Isolation.
I've been meaning to make this post for a while, as I always do, but everytime I fire up LJ and get to the post posting screen and start to type, the words just refuse to come. It hasn't been a problem just with my LJ posts unfortunately. In so many other areas of my life I find myself just without drive and motivation. Whether it's because the weather is finally turning properly cold, or because the sun is going down earlier, or because we're getting closer and closer to OSCEs, I have no idea. Well, I do blame the cold a fair amount.
It's interesting I think, that I recognise a certain amount of selfishness that happens the colder it gets: the lower the temperature the more selfish and inward looking I become. Obviously, other people don't have the same issues with it I do: if not everyone would be just as impossible and miserable as I imagine myself to be. It's a strange duality, that on the inside I am a constant cesspool of darkness and pessimism and misery, and on the outside when I'm with other people, I don't think you'd be able to see much of that at all. It can be hard to believe I suppose, that I often feel depressed. Although don't we often talk in medicine about how everything is relative? The super-intelligent person with dementia might still be able to hold a perfectly cogent conversation with you, but that doesn't mean he's suffering from a relentlessly progressive neurodegenerative disease.
I want to go home. That's the thought that's foremost in my mind. Every other moment I'm thinking about home, and how much I miss the trees, and the warmth, and the shopping centres. I'd miss the people, but after summer, it kinda feels like everyone else has moved on for the most part. The reality of the situation is that I often wonder: Will I really be able to fit in back home anymore? After living in Australia for coming onto five years now. I don't know that I could. Although my perceptions of my home country and its health system might've been coloured just abit by everything I've heard while I've been out here. I do love it immeasurably, and want my kids to go to school there.
Where does that leave me? Broken and breaking and crumbling constantly with every day that passes. Doubtless I've got absolutely amazing friends here, and in Australia, and back home, and all around the world. But what can you do for me? When you're outside and I'm stuck in my own head.
There're voices, other parts of me, that say well toughen up and if everyone else can do it you can to and just serve your time and get out. But what a crushing realisation, that you're just counting down the days till you leave, living an existence of subsistence. Is that all we're doing? It conjures up images of scrambling through the dirt for scraps while the best and better drive up to their hillside mansions in Lambourghinis. Doubtless, all our homes here are on the hillside: It's just one long, never-ending hill. With the most amazing seaside view. With the most wonderful winds that'll cut you to the bone and leave you shivering.
Can you feel the pessimism? I can. And it's a see-saw and I just sometimes wish that this had never happened. So much for never having any regrets. Would I have been happy elsewhere? Doubtless. Am I happy now? Doubtful. As Lucy once said (from Charlie Brown mind), good things last three days, bad things last three weeks. In Tassie, when winter comes, it fills your mind like a beast without beginning and without end.
It's interesting I think, that I recognise a certain amount of selfishness that happens the colder it gets: the lower the temperature the more selfish and inward looking I become. Obviously, other people don't have the same issues with it I do: if not everyone would be just as impossible and miserable as I imagine myself to be. It's a strange duality, that on the inside I am a constant cesspool of darkness and pessimism and misery, and on the outside when I'm with other people, I don't think you'd be able to see much of that at all. It can be hard to believe I suppose, that I often feel depressed. Although don't we often talk in medicine about how everything is relative? The super-intelligent person with dementia might still be able to hold a perfectly cogent conversation with you, but that doesn't mean he's suffering from a relentlessly progressive neurodegenerative disease.
I want to go home. That's the thought that's foremost in my mind. Every other moment I'm thinking about home, and how much I miss the trees, and the warmth, and the shopping centres. I'd miss the people, but after summer, it kinda feels like everyone else has moved on for the most part. The reality of the situation is that I often wonder: Will I really be able to fit in back home anymore? After living in Australia for coming onto five years now. I don't know that I could. Although my perceptions of my home country and its health system might've been coloured just abit by everything I've heard while I've been out here. I do love it immeasurably, and want my kids to go to school there.
Where does that leave me? Broken and breaking and crumbling constantly with every day that passes. Doubtless I've got absolutely amazing friends here, and in Australia, and back home, and all around the world. But what can you do for me? When you're outside and I'm stuck in my own head.
There're voices, other parts of me, that say well toughen up and if everyone else can do it you can to and just serve your time and get out. But what a crushing realisation, that you're just counting down the days till you leave, living an existence of subsistence. Is that all we're doing? It conjures up images of scrambling through the dirt for scraps while the best and better drive up to their hillside mansions in Lambourghinis. Doubtless, all our homes here are on the hillside: It's just one long, never-ending hill. With the most amazing seaside view. With the most wonderful winds that'll cut you to the bone and leave you shivering.
Can you feel the pessimism? I can. And it's a see-saw and I just sometimes wish that this had never happened. So much for never having any regrets. Would I have been happy elsewhere? Doubtless. Am I happy now? Doubtful. As Lucy once said (from Charlie Brown mind), good things last three days, bad things last three weeks. In Tassie, when winter comes, it fills your mind like a beast without beginning and without end.