honesty

I was talking to my mom yesterday. We talked for hours, like we do sometimes when I am home. I feel like she is one of my best friends, but at the same time, we are soo different and don't get alone most of the time. I love her and respect her. But there are times when she frustrates me so much. But whatever, she's my mom and the most wonderful woman in the world. I feel so much better when we can agree on something. I love knowing that no matter what, she loves me and I could never disappoint her. However, I makes me sad to hear her cry and not know why. I wish there was something I could do to help make her life easier. I wish I could do enough so she would not have to worry anymore. But at the same time, I don't want to know. I don't want to be a part of it. I don't want to have that kind of responsibility. I don't want to grow up the way she did. She isn't her parents and I am not her. And I know that I am slowly but surely turning into a version of her, therefore, I can see why she does some of the silly things she does. For example, we both feel the need to protect the other one. We don't want to worry the other person and would go above and beyond to make sure that hurtful things never got around.

As good as a conversation as we had, I can't help but feel a bit deceitful and angry. I wish my mom and I could talk about my father without one of us crying (mostly her.) I wish I could tell my mom about talking to my dad over the summer. I wish I could tell her how angry I was at him and theoretically, without much justification, at her as well. I wish I could believe her account of things, and not think that she is just trying to protect me.

I mostly wish I could find a way to not think about this all the time. I wish it wouldn't consume me. I wish I could quit judging myself and my mother because of this whole stupid thing. I wish I could find a way to understand, how to move beyond it all. Or at least learn how to live in spite of it. I wish I could get out of this shell that keeps me from being honest with my parents and just let them know that I am sadden by the choices that they made. But at the same time, what right do I have to be angry with them. My life, in the end, is really good. I turned out a not so bad kid, with a not so bad future ahead of me. So why isn't that enough. Why do I have to torture myself with my past instead of focusing what is ahead of me? Why can't I just be honest with myself and the people I love the most?

whirlwind

It has been one of those days where all I can do is think. I think about this stupid test I have to take on Friday, about how I am dreading the next three days of working on the floor and about the next six weeks of talking to crazy people and the drugs we can give them to keep them "normal." I can't stop thinking about having to make a decision that will determine the direction of my life for at least the next 10 years. I can't figure out what scares me the most..failing or not trying. I think about where I was 5 years ago and where I will be in five years. I wonder about how much my life has changed and how much more my life will change in the next few years. I think about the decisions I have made and how they have shaped who I am today. And it all just confuses me. I feel as if every time I try to make a step to be more confident and more secure about who I am and what I want to do with my life, I get shot down from one direction or another. And just when I am about to get up, I get knocked back down. And it's all this big whirl-wind that does nothing more than make me dizzy and confused.

It takes a man...

to be a real father.

what the hell does that mean? stupid commercials. everything is black and white in fantansy land. good decisions and bad decisions and nothing in between. but every once in a while... it gets me thinking...

there are real men and not so real men.

but what makes the difference?

is a real man the one that stands up for his daughter and fights to be with her when she is growing up or is the real man the one that fights for his family dispite of everything that is going on around him?

Question is... was my father being a better man by staying with his wife and kids and pretending that his I didn't exist to save his family...or would he have been a better man, leaving his wife and two kids to be with a woman he loved and the child and life they had built?


In the end, who am I to judge him? How would I know what it is like to be torn between two loves or two responsibilities when I can't even let myself be near one??

should I blame my inability to trust the opposite sex on my father or just my inability to get past my past?? where is the line between fighting to make the same mistake twice (aka: what my mother did) or fighting to make my own life? I just don't know how to make sense of my life.

A part of me wants to find the one person in this world that make me feel so special that nothing else matter, but another part of me want to feel complete without anyone else in the picture. Why can't I just let go of my pride for enough seconds to let someone else in? Am I my greatest fear? Is the fact that I don't even trust myself to be independent the fact that I can't let myself get anywhere close to anyone?

when will i realize that i am not my mother and that i will not make the same mistakes as her??? when will i trust myself enough to let all my insecurities go away and just follow what i really want: a peaceful life filled with love, ambitions and impossible dreams. why not? why can't I have everything I ever dreamed of? why can't I give my children the childhood that I dreamed about? the one with a mother and a father and a pseudo-normal life.

Passion

Please be advised that the following will be very corny and quite possibly full of bad metaphors and cliches.

I consider myself a passionate person in regards to how I live my life, value the people in it and interact with the world. I believe that everything that we do in this life deserves to be done with passion. I realize that can be a bit tiring, quite exhausting, in reality. However, I couldn't imagine being happy any other way. It has recently caused me to make some fairly difficult decisions, like move half-way across the country away from all of my family and friends in order to experience life in medical school completely. But I wonder if it is such a good thing to think that passion can exist in everything.

Since a young age I have been particularly fond of saying that I will only participate in those activities in which I can dedicate myself completely instead of only half-heartedly doing a little of everything. I have very specific standards for what I will claim that I helped out in, regardless of others' opinions. I value my time, even though it may appear that I waste it in front of the television, or reading (like my mother sometimes claims), or talking to my friends (on the phone or anywhere for that matter) or sleeping. But I consider those activities completely valuable and irreplaceable because they help me maintain my sanity. So if I am going to do something that takes me away from my sanity, I want to do it because I couldn't imagine spending my time any other way. For example, some of my friends would say that in high school I had to much school spirit for my own good, but that was the way that I could express my desire to be at school (aka: my passion for school) because it made me happy to learn and see my friends and do all those other school activities that kept me at school for many many hours. One of the consequences to my being passionately involved in things is that I end up micromanging, but that is a whole different story (mostly has to do with my desire to be in absolute control of everything in my life.)

Point being, in my surgery clerkship, I felt that same passion that I had with all the other things in my life that take up any significant amount of time. I wanted to wake up early and be in the hospital all day. I wanted the residents to give my assignments for either floor work or research (even though I did a good job of avoiding ever giving presentations). I wanted nothing more than to be in the OR day in and day out. It was something that I had not expected (or had done a good job or denying). So I entered my next clerkship with a bad attitude right off the bat.

The first morning, once I was introduced to what I would be doing, I got really excited. Because that is what I do, I submerse myself into things because if I don't do it whole-heartedly, I might as well be at home sleeping. Problem is that even though I can be passionate about pediatrics while I am in the clinics or on the floor or talking to my pregnant friends about their children, I have a difficult time maintaining that passion once I go home. With surgery, even though I had to get up really early in the morning, rarely had time to eat, and some people were not so nice and really competitive, I looked foward to the great majority of the days. In the past week or so, I haven't had that same feeling. I dread going to clinic (and yeah, sure, once I am there I have a good time, but I would still rather be sleeping). Don't get me wrong, it is a great life. Pediatricians are fun, really nice people, that give you more than enough time to eat, go to the bathroom, ask questions, go home early and the best part, they don't yell at you. I get to wake up later and come home early, but I still don't really want to go to work the next day. But the funny thing is that I can read for hours and hours about peds and pseudo-force myself to keep this ridiculous study schedule that I made for myself. Which is completely different from surgery because I always put off studying b/c I could learn it later. However, I do not know how much of this discrepancy is because peds is half the amount of time as surgery (6 wks vs. 12 wks). One other thing is that I feel like I could actually fit in with this group of drs. I don't feel completely out of place or awkward. Unlike how I felt with all the surgeons. Their attitudes, their behavior, it was all so different from my own personality.

I always thought I wanted to be a pediatrician or at least that is what I told people. And no matter what I say, I don't really hate kids. They just kinda scare me and I really want them to like me, so it is easier to make them into little demons than actually feel rejected (whatever, once again, that's another blog). What I really want to figure out, is if my need for passion is good enough of a reason to help determine my choice for a career. I have a very long way to go before I am done sampling all different aspects of medicine, but I want to know if this a good ruler to use for comparision or if I need to find another way. Am I still naive about the realities of medicine and the real world? Can I hold on to my ideals long enough to help others the way I always dreamed of?