I am constantly finding myself misinformed on how much a person can carry before they crack under the pressure. I'm pretty close to just turning off all communication and hiding under the bed so that I won't find out any more bad news. I'm not saying this so people will feel sorry for me or whatever. It has just been the hardest couple of months I've ever experienced, and honestly medical school is going to have to run to keep up with the garbage life keeps throwing at me.
This morning I keep thinking about an interview at a medical school (that shall not be named but is not the one I am currently attending). One of the interviewers asked me how I would handle the pressures of school that might be more difficult for someone with a family. I chirped back that I had an amazing support system, and that my husband was prepared to jump in and pick up everything and keep us all going while I was in school. It never occurred to me during the time that I was shedding all my regular responsibilities and piling them all on him that if anything happened to him, I'd have to pick all that stuff up, keep going with school, and help take care of him. Boy, if ever a girl needed a time machine so she could go slap the shiny optimism off a person...
So here's what I'm deciding to take away from this whole un-shiny part of my life. People are fragile. You never know when you are in the line at Starbucks getting a coffee if the person taking your order might be struggling with some really hard life stuff. Sometimes I take someone else's unpleasantness extremely personal, like they are just targeting me to be awful. But you never know what kind of burdens people around you might be struggling under. Maybe they left the whipped cream out of your latte after they had just asked if you wanted it. But maybe they are trying to hurry up and get you taken care of so they can go in the bathroom and cry until the pressure lets off enough to allow them to finish their day without completely coming apart. So keep in mind that while you may be coping just fine and skipping along through life with sunshine and daisies, at any moment something could come round and kick you right in the butt and make things really difficult for you.
That doesn't mean that you don't take the time to fall apart and mourn the fabulousness that was everything going your way, though. It's like when you get a cold and air just will not move in and out of your nose no matter what, and you lay in bed and think about the many days that you took for granted the fact that you could breathe out of BOTH nostrils easily, and you promise that if you ever find yourself breathing normally again that you will never take it for granted again. It's like that. SO at the risk of sounding like Pollyanna, all this hard stuff makes me look really hard for things to be thankful for, AND it makes me a little more compassionate for those around me that might be going through similar or worse circumstances.
In other news, I know I mentioned that I had to remediate anatomy lab last week over block break. I took the repeat practical on Thursday and I passed! So we start back tomorrow morning for block 4: cardiovascular and pulmonary systems. It's the last block of our first year of medical school. I'm ready to get going again, even though there wasn't much of a break this time. So here goes!
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