as it were

It's not so much (or only) that I hate the city, it's just that, I have no idea what the point of summer is without an ocean. Or a lake. Or even a slip and slide. Driving around Brooklyn yesterday, watching kids try to come up with ways to play outside, locked in and trapped up, staring side-long at the hot, dirty faces slumped over on the stoops, I had this flash of how different my life could have been, how different I could have been, under any number of different circumstances. How easy and fragile and specific and intricate our little lives end up to become. If I had grown up here, how different would I be?

You should be a doctor. I hear that to varying degree and from time to time. I hear it more now and recently, here in my shocking and unsurprising niche of Obstetrics. You should be a doctor, they say to me and it is a dense and messy thing in me and I rarely handle it gracefully. You should be a doctor. From my mother in law it drives me bat shit crazy, from the residents and occasional Attendings, I wince and shake my head and clutch at the remnant part of me that agrees. What I should be is in ownership of my profession. What I should be is confident and secure that I would ultimately be no different, no better, as MD. What I should be is grateful that I am now finished and not looking down the barrel of six more years. What I should be is unenvious and relieved and contended. What I often am is left wondering if I should have been, could have been, would have been more.