That morning, I awoke to one simple sentence in my inbox that threw my well-intentioned plans and imaginations for the next 4 - to 30 - years to the wayside.  I realized that the lacquered door I had been knocking at for months until my knuckles bled had always been bolted shut.  When I finally turned away in cold clarity, I was shocked to find right beside it a door open ajar just enough for me to slip through.

Yes, it hurts that my best - truly, my best - was not enough and that I was last pickings, a theme that I may never escape from.  It's hard not to feel like all this time, energy, money, and tears were wasted.  It's shameful that I was the only one who believed I was suited for my dream.  With bitter gratitude, I know that I am being protected from the future that I could never anticipate.  This I know, that I can trust that there's more to the story.

So, I'm still at the threshold and haven't taken my shoes off yet, but it's warm in here.  Voices I don't recognize yet are calling me in.  Soft music is playing around the corner, and there are big windows that let in the light and the breeze.  It's now that I realize deep down what my feeble prayers have been asking - for some place to finally be like home.  For a place where I can be myself, and be at peace.  To one live fully, without having to sacrifice other precious parts of myself or parts of my forever.  For somewhere I can grow roots, where there's room for someone else to grow with and alongside me.  That's all I want.

I need a guy who doesn't try to force himself in.  I don't need a man-splainer, or see-through attempts at forcing common ground.  I don't have respect for a guy who mistakes forcefulness for boldness, or attention for flattery.  I don't want a guy who think he's doing me a big favor by offering what I already have.

I don't know what to write.  I can't seem to get anything out.  All these words brew inside, grow wild and knock into each other in my chest, and just as they're about to spill forth I pull them back and bury them deep, as if expecting them to transform into something that will make sense and be worth having when I go back to upturn them again one day.

Being in medicine seems to put up a quick barrier between you and others the moment it's mentioned (which is usually very quickly).  Part of me has always wanted that automatic, safe distance.  Part of me wonders if it'll keep me away from everyone.

I don't know if I believe in soulmates.  My mind conjures up too many possibilities and combinations of scenarios to think - out of all these people and possible life paths, all these language barriers and shores divided by oceans and time - that there has always just been one person meant to perfectly fit me.

I do know, or at least I do hope, that one day I will meet someone with which that question does not matter.  They will not be my absolute puzzle piece, but our hands will fit together.  My heart will have found a home, and it will not need to, nor want to, search elsewhere for an answer.

It's only day 2 of my outpatient psychiatry rotation, and my heart already hurts.  Not in a bad way per se, but I just want to hug each patient and shout out how much they are still loved.  How much there is still hope, and that it's never too late.  The good news.  But that's not my place, nor would it be helpful for them, and I know that in reality most people will not acknowledge God.  How can you tell someone living in a personal Hell that there's a deep rooted joy to be had?  I am told that the best we can do is to show them love and a safe place, but for me, it is withholding love if I am not able to share with them the truth that has the power to save them?  How am I to simply allude to and metaphorize Jesus?

I am the type of (future) doctor that wants things fixed, or at least resolved, and this is one area where we don't know how to fix things and only know how to mask them.  It is hard to see how much people have been deprived of love from their very beginning, how toxic legacies are continuing to perpetuate, and how difficult it is to break that cycle.  That scared child becomes embedded in a person's core that cannot simply be undone.  I feel so fortunate that my upbringing was whole and safe, but because my heart keeps screaming "This should not be so," it is as if I am not thick-skinned enough, or too naive, or that my softness is not how the "real world" works.  Basically they would say, "If you suffered as much as I have, you would not believe in God either."

As for the religion that my preceptor follows, I cannot help but see it as a search for numbness, and an escape from the precious gift that is now, and that there actually is always an unattainable goal leading to restlessness.  While it may help some people cope, they aren't being genuinely healed.  They are only finding peace in nothingness, and that is not life lived abundantly.

On the drive home, "Good, Good Father" played on the radio and the words rang so true - "I've seen many searching for answers far and wide, but I know we're all searching for answers only You provide."  I can't deny their suffering, but I pray that their hearts will turn and seek to be truly known.

It's my birthday today, and I know that I want to stay soft for the rest of my life.

I don't know if it's just the part of me that wants to redeem or re-write the past, but pediatric oncology is still on my list of potential specialties.  Maybe once I go out there into the wards as a doctor and not a bystander, it'll be way too much to handle.  But maybe the things that break your heart are what God has put on your heart to try and change.

Humans of New York has been doing a series at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, interviewing patients, their parents, nurses, and doctors.  Each is very poignant, but I study the doctor ones particularly carefully to see if I could or want to one day be the same.  This one especially gets to me, because at some point you ask the question - when is it worth it to stop fighting, and how strong must you be to let things go and just live, even if only for a little while?

“All doctors have those patients who sit on our shoulder. Their image is always with you. One kid will pop into your head every time you hit a wall– when you encounter a disease that is so unrelenting that you’ve exhausted all therapies and you’re still not even close. One memory will keep you going. It’s a different kid for every doctor. It’s hard to know why they stick with us. I remember one patient that had red hair just like my son. And I remember one five-year-old girl who made me laugh, because when I asked her how she was doing, she told me: ‘I don’t know. You’re the doctor.’ And then there was the boy early in my career who was born without an immune system. He’d already lost two older siblings to the same disease. He lived the first two years of his life in an isolation room with no windows, and his entire exposure to the world was through a black-and-white TV. We gave him a bone marrow transplant, and suddenly his immune system came online. And we took him for a walk in the garden. This boy who had spent his entire life in a windowless room. And a sparrow landed on a bush, and he pointed at it, and said: ‘Bird.’ That moment will always be with me.” 

-  It's sweet and flattering, having a non-female friend telling you "You're gorgeous.  Really." for no reason.  But I can't respond with anything other than a "Pfft!"
('Cause really, even if it were true, what good does it do if guys don't talk to me anyway?  If the cute second year doesn't notice me? XD)

-  Why is it that when people discount Christianity it's almost always in a mocking, cynical way, but they can calmly discuss Islam, Buddhism, and all other faiths they don't believe in with a respectful, open-minded, academic attitude?  Is it because they believe they know what Christianity really is?  That they've been scarred by it or its people somehow? They say that the Bible's teachings don't show a loving God - but then how in the world do any of the other religions either?

-  The events all over the world are frightening.  It really is a dangerous place, especially for women.  It hasn't gotten much better after all these millenia.  It's heartbreaking and terrifying.  I don't understand.

Random things people say can resonate and stick with you for a long time, especially if those people are those you really respect, and are where you professionally want to be far into the future.

- On death:  "Each patient's life is ultimately in God's hands.  I am simply given the opportunity to help as I can, and I can have peace with that."

- On listening:  "A patient's story can help solve the puzzle at the very last minute."

- On studying:  "I'm not very smart, I just worked very hard.  My motto was, Every day is exam day."

- On this path:  "Don't ever let anyone make you feel lesser for doing osteopathic medicine.  All my DO colleagues are excellent.  You're in a rare position to change people's lives, and that's the best reward."

- On medical school:  "Your health comes first.  Stress can kill you - literally.  I had a classmate who took pills to help him study, and one day he just didn't wake up.  There's no time for a relationship.  Throughout med school, I wore a wedding ring.  Said I already had two kids.  All the girls came to me with boyfriend problems - I became their counselor!  My (now) wife was the only one who found out I was lying, so she got me."

At the after-school program where I volunteer, the kids often start out the day with a poetry exercise.  This one kid, who can't be more than 11 or so, has crazy rhyming and vocabulary skills and a sense of flow well beyond his years.  He could be on his way to being an amazing spoken word artist; all it takes is encouragement.  Instead of doing his homework, he spends his time engrossed in a story about a kid trying to save his best friend from galactic forces.  I'd say that's a good use of time.

Another boy (like most of the others who just write about their daily habits) wrote about his parents being sad.  One girl is too shy to show her work and writes in her notebook underneath the table, but she'll still go up front to read it out loud if asked.

Words sometimes are the only proper way to show the world the crags and fissures of you.

As 2013 comes to a close, never has it been more true that I can say that it's been a rough year.  Deaths of loved ones.  Dreams dashed to pieces again and again.  Being used, replaced, taken for granted.  Seeing people slide into what they swore they'd never be.  Becoming more like the world myself with all this bitterness.

I don't know what it is, this feeling that I just need to hibernate until something shakes me awake.  It's almost a new year, and I feel like I'm still crawling around with broken knees.

After a lot of neglect, I knew that I had pushed God aside and so I came to Him briefly again today.  And in the midst of their suffering and punishment (that they brought upon themselves) He kept on repeating, again and again, "I will be their God."  I wouldn't say that I'm happy at this moment, but I know that He still has not left.  If anything, that's enough to keep going.

There are a handful of friends that I've been able to keep in contact with (who I much appreciate) but there's only so much that can be expressed through a screen - be it with words or even through video chat.  Conversations are almost always "after the fact," after the situations have been mulled over 100 times in order to be articulately and calmly expressed and at that point, they've been about 90% self-solved.

It still takes effort of course to keep up this line of contact, and I've been really growing over the years in learning how to do so.  But I've found that lately there are a lot of people that I've been trying and trying with that just seem to have... forgotten.  Even the ones that I've shared a lot of life with.  It's weird, because I can't pinpoint any particular reason, and so I wonder what went wrong.  And I always draw the same conclusions - I should have been different, or better, or done more.  But like I always say, what can you do if someone wants to leave?  Absolutely nothing.

So what is there to do - just start over... again?

You are never going to know or understand someone completely.  Your parents, spouse, best friend... and the same applies to God.  To put them in a box of what you think they are is a high form of disrespect.

So keep seeking, keep loving, and keep being surprised.

Perhaps this is one of my biggest character flaws, but I've never had a whole lot of stamina when it comes to maintaining relationships.  For the most part, my friendships have been seasonal (which is normal in itself, since high school depth is nothing compared to college depth, I guess), and I'm okay with letting people go.  You can't make people stay if they don't want to, after all, but what's the right degree to show people you'd like them to stay regardless?  How much reciprocation is it necessary to expect?  Especially if you've been doing all the work for awhile, how do you know if someone's just tired of you for good?

I mean, I had another dream about getting jilted at the altar again.  It's pretty much a recurring theme of being replaced.

We've all changed, and I wouldn't have ever expected for us to have stayed the same, but I wonder if it's always going to be like this for me.  To never have a big group to fall back on, to simply hang out with without feeling like it's asking for a big favor, to go more than surface level and grow together even as we change.  To always be dispensable and as easy to let go as I allow myself to be.  Being alone is good, but it doesn't always feel right.  

The past few months have felt like years, as everything in my past seems to have been yanked away.  Or more like, I was suddenly sent out to sea on a life boat (rowing my own boat, which is a whole other topic haha.)  And yet instead of being wizened and weathered, I still often just feel like a child with too many thoughts.

I used to hate the "22" song by Taylor Swift, but more and more it just seems so true.  We don't know what we're doing and we feel pretty stupid all the time, but there's something so free about it.  Such an ambiguous age where doing your own thing isn't a search for rebellion, it's just simply you.  And we'll figure something out... eventually.  There's just no need to be mopey about it like the rest of this generation, because that's a waste of the youth you do have.

In fact, a lot of Taylor Swift's newer songs used to feel pretty audacious and petty, but there's much to identify with regardless.  You have to learn to take only what you deserve, and be bold in that conviction and not take any guy's foolishness.  There's only so much sadness you can build up before it gets much too old, because there's so much more to be happy about.  Sometimes there are some people that you need to keep at a distance, and that isn't being hateful.  And I'll say this - there's so much more to be worried about than romance.  Not that it's any less precious, but as young as I am and as much "possibility" that there is, I don't want to grow old-hearted with the constant test drives.  Because it IS so important, I'm not going to try and make it into something it's not.  Everyone's so busy with grabbing at it, pulling until it stretches and rips and believing that the piece that they've claimed as their own is enough to keep them warm.  I can't just toss it up in the air and hope it lands right side up, but that's how love is played nowadays.  But that means I withdraw from the game completely.

Then it turns into being somewhat of a standby position.  Twenty-two isn't old, but I feel like I'm already running out of time.  Everyone seems to be finding someone wherever I turn, and I'm scared that I'll actually become too accustomed to being alone.  I'm just not good at holding onto people, guys especially.  I've never given them enough of a reason to stay.  And I certainly can't make someone love me because... that just isn't real.  As much as I've learned I'm still trying to figure the rest, and I don't have a lot to give yet.