You came!!!

You came!!!!

And, as promised, I will show you a couple of things that I’ve been hiding from you. Not that you were really missing much. But I'd still like to explain:

Writing has been different now. It’s harder. For various reasons, I’ve been having problems writing consistently. For one, 3rd year med school is remarkably demanding on my time. And I can’t drink as much as I used to. I mean, I can’t just go waltzing into a patient’s room and yell at them to lose some goddamn weight for chrissake. Not while I reek of vodka and cigs. It wouldn’t be right.

Not that thought and creativity were all in the bottle, but it sure helped. Plus, now that I’m all sober and responsible, life's a bit more boring.

Old Self:
“Wheeee! Fun!”

New Self:
I AM A ROBOT OF RESPONSIBILITY. PARDON ME, I MUST IRON THIS SHIRT, READ 2 CHAPTERS, PROGRAM MY COFFEE-MAKER TO BREW AT 4AM, AND BORE MYSELF TO SLEEP BEFORE 9PM. REEE! REEE! (those are robot noises)

And then there's the whole honesty thing. Not that I've been lying...but, the stuff that I needed to write was at a level of honesty that would have made me ridiculously vulnerable. It made me squeamish to share it with myself, in fact. But it was time. Time to open the closet (not the gay one, necessarily) and watch the skeletons parade out. And then stuff some choice ones back in.

The other problem with honesty is that it tends to hurt other people. Too bad, because the deep-down truth is actually pretty entertaining. A direct result from it being horribly offensive?

Plus, I was getting long-winded. So long-winded that I had trouble editing my own stuff, since it took so long to read. Yes, I'm aware that I should probably be on Ritalin, and right now I'm trying to see if I can get some shipped from Mexico or craigslist or something.

So there. Those are my excuses. And now, on to the excerpts, as I promised:

A conversation from my pediatrics rotation:

"Do you and the baby live her father?" I asked the baby's mother.
"He's a piece of shit."
"Uh. Okay..I'll just write down...uh... 'father uninvolved'"
"How about, 'father is an uninvolved piece of shit?"

From the first death on my OB/GYN rotation:

I followed the attending out of the room. As soon as we got out of the door, I
broke into a full run, out of labor and delivery, past the nursery, and into the
locker room. I was sobbing. Fuck.

I hunched over and said a prayer for the baby, the young mother. My mind turned to Eve and the Apple. Strange that men are considered the stronger sex, when it's the women that bear these bloody horrors. Alone.

I forced myself to snap out of it, attempting to make myself look like I hadn’t been crying. This is an impossible task. After I cry I get so red and puffy that I look like a giant hive with a face. When I came out, my attending gave me a pitying look and patted me on the back:

"Eetz good zat you should learn zis. Eetz not all happy-jollies, you know."

No. Eetz not.

And the first birth:

I stepped away from the table covered in blood and some other stuff that was probably baby-poop. I pulled off my gown carefully, and noticed the new father standing there. I asked him if it was a surprise. I was referring to the baby’s sex.

“Nah. I knew she was pregnant when I started dating her. The father’s a shithead. He abandoned her. But I’ve been there with her, I’ve stuck with her through this whole pregnancy. This is my daughter. ” And he stomped proudly out of the OR doors, a king exiting the throne-room.

Well, there are pieces of shit, and then there are some amazing boyfriends out there. A little confused about my question, but amazing nonetheless.

From The Boyfriend Box & the Pathophysiology of Love:

Final verse: we were living together. I found the letter to another girl. I kept it for myself, and bound it with a rubber band to the letters he'd written me, putting it right on top so it was the first thing I'd see. Chorus: anytime I was tempted to go back to him I'd look at all the letters again, cheating one first. The first 100 times the pain ripped through me like it was fresh, but I forced myself to look at it over and over again until I was sure I'd become numb. Maybe I overdid it. It took years before I stopped equating strength with being unfeeling.

I know. You've lived some version of this, too. Haven't we all?

....

Anyway, one new thing in the boyfriend box, one fresh ex to the list. It hit me that I have waaay more exes than I've had boyfriends. Guess it's just semantics, but it irritates me. Why should I be so stingy about the boyfriend title and not the ex? The ratio is off. Where's the pathology?

...

So I set out to draw the "pathophys" of love the way I'd been taught in class. Drawn partly from experience and partly from baffled observation. Honestly I'm kind of disappointed in it. Well, not totally. I AM proud of my Cycle of Neediness and Despair. It just irritates me that the only sure way to exit all this is by death.

....

Well, not necessarily a "best of" show here, but that's what I got. For now.