It's late in the morning here, I slept too long. Yesterday marked the end of a 72 hour week in the hospital, the last 36 spent consecutively. Last night was the first time I'd slept since Wednesday. There is such a different slant to life, the world around you, your own internal mechanisms, when you force function on thin reserves.
And today I have a homesickness of sorts, caught up in an an old familiar ache, for things beyond my reach, for small, quiet things that have passed or are gone, tucked into the corners of an old past, barely visible ahead. I miss the ocean and a wild, uninterrupted sky. I miss the thick, golden air, the lower hum of a different kind of living. I miss the quiet, laziness and slow minutes that stretched out effortlessly, so that I could be greedy and spoiled and use them all up, hungry, leaving nothing, full up and still grabbing.
I sit in my little apartment, surrounded by noise and grey, trying to recreate . My life has come undone around me, everything needs attention. There is much in front of me to do. But instead I am unraveling, so that hopefully I can pick it all back up again. Put things back into place, reorganize the unquiet within.
Part of me wants to give up altogether. After a week like this--after feeling as if I will never learn it all, or enough, after feeling as if I need more time, that I am not ready, that I want the benefit of more years, more books, more teaching but knowing that, in the end and no matter what, the onus is on me, to read, to learn, to adjust, to absorb everything--after a week like this, I kind of want to throw in the towel. After a week like this I can't stop thinking about waking up at dawn in Costa Rica to go surfing, walking with dirty feet through small streets, sandy and warm, full up with endless sun. After a week like this I can't help but wish for and want an entirely different kind of life, in a way that is infinitely unrealistic. After a week like this all I can think of in front of me is an older life gone by or an newer life not waiting.
And I stand in the murky middle, in the clutch between giving everything and being so excellent, and giving up everything and living life uncomplicated. I want each, and both, together, simultaneously. I want to flee to the Seychelles, exist unapologetically for enormous swaths of time. I want to move back to the ocean, live life again golden, red against the setting sun. I also want to be so amazing as the man I worked with, eagerly chasing, leaning in to hear every word, as we went from room to room, from sick to dying patient, in the blue-walled and buzzing Surgical Intensive Care Unit, filled from end to end with people. People in the full spectrum of death and recovery, in ways I hadn't seen before.
And when a chief resident comes up to me to ask my name, the same chief resident who yells out at morning report, the chief resident who is at once dismissive and kind, saying things like "extremely impressed", "better than some of the residents", "one of best students we have" I want to die and fall into the floor and can't help but turning around to make sure he isn't talking to someone else, isn't mistaken. Because I feel as if I am drowning, as if I know nothing, as if I know I've read about everything once, but remember nothing, that it isn't available in the back log of my brain, that it's come, and gone. And I want to die because when someone like him says something like that, all I can think of is, "oh shit, I've got a long fall in front of me from grace".
And it happened time and time again. Somehow there was a mistake. And each of them came up to introduce themselves, tell me they hear "how strong" I am on the unit, am I considering surgery. And each one of them didn't even try to mask their shock at learning that I am "only" a PA student. Which made feel fucked up and frustrated, because I don't know anymore what I am, whether I made the right choice, if I should have gone on to be an MD, or not.
All I know is everything I don't. All I know is that the man I worked with, the fourth year resident, the best I've seen, was amazing in a way that made me crazy. Because all I want is to be that good, and all I can see is how I am not. And I don't know if I ever will be. And when he took me under his wing, made notice, gave me praise, it only made it worse each time I didn't know an answer, didn't full understand a concept, had to reveal my weaknesses within. Because I felt that I had disappointed him, made him question his faith in me afterall.
So instead I recede, retreat, reconsider. And all I want is to replenish, one day of sun. There are too many parts of me to take care of. Too many things inside to keep in order. I fear I am not single minded enough ever be happy, that there will always be a part of me that is sullen and sulky, sitting in the corner, feeling ignored.
