Like a little hermit crab
In a little hermit shell
I carry my world
On my shoulders
And as the ocean crashes in
I retreat into my little hermit home
And find peace
In my little hermit head
S.
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
May
May the homeward-bound
rest their feet,
and their souls
find peace.
May the ink that writes
never dry unwritten,
and if the pages are found
their secrets are unhidden.
May your heart keep beating
even as you die,
and remind you
that you once were alive.
S.
rest their feet,
and their souls
find peace.
May the ink that writes
never dry unwritten,
and if the pages are found
their secrets are unhidden.
May your heart keep beating
even as you die,
and remind you
that you once were alive.
S.
Thursday, August 13, 2015
That feeling of brittleness but in your face and heart.
I saw my GP today and he said that I was looking much better and more confident today than several months ago, and I nearly started crying again. I held it together, mostly I just didn't want to contradict or disappoint him, but perhaps also because he deserves at least one session in which I don't bawl my eyes out because I'm so stressed.
So instead I told him that I was worried that I have pernicious anaemia and either lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. He agreed to a blood test to help alleviate some stress. Bless him. But I still want to cry.
Sometimes life seems okay as you float by on a superficial level, but then you stop and think for a second and you realise that you are still in this grey, muddy pit and you have just been trying to delude yourself into thinking you see colour in the hole that keeps pulling you in.
I often find myself telling people that I'm just stressed about uni, assignments, etc. but in reality, I don't feel anything except for numb and miserable at the same time. Yeah, I'm stressed about uni and how behind I am, but what's the point in stressing about something you don't think you have the power to change? The reasonable part of your brain tells you that stresses will always be there, but that they don't have to affect you so awfully. Then reality suggests that perhaps there is no hope and therefore no point in stressing, and this stresses you out more but without knowing exactly why you're stressed.
I'm not sure where I'm going with any of this (as ever). The point is that he was super nice and thought I was doing better than I think I am, and I feel so awful for disappointing him with both the not feeling great and with the cliched med student/annoying know-it-all patient who thinks they know what's happening.
Plus I haven't been sleeping well lately (keep waking up like 7 times a night) and the lack of sleep is making me feel weepy. Gah. I'm such a cliche.
Peace and love,
S.
So instead I told him that I was worried that I have pernicious anaemia and either lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. He agreed to a blood test to help alleviate some stress. Bless him. But I still want to cry.
Sometimes life seems okay as you float by on a superficial level, but then you stop and think for a second and you realise that you are still in this grey, muddy pit and you have just been trying to delude yourself into thinking you see colour in the hole that keeps pulling you in.
I often find myself telling people that I'm just stressed about uni, assignments, etc. but in reality, I don't feel anything except for numb and miserable at the same time. Yeah, I'm stressed about uni and how behind I am, but what's the point in stressing about something you don't think you have the power to change? The reasonable part of your brain tells you that stresses will always be there, but that they don't have to affect you so awfully. Then reality suggests that perhaps there is no hope and therefore no point in stressing, and this stresses you out more but without knowing exactly why you're stressed.
I'm not sure where I'm going with any of this (as ever). The point is that he was super nice and thought I was doing better than I think I am, and I feel so awful for disappointing him with both the not feeling great and with the cliched med student/annoying know-it-all patient who thinks they know what's happening.
Plus I haven't been sleeping well lately (keep waking up like 7 times a night) and the lack of sleep is making me feel weepy. Gah. I'm such a cliche.
Peace and love,
S.
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Caffeine to bring you up, happy thoughts to keep you there.
Sometimes I am struck (and paralysed) by how awkward I am, but then I drink coffee and the caffeine doesn't care about small talk or funny looks, just how much happiness and wonder is in the world around me.
Obvs the coffee doesn't fix anything, people still think I'm either weird or unapproachable, but at least my inside perfectly correlates with my outside, you know? I like the idea of being an authentic person, no lying to myself regardless of what others think. Of course I want to be a decent person, but what is the point of being a good person on the outside only to have a mess of hypocrisy underneath it all?
I'm pretty sure it's the caffeine talking now, but sometimes life is superb, once you remove yourself form the littleness of your immediate surroundings/situation and connect with life and the universe on a happier wavelength. For example, I just came back from ward rounds then coffee with the ortho team (interns and registrars) and the other med student was chatting away with them and they were responding to her and ignoring me, but do I need the approval of those people in that moment? It's okay to have nothing to say, and if my aim in life is to be a decent person to interact with, not having funny stories to tell doesn't really mean much, does it? I can still be easy-going in my interactions with people and not get in their way. They won't like me in the way they like the other med student, but I'm also not offending anyone, and eventually I will find my niche.
That sounds a bit sad, but I have so many moments in my life where I connect with people or situations and everything in life seems to be dancing to the same harmony and that's a beautiful feeling, like tapping into the fundamental frequency of the universe and seeing the perfection of every object and movement in relation to the rest.
I will worry about my awkwardness and lack of approval from others later when I'm feeling down. No need to spoil this high with stressing about what I can't change, and to some extent, don't have any need to change.
Peace and love,
S.
Obvs the coffee doesn't fix anything, people still think I'm either weird or unapproachable, but at least my inside perfectly correlates with my outside, you know? I like the idea of being an authentic person, no lying to myself regardless of what others think. Of course I want to be a decent person, but what is the point of being a good person on the outside only to have a mess of hypocrisy underneath it all?
I'm pretty sure it's the caffeine talking now, but sometimes life is superb, once you remove yourself form the littleness of your immediate surroundings/situation and connect with life and the universe on a happier wavelength. For example, I just came back from ward rounds then coffee with the ortho team (interns and registrars) and the other med student was chatting away with them and they were responding to her and ignoring me, but do I need the approval of those people in that moment? It's okay to have nothing to say, and if my aim in life is to be a decent person to interact with, not having funny stories to tell doesn't really mean much, does it? I can still be easy-going in my interactions with people and not get in their way. They won't like me in the way they like the other med student, but I'm also not offending anyone, and eventually I will find my niche.
That sounds a bit sad, but I have so many moments in my life where I connect with people or situations and everything in life seems to be dancing to the same harmony and that's a beautiful feeling, like tapping into the fundamental frequency of the universe and seeing the perfection of every object and movement in relation to the rest.
I will worry about my awkwardness and lack of approval from others later when I'm feeling down. No need to spoil this high with stressing about what I can't change, and to some extent, don't have any need to change.
Peace and love,
S.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
The answer to your midnight existential crisis is always 'there is no point'.
I just came back from an ortho tute at the hospital, where I literally knew nothing.
I almost got away with saying and knowing nothing, until the end where the consultant noted that I hadn't contributed. I was supposed to do an ulnar nerve examination, and I'm not going to lie, I couldn't remember anything about the ulnar nerve, including where it runs or what it is. He was cool about it and I fluffed around a bit (which always looks so much worse than straight-out saying 'I don't know'). And then I didn't understand what he was explaining either.
I think I felt the need to pretend that I knew what I was doing because everyone else knew the answer to every question the consultant had asked/has ever asked and I don't want to give away how stupid or slack I am, even thought it's the truth. I don't even know why I'm so slack or why I don't remember anything I learn.
Anyway, point is, I nearly cried in tute, and I sort of got teary on the way home, and I'm struggling not to cry now.
And this is not what I want my life to be.
TD has pointed out a few times that happiness doesn't last, just like any other feeling, and I know this now and I knew it before she said it, but the problem is that I don't want my lows to be so very low and I don't want to be sad for so much of my life.
On the way out of the tute, I was already contemplating ways to quit med or alternative careers or what I'm going to say to people once I've failed this year.
I go straight to catastrophising every thing that goes wrong, and I can't stop because things have been bad for so long that there's no way anything good can happen ever again.
(See what I mean?)
Sometimes, in the imaginary conversations in my head with imaginary people I will never come across (their faces are of the people who I know now since I can't actually imagine them), these people observe that I seem very depressed, and my response is, 'How can you not be?' and this makes me feel more sad because it's true. How can you live in any form of society, seeing how terrible people can be, seeing the worst parts of yourself in everyone around you, and still find some level of contentment? How can you exist and not see the pointlessness of it all? You're born and you die and in the space in between you reproduce or contribute to society in some other way, and for what? What is the point? So your genes survive and the human race continues, but so what? What is this end point that we're running towards and what is the point of running to it and why does anyone care about anything? What is stopping everyone from just curling up in a corner and letting death take us?
When I'm feeling more positive, I say to these imaginary people that you're born and you die and the best you can hope for is some form of distraction in between to take your mind off the inevitable darkness that will come with death anyway, so there's no need to give in to it now. What stresses you out will eventually kill you, and life is pointless but if you want your death to hold meaning, find something worth worrying about and let that kill you instead.
Sometimes I try to compose poetry and pretend that the poetry of misery is the most profound song the universe can strive for. In 'Not Another Happy Ending' the main character is accused of worshipping her own pain, and I can see how I'm doing that to myself - trying to build my misery into a shining throne from which I can judge others and put my own ego on a pedestal.
I know the reasonable words but I don't feel them. Even when I say them to others, I'm just throwing out the buzzwords in an effort to maintain this facade of an intelligent and hard done by innocent, to somehow absolve myself of any responsibility for my own failures and weaknesses.
I wonder when it will end, and how it will feel to pay penance for the lies I tell myself.
S.
I almost got away with saying and knowing nothing, until the end where the consultant noted that I hadn't contributed. I was supposed to do an ulnar nerve examination, and I'm not going to lie, I couldn't remember anything about the ulnar nerve, including where it runs or what it is. He was cool about it and I fluffed around a bit (which always looks so much worse than straight-out saying 'I don't know'). And then I didn't understand what he was explaining either.
I think I felt the need to pretend that I knew what I was doing because everyone else knew the answer to every question the consultant had asked/has ever asked and I don't want to give away how stupid or slack I am, even thought it's the truth. I don't even know why I'm so slack or why I don't remember anything I learn.
Anyway, point is, I nearly cried in tute, and I sort of got teary on the way home, and I'm struggling not to cry now.
And this is not what I want my life to be.
TD has pointed out a few times that happiness doesn't last, just like any other feeling, and I know this now and I knew it before she said it, but the problem is that I don't want my lows to be so very low and I don't want to be sad for so much of my life.
On the way out of the tute, I was already contemplating ways to quit med or alternative careers or what I'm going to say to people once I've failed this year.
I go straight to catastrophising every thing that goes wrong, and I can't stop because things have been bad for so long that there's no way anything good can happen ever again.
(See what I mean?)
Sometimes, in the imaginary conversations in my head with imaginary people I will never come across (their faces are of the people who I know now since I can't actually imagine them), these people observe that I seem very depressed, and my response is, 'How can you not be?' and this makes me feel more sad because it's true. How can you live in any form of society, seeing how terrible people can be, seeing the worst parts of yourself in everyone around you, and still find some level of contentment? How can you exist and not see the pointlessness of it all? You're born and you die and in the space in between you reproduce or contribute to society in some other way, and for what? What is the point? So your genes survive and the human race continues, but so what? What is this end point that we're running towards and what is the point of running to it and why does anyone care about anything? What is stopping everyone from just curling up in a corner and letting death take us?
When I'm feeling more positive, I say to these imaginary people that you're born and you die and the best you can hope for is some form of distraction in between to take your mind off the inevitable darkness that will come with death anyway, so there's no need to give in to it now. What stresses you out will eventually kill you, and life is pointless but if you want your death to hold meaning, find something worth worrying about and let that kill you instead.
Sometimes I try to compose poetry and pretend that the poetry of misery is the most profound song the universe can strive for. In 'Not Another Happy Ending' the main character is accused of worshipping her own pain, and I can see how I'm doing that to myself - trying to build my misery into a shining throne from which I can judge others and put my own ego on a pedestal.
I know the reasonable words but I don't feel them. Even when I say them to others, I'm just throwing out the buzzwords in an effort to maintain this facade of an intelligent and hard done by innocent, to somehow absolve myself of any responsibility for my own failures and weaknesses.
I wonder when it will end, and how it will feel to pay penance for the lies I tell myself.
S.
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