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.
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