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Metaphors and Medicine (Year I): Chapter 3

"My apologies to time for all the world I overlook 
             each second." 
  -Wislawa Szymborska, "Under One Small Star"

They say silence is louder than words.

Imagine the silence of the single voice inside of you that motivates every ounce of your being, pushes you past your limits, reminds you of why you are where you are. Why. 

I should be studying for my upcoming week of exams, but this morning the silence was just so freaking loud. Mind you, when I noticed it, I was at the gym with loud music pounding through my ears over the sounds of my struggling breaths as I sprinted. 

So what is this silence I'm talking about? 

I found my purpose in the middle of a hospital for the uninsured. I found myself in the absence of things: medical resources, medical professionals, and mostly, the absence of an open heart, unharmed by the damage of a place that did not have a lot of necessities. 

Through the connections I made through updating a worried family, buying someone coffee, running between one building and the next to send patients' questions to their surgeons in the OR and return their answers, I found myself. I filled a hole of uncertainty in a career choice by witnessing a physician slow down his day to be fully there for a patient. I found myself in the stories of students who were looking for me, in youth who wanted religious connection in their youth group, in lighting candles with fellow students as a united front. Mostly, I felt proud of the self I became as a result of all these moments and all this growth. I felt proud of the young woman who held 12-year-old Tariq's hand and found her place in an OR she didn't know if she belonged in. I felt proud of the self that an elderly woman told her, "I think you'll make a great doctor," for the simple act of speaking her native Arabic in the middle of an English-speaking American hospital. 

That girl, she found herself. 

Normally, I have all these memories raging through my mind like a movie, with the voices of all those who have impacted me in the back of my mind. I can easily pull those memories to the forefront of my mind and use them to get through a study session or my next huge challenge. 

But here's the problem with being in medical school: it's a lot harder to pull those moments out. I have become so entwined with studying that sometimes I forget the outside world. 

I forget to listen to the voices that have propelled me forward. 

I actually just had to take a few seconds to pause after typing that. It is so incredibly difficult for me to admit this act of forgetfulness. 

It's easy to tell yourself the kind of person that you will be as you prepare for a challenge from a distance. But let me tell you, it's 125% different once you are in it. 

I want to be that young woman, the one who found herself in hallways and conversations and light blue scrubs in an OR in Palestine. I want to be the self who looked a challenge in the eye, took a deep breath, and took it on as is. 

I have let her go. I am not balancing extracurricular, not volunteering, not taking on leadership positions. I have slowly been applying for some, only because I have started to notice this silence in small moments. And let me tell you, when I notice it, it freaks me out, because this is not me. Slowly, I will get out of this silence, and find the voices again. I will find these moments and wear them like a talisman around my neck. 

For now, I apologize to the world I've slowly forgotten to listen to.  I apologize to the part of myself I promised I wouldn't lose. 

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