes well, I could have a 6+ month gap in time which would only need to be filled by whatever interviews I get. In other words, I could travel. Even for the interviews themselves, I will have to visit wherever they are in the States.

Lots of fun patients in psych today, but my favorite told us that he was god. Specifically the reincarnation of Judas Iscariot. I do not quite follow the theology, but then again, I am no theologian. He also said that a witch doctor cut his heart out. When the doctor asked how, he said "I don't know how it works" in a sort of a "How would I know? I didn't go to witch med school"

There were many others. I should try to keep logs tomorrow so that I will not have to worry about logs anymore for the rest of the rotation.

Nothing Romantic

She is at a place where she does not want to think about boys or dating. And that is a healthy place. So I am no longer to think of her romantically, which is probably good, 'cause it consumed so many of my thoughts.

Though I would like to go yell at God about it (I thought He and I had cleared up some of these things last weekend), I begin my next rotation bright and early tomorrow. My mind feels somewhat relieved but also restive. I wish I had anything going on in this new city.

Make no mistake, I am glad that all of that happened. Maybe we will be come the people for each other someday, but we are not for each other as we are. I allowed myself to feel a lot, and it also got me writing a lot too. I had so little inspiration for most of my years that this flood comes as a relief, letting me know that that ability to write is still in me. If I go to a poetry open mic night, I will have something to share, and that is quite nice.

So now I am left with the ever-present question of how I can attain any form of a social life here? I have no relief apart from that which I find at the clinic, and one can hardly call a medical student's life at a clinic a "social life".

For now, I will have a drink and try to focus on the psychiatry rotation that awaits me in the morning. The mission, as always, is to obtain a letter of recommendation.

Talks With God

I finished my first core clinical rotation on Friday. The doctor told me that she would miss me and to call anytime. She said that I did an excellent job, and that I could request a recommendation letter from her.

I should have been celebrating after that. I did try. I went to the movies to see Isle of Dogs. And then to karaoke. The movie was good but made me think of that girl the whole time. Karaoke was not very good.

See, on that Monday, that girl had messaged me to let me know that my incessant letters were making her roommate assume that we were dating. This had implications of dishonesty on her part. So I was to stop writing letters. I had put one more in the mail that day, but told her that I would stop. And from that point, I became somewhat convinced that she no longer liked me. That evening, the thoughts of her did not interrupt my studying every few minutes. I accomplished more a lot faster. But then I had to correct my mind that night with no more daydreaming about her. For a night, it was okay.

The following night, the loneliness was crippling. I tried to just go to sleep, to just do what I have done for the bulk of my life, but her absence from my mind was so acutely disconcerting that I cried. I never cry, privately or publicly, with a few very specific exceptions related to academics. That night, however, my pillow was lightly dampened.

So the next night, I finished my tasks early enough to drink. I messaged her that night, checking to make sure that I was still okay to visit the following weekend, but she said that it would be too painful. I told her that I have put aside enough of my feelings to be a friend for her, and she too is depressed enough that she appreciates it. Though I remain convinced that she no longer wishes to like me in a romantic fashion.

My mind is in turmoil all week as a result of these assumptions. I do not allow myself to think of her romantically, to daydream of her, and it takes its toll. I always dream about a better day to come. I cannot help but to drink every night.

Fast forward back to Saturday. I work out, which I had negated for much of the week, and then I try to make myself go to a different karaoke. I think to myself that I need to get out, to live a little bit. But I walk in and wander for five minutes and simply cannot make myself stay. I felt wrong. So I left, but rather than drive straight back to my apartment, I pulled over into a parking lot in front of a park and began to talk to God.

Normally, in instances of frustration such as these, I make myself yell at God. I rarely see a reason to raise one's voice when trying to communicate, but for God, I think it important to churn up whatever I am trying to keep from Him. But I am so exhausted from the thought of not being with her, of the simultaneous reopening of that void of loneliness, that I merely speak. I had really tried to obey Him in this. A vision lent its support and that friend remains convinced of its validity. The missionary gave a cautionary answer that was "not a no". Logic said to give this up. I had moved away and it did not make sense. But neither does me becoming a doctor. So I cautiously told God that I would switch my thinking from the loneliness back to thinking that she and I were meant to be together, that if He wanted that to change, then He should absolutely intervene and correct us. And also importantly, I told Him that I would try to give up to Him my constant resigned suspicion that she would find someone else. If I trusted Him with the relationship, then I would also trust Him to keep her heart from other men.

That night, we FaceTimed. She had read my letters. The last one had included a list of qualities that were objectively admirable. It was only a page long, but she had mentioned that she did not see what she brought to the table, and that boggled my mind, so I figured that this may help. She told me that she was afraid that she would break my heart. I let her know that that was not her responsibility, that emotions are emotions, but I did not think that she actually could, given the nature of her character.

That conversation, which is the type of communication that I always long to receive from her, felt like a confirmation of the conversation I had had with God just hours before. We played truth or dare, and during that game, I dared her to visit me and write me a letter, both of which she agreed to do (though the visit was apparently still in the works from when she had previously told me that she would).

She said that I am not allowed to write her a letter until I receive one from her. I write poetry for/to her frequently, but simply have it saved in my phone, hoping for a chance to send it to her to capture her heart just a little bit more even though I remain 221 miles away.

Wrote This Last Night

I really have missed feeling things. Since college, I have felt far apart from such things. I backpacked through Europe alone. Why? To better myself as a person. I didn’t want to go alone, but I couldn’t find anyone else willing, and going alone was preferable to not going at all. It began as a mission trip for a week, so when I parted ways from my fellow missionaries in the airport, the weight of it hit me. That loneliness. Suddenly, I only knew maybe three or four people on the continent. And I had a bed and breakfast booked for the following night, but no plans beyond that, for the next three months. Loneliness. Loneliness in the most beautiful and romantic places in the world. Because this was the best way I knew to become a better person.

After I got back, I went to medical school on an island for two years. I was suddenly a racial, religious, and cultural minority in a place that, as I would go on to discover, has an odd culture of cruelty for no purpose except to be mean. And no ladies in mind except one or two that were back in the States. Even writing letters wasn’t practical from the island. Two years. Loneliness. Depression. Because this was the path to saving the world.

Then I got back to America and found myself an intellectual minority, and in the process, I exchanged the depression that came with isolation with the anxiety that comes with a 2016 presidential election. I wanted to process the past two years, but somehow I couldn’t come to a place for that. I felt like God told me not to go to my old church. I was confused on a spiritual level, and that helped lead me to deal with the stress in unhealthy ways. I compromised my morality, became unsure of my identity, and also lost the hope that I would meet anyone to partner with in this pursuit of saving the world.

Then I took a study program and met someone shockingly wonderful, who immediately got along great with everyone in the study program to whom I introduced her. But she was with someone, and by her mannerisms, I did not suspect that she was Christian.

Summer came and I moved to Arkansas to study for the big exam. I did so because home felt an impossible study environment and because I was trying to find myself. The last time that I had a firm grip on who I was happened to be when I was in college, in Arkansas. I reconnected with a friend who had just become a doctor, and became his social relief as his medical friends moved away for their residencies. I easily befriended all the strangers at the local small town patio style bar.

I took the test and do what I always do when I have a gap in my schedule. I traveled. I had never been to New York, so I drove there with very little plan for how things could work out. Nashville, D.C., Baltimore, NYC, Niagara Falls, Toronto, Milwaukee, Chicago. It was exhausting and difficult. Then I found out that I failed my test and drove home. I began studying again a few days later. I had also begun liking a girl, but as I got to know her, I became increasingly frustrated with the fact that she was my age and loved God, yet somehow had not felt the compulsion to travel beyond the local area to better herself as a human. I tried to like her because she was beautiful and going into nursing, but she didn’t have the spark. But she did have a connection to the old world to which my identity had been so intimately bonded. So I realigned my spirituality and morality. But my weakness is that without a hope of a partner in life, the kind that I’ve always felt that God has for me, I am prone to compromising my ways. So I was still dumb sometimes. But then I found someone who was a great many ideals in a human and liked me back. I had written to her with no expectation of return of feelings, not leaving myself vulnerable, just letting her know for the sake of allowing her to recognize her own worth, as she seemed to think much of myself. But she did indeed return the feelings. This is the first time that this has ever happened to me. Yet as with all things potentially wonderful in my world, there would naturally be something in the way. We had mere weeks until I was to move four hours away for clinical rotations. So we made the most of it, but the time finally came for me to move. And she continued liking me. She and her mom visited and she liked me then. We prayed about whether to try dating, but when she realized that little would change, that distance would remain prohibitory, she said no. And I didn’t feel peace about it. And counsel I consulted urged caution.

Even so, I wrote to her frequently, with ever-increasing intensity, until it came to a sort of culmination where the clinic was stressful and she was my only form of stress relief, and I became overwhelming in the affections that I poured forth. And finally, she asked me to stop writing. She understood how therapeutic it was for me, but the endless letters were causing assumptions from others that were untrue.

Thus do I find myself in loneliness again. But it is of a better flavor. She seemed ready enough to date after I made my feelings known. Distance, not affections, were what stopped her from wanting to be with me. This loneliness does not encompass all the vastness of space as it seemed to only a short time ago. This time, it only stretches for 221 miles.

Submitting The Idea To God

I FaceTimed with her after I wrote whatever I wrote yesterday. She is in the phase of happily being single into which I am always encouraging everyone else to enter, the phase in which it seems I will likely continue to dwell for the near future. It allows for personal growth and development, but the loneliness does hit rather acutely at times. I still have tentative plans to visit her, and she hopes to do the same to me, but I am trying to do better at submitting the whole idea of a relationship to God. God has someone wonderful for her, and it probably is not me as I currently am, and obviously potentially is not me at all.

So the letter I wrote today was a poem about the Bible, and I also typed (because it's way faster) a prayer about us to God. Oh, and a list of nice qualities which she possesses. I typed that too, 'cause it's a long list, and she had expressed doubt about what she brings to the table. I could not tell if that was about dating or saving the world or whatever else, so I listed things from multiple parts of life. And I left out her looks in all of these, 'cause I think she already knows what I think of those.

Not feeling that burning longing quite so heavily after putting pen to paper in this way, and after taking the time to submit it to God more, I already find myself drawn to drink. I genuinely did not want to drink to excess either when I was with her or when I daydreamed about her. She filled that void. I wish that God could fill it, and I suppose that He does sometimes, but there is a reason for the Eves of this world for stupid Adams like myself. Maybe I will find one someday.

Vulnerability Banishing Loneliness

This last week was difficult. I finally gained access to all of my weekly quizzes, so I now need to complete all of them during my final week of pediatric rotation. Fortunately, my next rotation appears to be very light. In addition to the coursework, a nurse practitioner was sick this week, so that meant showing up early and seeing patients every day with scarcely a lull. I was beginning to get used to the 3-hour lunches, and having that cut down to 45 minutes really put a hamper on my daily study quota. Hopefully the doctor will give me a good grade. She keeps telling me that I am doing excellent, and to keep it up, but I do not know if that is an 80% or a 100% or somewhere in between.

Also very much on my mind has been that one girl. Though we are not dating, this is certainly the closest I have ever come to such. Being in a new city with no friends or real hobbies present, I have been channeling my exhausted mind into writing to her. She told me she loved me when she visited, and I did not respond in quite as articulate a fashion at that point as I later wished I had. I have told many friends that I loved them, but it did seem as though this meant something else, and frankly, I have never allowed myself to be vulnerable enough to express such a meaning. And without God's express approval (which I cannot confidently say that I currently possess), that level of vulnerability seems unsure. But perhaps this is healthy for me, to allow myself to feel this much.

And that is the real concern. As thoughts of her become my only escape, my poetry has become more specific and impassioned. I was planning to write one letter per week, but I ended up writing four this week. And I have several poems already written in my phone. She said that she loves me, but now she seems hesitant, because the strain of distance, of not having me physically present, may be too much. Would our pseudo relationship continue like this? Just flirting long distance? For her, having experienced more, this arrangement is perhaps unbearable. For myself, I am shocked that the spot in my mind where loneliness had taken deep root has instead been occupied by her. I did not know that the loneliness could be displaced to such a degree.

My next rotation schedule allows me the opportunity to visit her, and for her to visit me. I hope that we at least have this time together. I am trying to submit it to God, because this seems as hopeless as the prospective of my becoming a doctor. My grandfather proposed to my grandmother by post, but judging by the past couple weeks, she seems unwilling to reply to a significant degree either by post or FaceTime.