(no subject)
I gotta keep my distance to withstand the silence of you missin when you're not there to listen to this nonsense
43 degrees this morning; house with all internal temperature regulation turned off is still moccassins-chilly and cat asleep in my lap is radiating heat of 'stay here, stay here'. I do not reach for my notebook next to the bed or go into the kitchen to get some liquid fructose corn sugar caffinated beverage to make me feel awake & focused to read more again of this cranial nerve lecture. More Mumps, etc., again, on the machine. Twice today. At school until 2, lecture on autonomics in cranial nerves, long, sleepy, thick. Things I half-remember from yesterday. Drinking too-thick hot chocolate because I'm out of tea. Out? of tea?
Lab I was too tired to put on scrubs for, just a labcoat and someone else's snatched nitrile gloves, joking about the usual Human Centipede/Teeth/sex from the arrogant frat boy at my anatomy table over the woman of a body who gave her body to science, whose face we are dissecting. facial nerves. Lecture on Pediatrics for the free Chick-fil-A lunch, eating individual chips as a woman discusses her divorce, her campaign for parents to read to their children, her son. Crunching each chip invidivually between my teeth, no leftover soupy hot chocolate, nothing to drink, just salt against the flat of my tongue. Taste sensation, you know, I know, comes from the anterior 2/3 of the tongue via the lingular nerve, branch of mandibular V3 nerve, branch of cranial nerve V, the trigeminal nerve. Salt, thirst. As I type this Yoni Wolf is saying "mixed in with the light-floating paper rash and paper rest is only just some more smoke rising, no fleeting omen for your rise only waiting, no ancient mystic spirits rising, or translucent sage ghosts calmly speaking truths--you will always thirst like that."
Yesterday my grandfather had retina surgery. Trying to find their hotel was an adventure, as they kept calling the C Plaza the C Court, the old C House, unable to remember the name change. In lab I fumbled around for the name of the otic ganglion, parotid gland, flashing back to whatever I could remember about the parotid gland from a lecture by an otolaryngologist I attended two weeks ago. I am overwhelmed by the volume of emails I receive, while at the same time I check my email every five minutes, desperate for a distraction. "I used to do many things," I told my grandmother. "We went camping, picked blueberries, went on a search for the best doughnuts in New Orleans, saw friends every day, lived with my friends, worked with people, saw people all the time. And now I'm mostly just alone." In a letter I wrote "People should choose religion because they find it personally fulfilling, not because of a sense of family or community obligation." My grandmother said she was praying for me, as always. My grandfather explained his eye surgery to me, telling me that eyes had corneas, lenses, a jelly inside, and a retina, which was curved across the back. "It's called the vitreous humour," I said, as he drew a diagram on the back of my notes. I don't think my family can really process that I am going to medical school. It's all right. Sometimes in this new house, sitting in my new car, thinking about all the new things I am learning, I feel like a fake. I do not really believe this is happening to me
Walking down the hallway to the med student lounge lined in pictures of past classes, smiling faces and similar haircuts on pale faces, I did not say though I thought "I did not feel overwhelmed before". In the morning it was 40 degrees and I put my earflap liner in my helmet, pulled my sweater down over my hands to grip the handlebars, shivered through three layers of cotton on the way to schoool. Cotton, of course I did. There are many things now that are just facts about my life, the conclusions which can be drawn from seem too obvious to state, even to myself. On the way home I wrote emails in my head I will never send, asking my Advisor if he appreciated Alopecia, how there are strings of words that fall in and fall in and fill you and break you and how they start with "I'm not a ladies man I'm a landmine, filming my own fake death" and extend to
"The Heath grows green and magenta in all directions, earth and heather, coming of age-
No. It was spring.”
it goes on, and goes on.
Someone at school asked me if I built my bike. "Just handlebars, seat, back rack, new tires," I said. I know framebuilders, I can't ever say I built my own bike. "That means you did," he said, and complimented me. I like bikes and I like that they are something solid, something that I can understand all the moving parts. I am going to school to understand all the moving parts of humans and it is filling me with despair.