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. I just came across something I wrote during intern year. Specifically, within the first two weeks of my move to New York, when I didn't yet have a job or anything else to occupy my days except think about how much I didn't want to be there. If I remember correctly, I wrote this one night shortly after J had gone to sleep after yet another exhausting day. I had probably been trying to tell him something important, and he had probably fallen asleep when I was mid-sentence. I was definitely crying - no, sobbing - and he was definitely snoring, as if adding insult to imagined injury. So I opened up the computer and began my feverish typing. I wrote for confession, for catharsis, for clarity: It’s lonelier than not having my friends here with me. It’s lonelier than riding the subway alone and barely speaking to anyone, much less making eye contact. It’s lonelier than the brief and completely impersonal interactions made at the grocery store, the convenience store, the hardware store, or with the guy who came to install the internet. I hated the circumstances, but I was also deeply unsatisfied with myself and I equated my unhappiness with a personal shortcoming: "I hate that I’m so melodramatic and I wish I were stronger than the angsty, irrational, overemotional, crying mess that I am right now, but I just don’t know how to do it." And then there was the fear that my unhappiness and self-perceived weakness would be the new normal for the entire duration of J's residency: Three days, a week, even two weeks is not enough to determine what the next five years are going to be like. But oh G-d, what if it is? What if this last week is a microcosm of what I will be dealing with for the next five to seven years? I honestly don’t know if I’m strong enough for that. I sincerely doubt my ability to stay cool, calm, and collected in the midst of all this. There is not a doubt in my mind that those words were the most accurate description of everything I felt at that moment. I was wholly unprepared for the massive changes that were going on in my life and I had little appreciation for how many changes were happening concurrently: I had picked up and moved across the country, I was suddenly living with my fiancé, everything was unfamiliar, and I had no meaningful support system in this new home.
Sometimes the greater the unhappiness, the thicker the veil. My own malaise shrouded my perception of time; I couldn't imagine feeling differently even months from that moment, much less years, and I was entirely unwilling to entertain any hopeful thoughts. My writing - variously in a journal or on a computer - did little to make me feel better, but rather calcified my unhappiness. This, I had decided, was my new normal and my sole job was to get used to it. Fast-forward five years. . . When I found the document in my Google Drive, I wasn't sure if I should read it. I was afraid that it might bring back not just the memories but the actual feelings I had when I wrote it. I looked at it and thought "I'm in a good place right now. Why ruin it?" But I also wanted to test myself and see if I'd really come as far as I hoped I had, figuring that my response to reading it would be the proof I sought. I clicked on it. I read. I laughed! I hadn't realized quite how far I had come since those first few weeks in that Borough Park apartment. Since then I got a job I love, found a community that gets me, started seeing a therapist, and even more recently started taking anti-depressants to help me lift that veil when the unhappiness gets too thick (because I assure you, there are times when it still does). And this summer in particular I chose not to work and enjoy a teacher's summer vacation instead, affording me the opportunity to travel to Wisconsin for a couple weeks then come back to New York and focus on my own health and well-being in ways I too often neglect. I am not yet the most perfect version of myself, and residency is still hard, but I am stronger, more clear-headed, more self-loving, and happier than the person who wrote those pages almost exactly five years ago today.
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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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