I went through the regular weekday morning motions: leaving my apartment a few minutes later than planned, moving my Wisconsin feet at a New York pace, trying to catch the walk light at the big intersection, descending into my subway stop through a grimy staircase where the faint scent of urine lingers permanently.
I swipe my card and move through the turnstile in a single, fluid motion, practiced daily these past six years. I head toward my preferred seat on one of the few wooden benches along the platform, the seat that lies at the perfect spot so that when the train arrives I can walk straight forward without moving so much as an inch to either side and stand directly to the left of the train's open door. From this spot, I can enter the train right away and, hopefully, get a seat for my commute. Today, though, my seat is taken by a man whose fetor announced his presence many yards away. He lies sleeping across the bench, curled up into as little space as a tall man could possibly occupy. His tattered clothing as well as his hair hangs from him in a disheveled mess; he seems a man thick with dirt but thin with wear. Like the rest of the commuters on the platform, I do my best to ignore him, as if by not bringing attention to him I am giving him some modicum of privacy. It's gracious, really. I stand nearby, waiting for my train, and others walk by with eyes downcast or straight ahead in measured stride. Unaffected. But one little girl stops.
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One couch. One full size bed (mattress, box spring, and metal frame). A bench, a shoe rack, an end table. Shelves, a desk, four chairs, two tables, and walls filled with framed photos and artwork (large and small, delicate and not-so-delicate, all equally cherished). A kitchen cart, a baker's rack, too many dishes.
Our apartment has been itemized into cubic feet and pounds, looked at and assessed by professionals who see cargo where I see a home. It's been an arduous month, but I have finally checked off the first major item on my "Moving to Milwaukee To Do List:" Find a moving company. When I started looking in January I thought the process would be relatively straightforward, but as with most things in adulthood I was sorely mistaken. It often felt like there was no one resource to give me all the information I really needed, so in true Type A fashion I did far more research than any normal human being would be expected to do. In the end, did it help me make a better decision? We won't really know until everything is delivered to us in Milwaukee in July. But until then, here is everything valuable that I learned in my research process. I hope that it can help at least one other person preparing for a long-distance move. Have you ever opened up a journal or diary from when you were an adolescent and just cringed? You probably wrote about how the world was ending because your crush didn't smile at you one day, or how your parents were "the worst," or maybe how you were so in love with your boyfriend/girlfriend and you were certain it would never end. . .
And then you put it away and think "Thank God I've grown up!" Those written mementos, melodramatic as they may be, are valuable reminders of how things change with time, perspective, and maturity. When we write them we have no concept of how to contextualize the problems into a larger picture, into a timeline of personal development that will inevitably reshape and resize the roles of those problems in our lives. And although reading them can be painful ("OMG I can't believe I thought that!"), they are a great means of measurement for how far we've come in life. Well, apparently our capacity for melodrama doesn't always mellow with age. My doctor wasn't entirely sure what the scan meant, but she had a plan and reassured us that this would not define our future even if it was overwhelmingly terrifying in our present. I tried to remain calm as I shared all of this with J the moment my doctor left the exam room, and he responded with questions and statements of clarification. What are the numbers? What does it look like? So this is what we do next? Yes, that sounds accurate. Yes, I would agree with that plan. . .
"You're using your doctor voice," I said. "I know," he said stolidly. Then, more quietly, "I need to right now." I love Queer Eye.
When it popped up on Netflix I vaguely remembered the show from the early 2000s that I never watched because I have no taste for reality TV, so I scrolled right past it without a second thought. But when a few of my fellow teachers began singing its praises last Tuesday at an end-of-the-year celebration, I decided to check it out if for no other reason than to balance out the extremely dark, intense shows that have occupied watchlist over the last few months (Handmaid's Tale and Westworld, in case you're wondering). It's summer vacation, after all! I could use a little light. I started watching that night and was immediately hooked. My friend hadn't been exaggerating when she said she cried at least once every episode. I think I made it through all of fifteen minutes before something in that first episode rendered me sobbing happy tears. Unlike many reality shows, this show seemed to make a concerted effort to represent thoughtful dialogue and affect meaningful change in the lives of both the subjects and the hosts. Each episode culminates in both an outward and a deeply internal change within the subject. Although I have to question the longevity of these transformations, the premise is simple: people can always strive to be a better version of themselves through introspection, a supportive team, and a fresh haircut. I broke one of my rules.
Rule #5 explicitly states: "If your insurance is kind enough to cover mental health, TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT! It is not because you are sick or damaged or need to "get better," but because the closest person in your life will not always be available to support you and listen to you, and a lot of the emotional work may fall on your shoulders. A good therapist can go a long way in making the residency experience easier to bear." Apparently your therapist's maternity leave is not a valid excuse to stop going to therapy, even temporarily, at a time when your world feels like it's falling apart. Many surgical residencies strive to provide a variety of experiences and opportunities to their residents, though few hospitals have the resources or personnel to wholly represent every specialty. They can make up for this in the form of away rotations at other hospitals, usually for a month-long interval at specific points throughout the training program. In J's case, he's had opportunities to rotate through a community hospital that afforded him greater independence and responsibility, a renowned transplant program, and a massive hospital devoted entirely to trauma with significantly more severe and varied cases than his own hospital's trauma team sees in any given month. The first two of these away rotations were, thankfully, in New York City, but the latter is in Baltimore. It is undoubtedly a great opportunity, but unpleasant to have to spend a month apart, each of us living alone in apartments over three hours away. Still, in the weeks leading up to the rotation, we knew we would manage. We always do.
But life has a funny way of turning things on their heads and throwing wrenches into plans. It was nearly midnight and I was on the couch. J, meanwhile, was fast asleep in bed. It was nothing he'd asked of me, but I felt I did not deserve to share that space with him after what I'd said. It hadn't been intentional, I told myself, and I felt sorry the moment I said it, but there was no denying the harm it had caused. My negative feelings, warranted as they might have been, were no reason for taking them out on him. Since opening that letter on Match Day 2013, there was a word that occasionally popped into my mind unbidden, unwanted, but undeniable. The word brought with it a feeling that made me afraid of who I was and where our life would take us, and I pushed against it every time it surfaced. I refused to voice it to anyone for fear of giving it life, convinced it would tear us apart if it were allowed to exist.
Resentment. About a month after we moved when I was still refusing to be anything but sullen and pessimistic about our new home, J forced me to listen to the hard truth I needed to hear: "You need to find a way to make this work otherwise it's going to be a very long residency." He was right, of course, and that was a turning point in my approach toward this new journey of ours.
I've often thought that I should share my experiences with the world, but I've held back for fear of not having an audience. But then there are the occasional afternoons or lonely evenings spent on Google searches and blog posts, reading the experiences of others in similar situations, and they bring me hope, comfort, or sometimes a healthy dose of head-nodding, finding camaraderie and companionship in these strangers' words.
Because let's face it: being a resident's wife is really hard. And being a surgical resident's wife is hard. And being a small-town girl thrown into a big city is hard. And not having family around is hard. And living in New York is just plain hard. |
AuthorNashira is a music teacher and proud Small-Town Jew who, after surthriving six years in Brooklyn for her husband's surgical residency, is finally back in Wisconsin where she belongs! At least until the end of the two-year surgical fellowship, that is. It's a wild ride, and she's ready to tell you all about it! Archives
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