At some point yesterday I lost my mind. Actually, it was right around 5:30 in the afternoon, that much I know for certain. I was on the phone with Andy, washing up the remains of my 3:45 in the morning coffee, when I asked him how things were going with the house--and before anything else, I haven't been talking about freaking out about the house lately because Things Are In Contract and Negotiations are being Countered and lots of Faxes are Being Signed and none of it has, or rather can have, anything much to do with me, so I've just been waiting to see what happens, asking Andy every now and then how things are going with it and usually am met with a "about as fun as cutting my own testicles off, actually", so I generally keep my mouth shut.
But the thing is this. Whenever he does talk about it, whenever it comes up in conversation to friends or family or the bogglelingly well-connected network we have access to here in New York, he uses words like "I" and "me", which breaks my heart and makes me crazy every time. This is, admittedly, an old wound for me. Long ago and in another time I had a boyfriend who was always talking in "me's" and "I's", even and especially about things we had clearly done or invested in or built or made together. So my vapor point is a little low.
And I'm exhausted. And I'm tired sometimes of being 49 states apart. And there are strange things, poorly defined, malignant things about me that reside in the soft recesses of my mind that exist for the sole purpose of Making Things Complicated. And sometimes they get the better of me, and sometimes they win, and usually it is about one or two predictable, reliable Issues that live like squatters in my heart.
So when I asked him yesterday, how things were going, and he read to me an email that he had sent to the sellers, informing them that if they didn't get their (literal) Shit Together in the form of Septic Tank Issues, he was "prepared to walk". And then I got really upset. And I told him what a terrible bastard he was, or something close to it, and that he was insensitive and what did it matter anyway what I had to say about one bit of it, since he was clearly making unilateral decisions and speaking as if he were the only person involved in this. And he told me that he was the only person really involved in this, well, because it's true, but that drove me even further into insanity, because school has completely eclipsed everything in my life for two straight and uninterrupted years and there is not a goddamn thing I can do about it. And it makes me crazy and I feel powerless and every damn time I have tried to sneak out a little bit early, or stow away for one day, to do something like look at a house we are buying one more time to really make sure it's the right decision, each and every time I almost jeopardize everything I've put into the past 19 months in the form of getting found out and reprimanded. And then I have to sweat and try to cover my tracks and come up with Great Excuses so that I don't look like a Complete Fucking Asshole to my program because at some point I fooled them into thinking I was A Really Excellent Student and there is nothing worse than falling far distances from grace.
And then my brain melted. So when he tried to tell me that, although he's the only one involved in the process of buying "our" house right now, at "some point" it will be both of ours and "you'll be paying the mortgage too" and who cares if my name is no where on any of the Contracts or Bank Notes or Emails and who cares if I am more of a financial liability at this point than anything else and all I've done for the past two years is suck enormous amounts of money into the vast black hole that is Living In New York, not to mention the small galaxy of debt called Student Loans. And so when he said that, especially the part about "you'll be paying the mortgage too" I really fucking lost it. Because not only am I supposed to graduate in 6 short months and suddenly if not miraculously, be able to autonomously manage patients on my own, setting out on shaking feet towards my Career In Medicine, but I'm also supposed to create, carry and care for our future and abstract ideas of Children. In the next five years. Before my ovaries blow out.
All of that. Simultaneously.
So that's when I said that I'm not going to have children, actually, because clearly I need to be focused on my career and making money and trying to rectify the financial inequity that has existed between us for so, so long. And while I'm at it, I'm not going to have horses or travel, ever, or do one more goddamn thing that generates any kind of expense and never fucking mind if I just wrote twenty goddamn paragraphs about how much I hate surgery and no amount of money could ever entice me to go into it because of a detailed litany of reasons, I'm actually going to work seven days a week now, 12 hours a day. In fact I'm going to get two jobs. Because I'll be fucking damned if I can continue to go on living like I'm just a side note "wife" to the greater (financial) force of anyone.
That's what I said. Because I was feeling hurt and hurtful. And I wanted to balance out my own frustrations and anger and pain by inflicting some of it onto someone else. Because sometimes I am irrational and angry and probably need more therapy.
But in the end it was hard and horrible and hurtful. And in in the end it remains an enormous, impossible problem for me. Because so much of myself and my ego and my identity is wrapped up like a messy bandage into my career and medicine. I have alloted and sacrificed and invested so fucking much into it, from wanting to go to vet school at 19 to deciding on human medicine at 24 and finally choosing not to go to medical school but rather PA school at 30. And ultimately I choose PA school so that I could have a life and a family and some kind of balance. And rarely do I regret the decision. But sometimes, when I am feeling marginalized and unimportant, when I am feeling as if I've given up far too much for strange little, I fall into the familiar territory of, well, at least if I had gone to medical school I would be a doctor. Because apparently I am still juvenile and against all the evidence indicating otherwise, I harbor the unrealistic belief that being a doctor will somehow vindicate me against every imaginary injustice I've come across.
And now I am 32 turning 33, and I am about to finally be done with school after being in it since I was five and I already have all these Issues about not being the Best Student, because I could have been, but choose--or sometimes had to--instead to also be a wife and a friend and a daughter. And I already have all these issues, that I am just about to begin, finally, and at last, after years of life and pounds of flesh and blood and sweat and tears, doing what I've been trying to do for a decade. And, instead of being able to really do it, and be excellent, I have to think about how to balance not only being a partner and a friend and a daughter and a sister in law and an aunt but also a mother and a caregiver and a medical praciticioner and I have to be excellent at all of it. Instead of what I have been, which is mediocre in all. And I don't have the time anymore that I used to, to take a moment to Figure It All Out. The moment is now, my fertility is now, my career is now, my relationship is now. And I have this incredible husband, right now. I have this human being who, against what should certainly be his better judgement and despite everything, loves me astronomically, whom I love enormously, even though I am sullen and hurtful and stupid at times. And he gives me everything he has, which is born out of love but creates lots of Complications, because I haven't lived of life of being given much of anything. And I am stubborn and prideful and full up of my own, idiotic Id. And in the middle of all of this, at the center of it all, is the small, nagging, fearful realization that, after all this time of trying to Be, I really don't think I ever expected to actually Be anything at all.
