Everyone changes as they go through life thats what growing up means, to change and to grow. I have always been ready for change, always hopeful for change, I always beat myself up for the parts of me that felt, too soft. I wanted to change. Too empathetic equated to too stupid. Much of the pain I had gone through in my life as a kid, that was out of my hands. But so much of the pain I went through as a young teenager/adolescent was my own fault and most people told me it was because I felt too deeply. I really believed for years, I could never change that part of myself, that I would always feel too deeply, fall too deeply in love, give more in every relationship with friends and family. I believed there was nothing I could do about that. I thought it was just who I was and I hoped I would meet someone who would be the same, I figured that way neither of us would hurt each other, and we could be happy; because we were both the same, we were both soft.
I soon learned that it wasn't that simple, because when I got it, I was less interested in it myself. Ironic eh.
I was told I would never be an extraordinary woman, unless I dropped my ideals about love. That unless I built walls around my heart, I would always end up mediocre. Then I started medical school. I spent my first 3 semesters, agonizing, barely making it through school, hurting over everything and struggling over everything, struggling because I lived far away from home, struggling to hold relationships down from overseas, barely making any ends meet at all. I was hurting so deeply. All my feelings were making it very hard to focus in school, I did not have the capacity to compartmentalize, and it seemed all my colleagues were so well versed with this. I thought that maybe my personality type wasn't cut out for this profession, but who was I kidding, doctors are meant for healing, and you had to be an empathetic person to heal, right? Thats how I convinced myself to stay. I was born for this. But I was encouraged to go home, I did not fit the personality criteria.
But one day, I just stopped feeling, I got so good at compartmentalizing that feeling things and coddling relationships with people became so easy to push to the side and I never went back to them. I just left them there, out of the way. And when I went back to visit them, they seemed to no longer even matter to me, barely eliciting a response from me. I realized I had become an exceptional student, but I had become like everyone else. I felt cold, and I felt that I had lost myself. I don’t know if I like myself better now. It's exactly who I wanted to be, right? I must say it is nice not to get upset about things, to take things to heart, and to not care, its a freedom I had never given myself. It felt like a luxury.
Then I met someone, and he is in every way perfect. And he is exactly the soft guy, the guy my little soul hoped to meet one day. Except, I wasn't soft anymore I was calloused, and his feeling became a burden to me, the way my big emotions were once a burden on people in my life. Kind words didn’t spill out of me the way they used to and instead they were replaced by cruel words that dribbled out with such ease that it frightened me. It was easy for me to hurt someone, and not feel deeply saddened by it. I do not know who I am now, and I do not know how to fix it, I do not know if I will ever be myself again, and I do not know how to be with someone who is like who I was once like. And now I sit here on the other side, realizing how annoying I was to other people who I loved, And I cant bring myself to understanding what had happened. And I can’t even believe I was thinking in such ways, because I remember how much it had hurt me.
Medical school has changed me and I do not think I will ever be who I was.
My friends and family may see me as cold, but I see myself as reborn.
It is an opportunity to learn.
My empathy will not be the reason I self destruct, it will become my strongest attribute.
I am relearning how to love, but this time I am starting with myself.