Metronome.
Maybe it can be said that emotions are like a pendulum.
In its homeostasis, daily life generates a particular wave. Happy about a good parking spot, annoyed that latte wasn't hot enough. Up and down, up and down. The swings are small, the pace gentle, like a stately grandfather clock, tranquil, predictable.
Love has an obnoxious way of distorting this internal rhythm. The amplitude of emotions escalate and magnify - the exhilerating lurch in your insides when you think the boy who you like likes you back, that feeling identical to the one people chase after on rollercoasters, making the term "falling in love" perfectly apt.
And yet, the lows. The all-consuming heartache when you have a huge fight. When you're not sure if it'll survive. The times when you fear that it may just die. Equally intense as the high, in almost a symmetrical fashion, this becomes the price one pays for entering into the arena of love.
What do you do? You have two choices. Stay away, stay safe. Live the life of a buoy, bobbling up and down easily, cruising along. Or, jump into the waterfall. The rush, the roaring speed, the unforeseeable.
You pick how you like your water. How you like your swing. You pick.
Getting back on the horse.
Today a patient broke me.
I'd tried to help him every way I could, organise investigations, speak to him calmly, try to reassure. He swore and screamed and threatened me for a good 10 minutes. I walked away, went to the bathroom, locked the door, and cried.
I was so angry. Angry because I'd done so much for him. Angry because he didn't even let me speak, only yelling at me more when I tried to appease. I couldn't help but think, "Why am I putting up with this? When all I've done is try and help him? This is so unfair!"
When I came home, a bible passage came to me.
The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace (that is, the Praetorium) and called together the whole company of soldiers. They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. And they began to call out to him, "Hail, king of the Jews!" Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." (Mark 15:16-20; Luke 23:34)
I wonder if the same thoughts came to Jesus when they were hitting him. "Why am I putting up this? Why should I bother?!"
But Jesus didn't get angry and go back up to heaven. He died for us anyway, because he loved humanity so much. He loved
me so much.
And if He can do that for me, how much more can I go back tomorrow and face my patient, swear words and all.
Your love is amazing, steady and unchanging... your love carries me.
Little deaths.
A patient of ours died last night, unexpectedly.
I was told this morning. It was announced as though a tennis game on TV the night before - "did you hear about Mr X?". As the news sunk in, the man I saw yesterday, now - gone - it took all of me not to cry. I didn't want to seem naive or unprofessional - only later did I realise the folly in associating callousness with professionalism.
I went down to medical records to read the notes documenting his last hours. It didn't really provide much answers. There was a brief final comment by nursing - "Wife came to view body. Wedding ring returned."
That evening, I'd spoken to his wife only hours before. Back when talking to her was all part of my day. Explaining this, organising that. All routine - administrative, even.
She broke down in the corridor today, the nurses attempting to comfort her. I couldn't look at her. It was all too real.
I don't know what I'm more afraid of - upcoming days where I would feel this sorrow again, or the day when I will no longer feel anything at all.
Not in Kansas anymore.
I think there's a movie where a 13 year old wishes she were older, then wakes up to find herself the 30 year old Jennifer Garner.
I've never seen the movie, but I feel exactly like that (though I wish I looked more like the movie star). It's as though I'm merely playing pretend. Each morning is a day of dressups, another game of "doctors and nurses".
Ebbs of adolescent life peak out like a child's toes as he plays hide and seek. My real age is given away by the state of my bedroom, still a teenage squalor in the confines of childhood pink walls. My journal entries are still awash with immature preoccupations, crushes on boys, anxieties about life. I still think of life as "when I grow up", as some far-away goalpost that in fact I'd long crossed.
Concurrently I'm aware of how my life, as a 23 year old, "ought" to be. And not merely as some abstract societal expectation, but fulfilled in the actual lives of my friends. Living yardsticks of cohorts getting married and buying cars and signing up for mortgages and moving away to London and New York and Hong Kong.
But the real test of how old I think I am... there's this boy in this gelato store - he's so sweet that every time I go I leave grinning like an idiot. Then the other day it occurred to me, hey he'd probably be about 20. It took considerably longer for me to remember that I was 23, that the whole exchange was pretty paedophilic on my part, that I didn't see myself to be any more than 19.
Between the realisation of being old, horror of my mental cradle-snatching, and a burdening feeling of being trapped in this adult body and job and expectations,
la vita (or the gelato, for that matter) no longer seemed as
dolce as the little store proclaimed.
