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. It peaked out from the edges of my smile as I said goodbye to friends, family, colleagues, and students back home. It wound itself around my legs when I stumbled at the unfamiliar lurch of the subway train or the shove of a rushing passer-by. It bowed my shoulders as I carried instruments and books and bags and lunch and extra shoes and the burden of this new life, up stairs and into trains and across streets, from job to job and home again. It weighed on my chest when I tried to sleep in an empty bed as a newlywed. It held me tight on those nights when, after J went to bed with exhaustion beyond what I could comprehend, I sat on the living room floor of our first apartment and cried. It wasn't until nearly five years after opening that letter that I learned something revelatory: Resentment is real. It exists in people like me, the physicians' spouses. I joined online communities of spouses to physicians and every so often I read: "I've been stewing in resentment..." "...the feelings of resentment come crashing down..." "It's hard not to feel resentment..." When I first read it I stopped the absentminded scrolling on my phone and stared at the word. It stood plainly without metaphors, modifiers, or emojis to soften its edges. I was shocked, like a devout Puritan beholding a naked breast for the first time. These were my words, my feelings, spoken and felt by a stranger hundreds of miles away. This word existed for them, not as a death knell but as something to be accepted and worked with, the flu rather than a cancer. The more I learned from these wives of medical students, residents, attendings, and retired physicians, the more I began to recognize resentment as a natural part of this process. One fellow wife even said: "When you're riding the resentment wave, find another doc wife that will bring you back. It's ok to be disappointed, angry and lonely, but don't stay there too long." Alongside the normalcy of the feeling was the oft-repeated warning to resent the circumstances, not the person. Of course, I knew this already. I was certain I knew this. None of this was my husband's fault, and while I was battling the demon on my back he was battling the very real circumstances of his job: the interminable hours, the constant hunger, the growing fatigue, the burden of so many generations of physician training that historically ignored the fallibility of the doctor himself. But sometimes, the demon caught hold of my tongue. I was in a rut of resentment and, for the first time in our relationship, allowing myself to call it what it was. As I struggled to shake it from my limbs I vacillated between calm acceptance and indignant anger. Despite my best intentions, there was part of me that wanted to be combative, and every lesson I had learned about emotional management was pushed aside in favor of a more base and selfish need.
I asked him quietly, calmly: "Do you ever have to sacrifice things you want because of my job?" In that moment I swear I could hear something precious shattering, and the demon smiled. It took a night on the couch and a number of days to come to terms with what I had said. I had wanted to believe that by virtue of what his job forced me to sacrifice, I was somehow justified in my indignation. What I had failed to recognize in that moment was that it wasn't his job against me, it was his job and us. The truth is, being married to a physician means living in an open marriage with the hospital, an unforgiving partner that asks too much too often of its lover, but whom the doctor cannot deny. But it is also beautiful. My husband's other spouse is life-giving, empowering, full of hope and promise. It has made him stronger, faster, smarter, and more compassionate. It has opened his eyes and his heart in ways I never could have alone. It has inspired a stranger to approach him in a grocery store to say "Thank you for taking care of my mother in her last days." And so, too, will I live with resentment tucked away in a pocket, kept at bay by the reminder of why I'm doing this at all: Love.
1 Comment
Amy
2/18/2018 02:29:16 pm
Brilliant analogy! I also love your discussion of temptation. Somehow we try to ignore the very real power of evil, and how easy it is to let the negative take over. Keep fighting the good fight and notice that things improved when you asked for help (not a process I do well myself). You are a writer, my friend.
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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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