26 posts tagged “relationships”
I am bothered by the problems that I see and cannot fix.
I know that there is nothing I could possibly do, except perhaps what I am already doing.
But, what I am already doing is not enough.
How can I do more? How can I make it better?
I find myself wishing that I was less of a "fixer."
I want my world to be better. I want my world to be better on a global scale. I want my world to be better on a local scale. I want my friends to hate each other less. I want for things to make sense again. I want to remember what it feels like to be in love with a place. I want to have someone here that I feel safe crying in front of.
I want things to be better.
"There is a way to be good again."
So, it's finals week. We all know what that means.
I got the invitation to Pam and Dana's wedding yesterday. It's beautiful, and I'm excited to go... my first wedding in a long while. There was a short little phrase, a very sweet and sentimental thought, letterpressed on the inside. Maybe another time I'll come back and add it.
But for now, suffice it to say, it made me ache a little bit. It's just another in a long line of revelations about myself that I really could have lived without this week. It's hard to admit, because it makes me feel sad and makes me look more than a little pathetic.
But, for the moment, all I can do is try to breathe through this week, survive and live to fight another day, and hope that each successive day brings me a little closer to what is to be, and to what I am to become.
One of the directors at Rainbow gives a single piece of advice every year at closing circle. He says it after the most draining week you can possibly imagine, after you've learned so much about yourself, who you are, what you're capable of. He says it when you have tears streaming down your face, because you are so sad that the week is over, but so happy that you were there - it happens this way every year for me. He says it when you're crying because you haven't the slightest idea how to frame the intensity, the emotion, the love, the experience - seven years, and I still cannot frame the words in my mouth. But, Allen gives this advice:
"There will only be one you in all of eternity. Fearlessly be yourself."
It's a piece of advice that's easy to forget here, when you feel yourself becoming nothing but a textbook-spewing machine. What pathway does this enzyme belong to? Does that neuron fire inhibitory potentials? It's so easy to get sucked in here, to forget who you are, where you come from, what's important.
I can't apologize for being me. I can't apologize for who I am - I am a product of all of the moments that brought me to this one. Even the bad ones, the horrifying ones, I can't take them back. I couldn't be anyone else, even if tried. I do a pretty good job keeping people at an arm's length, but the people who know me best - Beth, Lacey, my family - they all see through it.
I can't apologize for not being someone else. Even on my very, very best days, the very best that I can be... is me. There are days when I think she's a pretty great person to be - she's living her dream, surrounded by friends and family, with very little left to want. There are other days, too, but we all have them - some of them worse than others. But for all of the effort, the best that I can ever be, the most I can ever do for you, is to be nothing but myself.
A new term starts for me on Monday - I'm finishing up biochemistry, starting Neuroscience and Genetics, and taking online courses in Ethics and Epidemiology. I'm excited to be in some new classes, for the challenge and the thrill of new material.
I'm also excited, even ready, to go back to Chicago this weekend. It's still not home, but it is where most of my life is now, which is simultaneously great and also terrifying. It's got the highest density of "my people," in terms of people who get me and understand better than most (with Lacey being the obvious exception) what my life is like. It's only just been in the past couple of months (weeks?) that I've felt like there was anything keeping me there besides school.
It hasn't been that long since I've been that happy in a place - I love Columbia, and there are days when I miss it so much that I ache for my places there, sitting under "my" tree, sipping coffee at Lakota, watching Thursday night TV in Lacey's living room. But it's not home now - most of my people aren't there anymore and when I go back, I'm going back for visits, to see the few people who are left and to be in my places.
The new year has been a strange mix of happiness and panic, stress and frustration. But I can't think, except for an afternoon here, an hour or so there, where I've been genuinely unhappy. And there have been a lot of situations where I've caught myself working without a net, and doing things I never thought I'd do. And there are some times when I catch myself thinking, "What's happened to me?" It's happened a lot since I've been home, when I think about Chicago and the things that I miss there. And the people that I miss there. I've never really been one for missing people, so that's a really, really scary phenomenon for me. I can't really iterate how terrifying it is to feel like that.
Anyway. I'm ready to go back to Chicago to await the spring and see everyone and learn new things. It's a big new term for me, but I'm going to try my hardest to stay uncomplicated and happy, to be the friend that I should be, and work hard and go to sleep tired every night.
Today is February 19th. A whole five days after Valentine's Day... so I'm writing about it now because...?
I should explain that, as a rule, it's a holiday that I really don't like. I used to love it when I was a kid - the week before, my Aunt Ruth would take me to the five-and-dime store, and then to the craft store, where we would buy paper doilies, stickers, construction paper, and patterned paper, and a new set of markers. I would sit at the big dining room table downstairs, and I'd make valentines for everyone in my class. They were, in my pre-adolescent mind, beautiful and special, because I could put a lot of thought and effort into the ones for the people I liked, and slap a few stickers on for the people who had already socially rejected me. I didn't really want a reason to be brought into their social fold anyway - they were mean, and there were good books to be read and I was fine playing tether ball with the other socially awkward kids at lunch.
I'm not really sure when I started avoiding the day entirely. My cynicism became a little more marked when I hit junior high, the land of candy grams and Ophelias, and probably got a lot worse when my first boyfriend and I broke up on February 13th of my freshman year. For the past couple of years, most of college, I've really just pretended that it's another day. I think I had candy grams sent to my dorm friends one year. I might have gone out. Last year, I spent the whole day in an airport trying to come home from an interview - that was perfect. Who could I possibly know in an airport? Nobody noticed whether anyone else was exuberant or wistful - it was totally okay to spend the day in an irritable fit because I had slept for two hours in a hotel before being shafted from airport to airport and had been wearing the same clothes for two days.
Enter this year. I have no idea what's going on. At all. I decide to spend the day doing what I always do, pretending that it's just another day and avoiding potentially awkward situations. I live, work, and study in a place where awkward situations are almost impossible to avoid... there aren't that many of us, and there aren't many places for us to go. So the day is setting up to be a real challenge.
Can I just point out the paradox here, of spending so much time planning how you're going to avoid awkward encounters, in order to pretend like it's just another day? Especially when avoiding said encounters has become a pretty major facet of your day?
Anyway, success. I made it through the day unscathed, if nothing else. It's really possible that I didn't talk to another human being on Thursday until after my exams - I gave my phone to Britt for the evening to keep myself from doing something stupid... which was probably a smart move on my part.
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So here's why I'm writing about this now:
I woke up this morning to help my mom get ready for work, and came in after she left to check my email. I had two new messages, one junk, and the other from an e-card website I've never heard of.
The subject: "E-card reminder from (name)." Reminder? I don't remember getting a first notification! I open it, and read it, and look at the Sent On date.
February 14, 2008.
Ohhhh, crap.
I open the card.
Ohhhh, crap.
I open my spam filter. There's nothing there.
Ohhhh, crap.
Nice, Melissa Ann. The one totally nice gesture you got from anyone on Valentine's Day, you totally ignored. Smooooooth. While I'm sure that at this point, it's no big deal, I feel really just mean. And yeah, kind of stupid. Oh well - not a whole lot can be done now :)
It is still obscenely cold in the Chicago area. My mother reminded me a few days ago that, when we came up to look at apartments in July, how cool I thought it would be to be this close to the lake. I was so young then, and naïve. The lake is where the cold comes from!! The lake is where the wind comes from!!
Setting aside any problems I have with wind chill...
It's going to be a long night of pathways, carbohydrate metabolism, and electron transport... wheeeee... Not a whole lot has happened the last couple days, in any respect. We're all so bogged down with exams and just exhausted. I hosted a study group for embryology last night, pretty chill but still fun. I'm going to be eating leftover pasta con broccoli (St. Louis style, oversauced to no end) for the rest of the week. Sent Martha home with leftovers, and let Faye take a bowl yesterday, and there is still enough pasta to last me until at least Thursday.
I'm ready for the break. I'm ready for the week away, the week away from *everything*, putting some real, physical distance between school and my "school personal life" to figure some things out and steady myself a little bit. I'm ready to see my parents and some of my friends, and establish a normal sleep pattern, if only for a few days.
In the meantime, pathways, pathways, pathways...
To be sure, I am not a winter person. How I ended up in this barren, frozen wasteland in the middle of winter, I have no idea. Or wait... nope. Definitely brought this on myself. Why didn't I try to go anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon? Texas? Virginia? Someplace with palm trees? Or really, any winter vegetation? I'm so not picky. I want tulips and daffodils, and I want them in short order.
It's been snowing, it seems continuously, for days. I've always appreciated a good occasional snow, but this is too much for me. And it comes at the worst possible time, when I really want to be out and studying, but now can no longer safely drive to a coffee shop for a break. I'm not sure I'll even be able to make it to services on Friday evening, which I want desperately to attend, because I've been missing it badly the last few weeks. I need those few hours every week to renew, to feel like I come back fresh, to converse with a few people who exist outside this world I'm confined to for most of the week.
I think that this is what they call "stir crazy."
It doesn't help that my personal life is in something of a flux right now. I don't know up from down right now, and there are some generally unsettling things that are happening. There aren't many people here that I can talk to about it, which is frustrating, but it's a function of the place and the people and the relationships. I have great friends here, but I miss Lacey and Lindsay and Beth. There are times when I wonder if it wouldn't just be easier to forget about this whole "social" facet of my life, and just have "work friends," who exist solely in that single sphere of my life. The problem with that becomes that medical school, more often than not, is the only sphere. And I'm not really willing to lock myself into the loneliness that solution seems to imply.
Anyway, I haven't been writing publicly enough lately. I have some thoughts that I've been gathering lately, but they have not yet been properly organized, and most of the good, juicy stuff has either been confined to my "neighborhood," which seems to consist almost entirely of Lacey and Dora, and the paper journal I occasionally write in to record just a few secrets. I'm sure I'll be better about it after finals are over and I can sort of regain my emotional footing. I'll be home for a few days at the end of the month, which will probably be immensely helpful.
I'm not so good at the whole "interacting with the opposite sex" thing. It's starting to get pretty frustrating. As many guy friends as I've had, it's no surprise that I don't really know how to flirt. And I'm such a pansyass anyway - there's no way in hell I'd actually say something out loud unless I had reason to believe - and I mean absolutely irrefutable reason to believe - that I wouldn't end up making a total fool of myself.
Whatever. Que sera, sera.
"Tristan and Iseult" by Tarkio
“Would you like to go out tonight?”
said Tristan to Iseult.
“It’s a lovely night
to go to the Odeon;
sit in the back row.
Sick of staying in.”
So they threw on some clothes,
walked slowly down the street,
lit by lantern light,
through the market square,
studied the marquee,
bought two tickets and some popcorn.
And on the screen the hero stands,
the female lead, hand in hand,
and says,
“God I love you,
but you trouble me.”
She pushes him away.
And as the credits roll,
Tristan turned to Iseult,
said, “What did ya think?”
“It was okay, I guess.
That story’s pretty old.
It’s a bit clichéd and hackneyed, I thought; I thought.”
And back out on the street
they stopped for some ice cream.
Talking quietly,
there was nobody
in the room in which they sat,
as he reached across the table.
And just as their fingers caught,
timidly, he whispers to her
and says, “God I love you, but you trouble me.”
Said Tristan to Iseult.
Said Tristan to Iseult.
Said Tristan to Iseult."
This is the song that makes me sure that I need to be dating musicians... like, real ones, who play guitar and write really beautiful words. Seriously, Colin Meloy is one of the best singer-songwriters out there right now. Listen here
I turned twenty-two on Friday. I'm really not much for birthdays. In fact, for most of college, I've made it a point to never tell people when my birthday was, mostly stopping at "sometime in April" if pressed really hard. This behavior is due almost entirely to the tendency for things to get really awful before and during my birthday. It's been this way since I was probably thirteen or fourteen, and mostly the "bad things" were limited to major fights with my parents. As I aged, though, these incidences grew increasingly worse:
- Failed my driving test on my sixteenth birthday
- Got into a car accident about two weeks before my 18th birthday, which precipitated a massive breakdown in relations with my father, because he wouldn't let me pay for the accident in any way, but never failed to let me forget that I wrecked his car. I decided that was fine, but then I wouldn't go to my senior prom because a dress was about as much as the deductible on the insurance and I am all about saving him money. Also wouldn't let my parents buy me a birthday present.
- This week: a horrible evaluation from one of my bosses (who clearly lacks any understanding of her role in the whole situation), frustrations with the campus program I've been planning, and being put on the "death hold" at my top choice medical school on my birthday, among other things.
And that philosophy mostly worked for the three years that I applied it. Last year was sufficiently shitty enough, without anything additional piled on. My birthday itself fell on Passover, which meant no grain liquor, and the end of Passover was followed by the impending doom of the MCATs. So, my birthday celebration/MCAT post-party was ten solid days after my birthday. And it was fine.
Twenty-one was a pretty crappy year by most standards anyway. It started off with Passover and the MCATs, and was summarily consumed by the medical school application process, which is time-consuming, exhausting, nerve-wracking, and expensive. I worked retail, which I didn't totally hate, but which didn't give me the hours that I needed. I started, and then stopped for very justified reasons, dating someone. I got to travel a lot, which was nice (Washington D.C., New York, Massachusetts, Chicago, Pennsylvania, and also somewhat North Carolina, Ohio, and Michigan). But mostly the last year was not a good one. It was not the "last year of college" formative experience that everyone else seems to be having.
I enter my twenty-second year in something of a state of panic. It may be because it has not been a good week. However, it is more likely due in large part to the sense of impending doom that I feel about my future. I move out of my apartment four months from last Thursday. I look forward to living somewhere new, but right now have no sense of where I'm going to live in terms of apartments and sheer geography. I have no idea what I'm going to be doing - will it be graduate school (and then, in what and where?)? Will it be teaching in some incarnation or another? Will I be working in labs? Will I have to sell my soul to pay my rent?
I'm twenty-two years old and I've never been in love. I've been close, I think. I've been able to see it distantly from the bottom of the hill. I sometimes wonder if I'm looking in the wrong age-range, or if I've already exhausted the pool that I appear to be wading in right now. I don't know what it looks like with me in it, except for that I know I want it in the way that you see a couple holding hands, and your own hands ache to be held. I know it like that, but I don't know where or how, much less who.
I'm twenty-two years old with no discernible life plan except for wanting to be a doctor, but with seemingly very little to show for it except for the fact that I've worked my ass off for as long as I can remember. It's a goal that I want really badly, but one that would be foolish to persevere in for too long. I don't want to be accepted at 28, in school until 32, in residency until I'm 40, and then I only have a few good years to work. It's not something you can do forever. What if I want a family, or a house, or spending money? I'm starting to wonder if this isn't just G-d's way of telling me to figure something else out.
I'm extraordinarily blessed to have so many loving friends and family as I do. I'm blessed to have eyes and ears and hands, and a capable mind. I'm lucky to have professors who believe in me, and employers who do believe in me.
If I were the president, I'd have some crazy, kamikaze twelve-step program to achieving my personal success, but I don't have that wisdom right now. And it's 3AM and I'm tired.
*This concludes the crappiest birthday I've ever had*
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