gamophobic

the amount of information that i have learned in the past 15 days is amazing. ok, maybe it isn't as much as i would like, but it certainly is exponentially more than 16 days ago. and in the midst of learning all sorts of new info and remembering old stuff and am highly entertained by the profession i have choosen. I usally can not go more than an hour without laughing at something written in my study guide.

for example, today i was reviewing psychiatry, and let me tell you that it is super entertaining to learn the different manifestations of these disorders (or imagining people i know with personality traits similar to the disorders, because it is kinda scary to remember all the patients that we saw early in the fall semester this year). getting to the entertaining portion: among the examples for phobias are: agoraphobia (fear of open spaces) and acrophobia (fear of heights). things that you usually think of when you think phobias. Then there is algophobia (fear of pain). by this time, I am starting to think that the book is a little obsessed with the phobias that start with the letter "a" (or is that just a manifistation of my obsessive compulsive disorder or part of my adjustment disorder or part of an illusion or delusion [sorry, ramblings of what i learned today, i get a little excited sometimes]). but then, comes the funny one: gamophobia (fear of marriage; root gam = gamete). now that may be me just being a nerd, but i laughed sooo hard when i read that. the associate of gametes and marriage makes me think that the men who named this phobia were more scared of having children than getting married. an psych dictionary defined it as a morbid fear of marriage (love the use of the word morbid) {further research revealed that gamos = marriage, which makes more sense, but that makes me think that we named gametes after marriage, because we all know that babies (joining of gametes) only happens in marriage}. then i guess if you dont have gemophobia, you have Anuptaphobia- Fear of staying single.

i stumbled upon phobialist.com, with a whole list of phobias including:

the ones that make me sad:
geliophobia - fear of laughter :(
euphobia - fear of hearing good news;


funny ones:
Arachibutyrophobia- Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth.
Cacophobia- Fear of ugliness.
Hellenologophobia- Fear of Greek terms or complex scientific terminology.
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia- Fear of long words.
Sesquipedalophobia- Fear of long words.
Lachanophobia- Fear of vegetables.
Levophobia- Fear of things to the left side of the body.
Metrophobia- Fear or hatred of poetry.
Nomatophobia- Fear of names.
Octophobia - Fear of the figure 8.
Philemaphobia or Philematophobia- Fear of kissing.
Philophobia- Fear of falling in love or being in love.
Philosophobia- Fear of philosophy.
Pogonophobia- Fear of beards.
Sophophobia- Fear of learning.
Testophobia- Fear of taking tests.
Venustraphobia- Fear of beautiful women.
and of course:
Phobophobia- Fear of phobias.

then and now

I've been home for one week now and it is good; good because i feel safe and loved. It has been super difficult to sit down and study everyday because i just don't have the disciple or the attention span. i do know that coming home was the right thing to do. i can't imagine having to be in nyc right now.

but things feel different. i feel different. a week ago i was scared of the end of second year, hoping and praying that i would pass. i was holding on to emotions that made me feel less like i wasn't going to losing a part of my life. being home now shows me that i have grown up without meaning to. i am not the same person i used to be, but a more experienced one. I still feel like the same little girl that dreams about one day being a doctor, I just happen to be two short years away from making that dream come true. I am still the hopeless romantic that wants to meet her prince charming and live happily every after. I am still the same spoiled brat that gets everything from her mom and her aunt. I am still the same attention seeking kid that will do just about anything to get her way. I am still the person willing to give up anything for the people I love.

Things are less of a fairy tale now. I realize that people aren't always good (and neither am I). I see that friendships are something that happen with time and you just can't be friends with everyone. I can see now that there are somethings that are part of a big grey spectrum, while others are just black and white. I have learned that there are some things in life that you can't change, but sometimes that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. I think that love comes in many forms and we don't always understand them. It is unhealthy to give of yourself all the time and receive nothing in return. We can't (and shouldn't) all be martyrs. There are things worth fighting for in life, but you won't always win and it will almost always hurt like hell.

I don't want to say that i am more cynical or bitter but experience lets us see bits of reality that aren't always what we dreamed they would be. I won't stop giving it my all because then I wouldn't be me. Now, I go ahead in life with the same optimism and idealism as before, only now with a clearer view of my obstacles. When I go back in a few weeks, life is going to be different. I have gone past one more stepping stone (probably the one that I have worked the hardest for and that has caused me the most pain). I finally get to do a little of what I have always wanted. I only hope that I can learn enough to make a real difference. I hope that I can be that person that everyone is so proud of, the me that I am proud of.

not sleeping

in a vague attempt to distract myself i come up with random things to consume my mind. in this case it's about love. since i am not much of an expert myself i simply pose a few questions. is love supposed to hurt? and if it does, it balances out, right? and if you care for someone so much that it makes you cry, is that good or bad? and if you know that you are not in love with someone, can you try to be their friend when he may still think that you have extra feelings for him? and if for the first time in a long time, you are finally kinda sure (as opposed to not sure at all) that you are well on your way of getting over him, and though it seems that you have slipped back multiple times, but in reality they were just small pauses, but not much back-tracking actually took place, can you reach out without falling?

what the heck is all this about? simply put, i finally put my own feeling aside for .2 seconds and realized that a friend is sad. the problem is that i don't know if i can ask what is wrong. on one hand it shouldn't be a problem because we are supposed to be friends and if he doesn't want to tell me that is quite alright. but more than that i really don't want him to get the wrong idea about my intentions. it makes me sad to see him sad, in the way that it hurts when any of my friends are sad. i don't want to make it better or make it go away or try to solve any of his probems, all i want is to make sure that he is ok.

i swear, i don't think that i am in love with him. of what i am sure is that i am going home soon and that i will be able to have enough me time to recharge my emotional batteries that have lost the majority of their energy.

also, is it fair to try to be a boy's friend when i just finished sucking at being a good friend to someone i thought i was close to?

hell is freezing over

today is the fifth day of april and it snowed today for over 30 minutes. it was so weird. at first it looked like light rain, but then before our very own eyes, the rain turned into snow and the flakes grew and grew. no one in class could believe how it was possible because earlier that morning there had been sunshine and about 50 degrees. in the span of a couple of hours the temperature dropped about 20 degrees and there was a mini blizzard, only to stop suddenly and for the sun to come out and shine again.

other weird stuff that going on: i am going to lay aside some of my pride and ask my dad to talk to me. my brother took the news really well and seems to really care about protecting me, which is something i sometimes need.

it's almost completely official that i will be moving out and that makes me happy and sad. once again i feel a bit torn about my choice to be willing to lose a friend. because, in the end, that is what it comes down to. at what point did i fail as an honest person. when did i start to care more about me than other people. how the hell did i ever think that i have any right to decide that i could walk away with no explanation. in other words, what i am doing to this friend is what i would completely hate for someone to do to me.

yeah, i know, i suck. the thing that sucks about this whole situation is that there is no turning back now. what is done is done and i have to live with that. maybe i deserve to feel like a heartless bitch because i am and the entire world is letting me know it. so, this is my vague attempt at justifying my behavior: on the good days i can be in the same room as this person, still not speak a word to her, but at least not feel the need to be in another room. bad days, however, mean that at the sound of her voice or in her presence i feel the immediate need to be at minimum in another room. so though the decision is the right one, especially for me, now, but i feel horrible.

regardless, i would like to think that at some point i cared enough to think that what i did was to protect our relationship, as misguided as that maybe. in the end, the most likely thing is that i am too selfish.

Too much TV

When I watch TV I am almost always looking for some sort of connection to my life. I want somehow the TV to transmit some message for me that will impact my life or point out the obvious or make me think a little more.

Tonight, it was Grey's Anatomy again. The last time that the dad showed up on the show I had this horrific breakdown about my own dad, and tonight he shows up again. And the night after I have made the choice to make a breakthrough in my own relationship with my father. Weird, kinda. I feel that regardless of what I decided on my own yesterday, I would have had to think about my dad tonight anyways, so that kinda freaks me out. But anyways, months ago I refused to be the one to reach out and ask for my father's attention because I felt since I had been the one to be "wronged" it was his responsibility, as the adult and the "wrong-doer," to make the effort and look for me and apologize. But now I see my reaching out as me taking my life into my own hands and playing by my rules. Which as a control freak I happen to do often. The logical part of me (very small part of me) knows that it is not that easy to get anyone to play by your rules, but this is the source of courage that I need right now. What will happen and how much it will affect me, I don't know, but now, for once I am willing to take that risk (as painful as it maybe).

And yes that means that I have changed. I have grown up just a little bit. I don't want to be that little girl still waiting, looking out the window over the front porch, for her daddy to pick her up on a Friday evening. (yep, it was how he left me waiting the last time) I am not at that place anymore, so I need to resolve this for me to move on and look somewhere else for hope and not in the past that I can't change. As tired as I am right now from a long year of struggling with who I am, who I want to be and how I am becoming that, I am just looking for peace. A fresh start for my new life in the hospital.

I know I say I don't expect much, but I still haven't been able to put it all out there without a safety net. I may be brave to give it all up and move half-way across the country into the cold whether, but other people believed in me and I can always bitch and whine about it, so I really isn't all that brave when you complain all the time. I need my safty nets still, but one day, I will leap, into the dark, eyes closed, and I will trust, but for now, I will take baby steps hanging on tightly to those that love me enough to hold me tight.

I hope my dad can look me in the eye and tell me he loves me and that he was wrong in letting me go and that he won't do it again. That is what I hope. But if he doesn't, I will always love the man that was there the first five years, because that is more than I could have ever asked for. And I will be ok, because I have been ok thus far.