limbo.

I ran across this excerpt below in my journal last night, because I am back into "reflective mode." I am starting to recognize these patterns in my life, probably because I write my whole life down. I was reflecting back over the past 2 years to give me some clue about where to go next...

I had a meeting last night to discuss my Future, which causes me to have horrendous abdominal pain and continued Insomnia. In the end, my advisor and I had formulated a Plan of Action for me to face the next step on this road..

My advisor and I have many similarities, which is one of many reasons that I love my advisor so much. He went straight through school all the way through residency. He had a crisis of meaning during residency and almost quit... He was single and alone in a new town for the first time since leaving home... He was lost at the end trying to decide what to do next, because it was completely and entirely up to him. He looked around and saw one coworker going to this town because of his wife's job, another one staying because their children were established in school, another going home because it was perfectly clear to him that is where he belonged, another couple trying to navigate some place that is a compromise between them... It is a strikingly similar course! This is exactly what I am experiencing all around me right now...

Another reason I love him is that he gives me lots of Food for Thought.. I have this habit of both lamenting and cherishing my Freedom and Solitude. I was going through that process last night with him, explaining that I feel more trapped in some ways by my freedom and independence than all of my friends who have to navigate all of these life circumstances together.. I am so happy that I am free because this is what I love. I like to not have to make plans for what to do on Saturday, then wake up on Saturday and do whatever I want. Recently, people have been trying to pin these plans on me and then suddenly all of my free time has dissipated, and not only is Saturday over but I knew exactly what would happen Saturday all damned week.. I don't like that, so I'm thankful that I don't have to live that way. But I also have no barrier tapes to guide me as to where I should or should not go either. Or can or cannot. I feel so lost as to how I should choose amongst everything that is out there, almost all of which is available to me as a young, single, primary care doctor about to leap out in to the Real World for the First Time...

I sometimes have these moments, they are rare and I really have to watch for them, where things become crystal clear. It's like most of the time I am looking through some prism and things look distorted and vague, but pretty, and I don't want to stop looking. Then BAM - everything looks just as it really is - so I immediately turn that thing just enough to prism the vision again. But I still saw it. Kind of like how it hurts your eyes too much to stare at the sun except just as it is about to appear from behind the horizon, but you can stare directly at it and see it clearly during the sunrise..

I had one of those moments last night. After our meeting, I started to see things more and more in focus.. I finally fell asleep early morning, and woke up 2 hours later in PANIC. But suddenly seeing perfectly clearly about what I am supposed to do next... So of course I wrote it all down. That's not what this post is about, though, and we will see if my plan comes to fruition. It is sort of beside the point.

One thing my advisor told me, though, which is what this post is about, is something I have been thinking about... He said something about, "You have to just choose something and see what happens, because you don't know what will happen." What a simple and true concept, but I do not live that way. I obsess and obsess and wonder and worry until I have so much angst and abdominal pain that I cannot eat or sleep any more.. Reading through the history of my own mind last night before bed, I realized this is what I do at every single fork. Then I talked to both a sister and a friend about this problem, and they both said, "yeah, don't you remember when you were trying to decide where you should go for residency?"

So what did my advisor do? He went on a Road Trip to see what he would see. Then he picked some place. And something happened. And here he is. How perfect.

I had some notions and illusions about what Residency would be as well as life outside of New Orleans... And they were almost all incorrect. So perhaps I should give myself a damned break and admit that I do not know, and it is useless to try to predict it, and I can fantasize all I want about it but that will definitely not be the reality of the situation once I arrive. I have to just choose something and see what happens.

I don't even have to re-write my journal about the exact same thoughts I am having now that I was having at the time I was finishing medical school. They are identical. I am a little different, but not much. Maybe I am only different in that I am recognizing that I have much less control over the whole thing than I have been willing to admit in the past... So maybe I should just hop on the ride and enjoy the thrill of seeing where it might lead.

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January 2008

so i suppose we all hit certain landmarks in our lives....specific "first times", as it were...or i suppose specific "last times" as well...i feel like i've been hitting a succession of these moments at tremendous speeds lately....graduating from school, friends getting married and reproducing (inexplicably), moving away from home, observing people I have dated and will always be a part of my life moving on and forward with their own lives, and away.... time racing forward and leaving me behind to watch and wonder....

so what does this feel like? it's hard to say, really. sometimes it's sort of like rapid-fire hail continuously pelting my face. or not hail i guess, but more like when you step out of your car to a bitingly cold wind that steals the breath from your lungs. you know what i mean, something you try to prevent by turning away or putting up your hands, but really you just have to wait till it's over....

and sometimes it's more like feeling that same cool, but milder, breeze while facing a magnificent, but ill-defined landscape ahead....

anyway, it's always a mystery. why did time leave me behind to be a patient observer? do i have some special and unique role, or am I too insignificant to extend a hand to drag me along...?

i really shouldn't complain, though. i'm in that wonderful limbo in life that only comes around occasionally. it actually may not come to some people ever. it is a limbo where everything here and now is good, there are no regrets of the recent past, and the future is composed entirely of vague unknowns which are all enticing... they all have allure and intrigue.

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...and so to fix my mind on thoughts of the future which would carry me, as on a bridge, across the terrifying abyss that yawned at my feet...

-Proust , The Remembrance of Things Past