Simply Girly

*I would like to warn everyone that this post contains some morbid content and discusses themes like death. *

I heard this quote yesterday from the new Bob Dylan movie with Timmothee Chalamet. He said that rather than finding oneself, we simply choose to be different and embody something we want. I like that much more. Theres too much pressure on finding myself, especially when I change every day.

Yesterday, I was tired, and anxious and needed a rest, and I couldnt decide who I wanted to embody, and today, I think i’m more sure. Today I want to be dilligent and disciplined, and foreward thinking. If I become this today, must I commit to this line of a person, or can I float elsewhere tomorrow. We both know the answer to this.

There is no one but myself forcing myself into a box, and society convincing me I must. I must be a doctor, I must be straight backed, cross my legs, carry my stethoscope like a second neck. I haven’t gone through enough medical school yet to decide if I can break this pattern. I only know that I haven’t yet fallen into it.

I still choose to take days off, to write and paint, and make mistakes. I make silly jokes, and walk around with only two braincells signalling information. I haven’t yet become wholly different, but I have become somewhat altered.

I spend all my days with donors (technically named cadavers), using tools to open their bodies and analyze their organs. It has changed me, and it terrifies me that I cant name how. I kill bugs with my bare hands now, because a bug, a spider, or cockroach, are nothing short of dust in comparison to death. I see death every day, and I mourn the loss of countless lives, I never knew, but somehow know more and more every day. I feel them sometimes too. When we find a tumor or irregularity, I feel their pain, and I know they suffered.

How do I separate a body from a living person, when I meet them every day. I know how God drew their arteries and veins so uniquely, it’s almost as telling as their names. How heartbreaking then, when I must take out an organ for analysis and view it in my palm. Something so personal, and vital, now bloodless but still breathing something I cant describe.

Many people disassociate to cope. Some people talk to the donors although they cannot respond and have passed away. Everyones brains are shifting, and everyone knows it. But we don’t have time to know what it is.

It’s terrifying to see the donors, but its equally terrifying to see who we’re all becoming. Something in all doctors had to change, I hope this change remains my choice despite the odds.

May God guide us all, and protect our patients and donors.

Best,

Med Girly