| Examples |
[20 Feb 2009|12:09am] |
EXAMPLE ONE
My life is ordinary, or at least, according to my previously lucid mother it is. Two days ago I would have said that it was anything but ordinary. Not everybody gets to be happy, in a loving relationship, and a surgical intern at one of the best hospitals on the West Coast. We see cases you couldn't even dream of at any other hospital, people stuck together by a pole, a bomb in a body cavity. I'm with an older man -the first older man I've been with since the disaster that was Bobby 'Fish' Fishbourne in the 11th grade- who I'm crazy about, and I know will come back at the end of the day fight or no fight. I'm not going to go all crazed seventh grader and doodle his name inside little hearts and write "Mrs. Meredith Shepherd... Mrs. Derek Shepherd" but I'm happy. But, I'm ordinary. According to my mother, my life is ordinary and she's disappointed and I've ruined all chances I've had at greatness.
Strained has always been a good way to define my mother and my relationship. I can remember the last fight, before the latest, we ever had before she succumbed to Alzheimer’s. I didn't want to go to medical school; she thought that my entire life would be wasted if I didn't go. Her only definition of accomplished and successful was being a doctor. I didn't want to end up like her, and I told her exactly that and she told me that I was a poor excuse for a daughter and I went to Europe. When I got back... the disease had progressed and I wasn't the 'poor excuse for a daughter' anymore. Hell, I wasn't even 'the daughter', I was the girl who 'kind of reminded her of her daughter'; I enrolled in Dartmouth’s Medical Program the next week. I didn't want it, at first. I just did it because I felt so obligated, because that was the last thing that I remembered her wanting from me lucidly. She was right though; she knew I would love the rush of surgery and want to do the work she had. The only difference is? I've changed from the 'baby Ellis Grey' to the girl who wants to have a life while having a career. I made it work too.
I wished she would lose her memory again the other night. How horrible a person am I that I wish that my own mother loses her memory? I might as well have told her that the other night, when she was lucid enough to proclaim what a waste my life was. I told her that she was what was wrong with my life, and that despite wanting to be the best damn surgeon I can be, I hated being in charge. Maybe I don't hate being in charge, just I hate being in charge of her life and mine. People can only have so much responsibility and lives in their hands before it becomes too much. I wished she would lose her memory, and she did. She lost it; right after the Chief saw her. I'd spent time in surgery and time with everyone except her and no matter how much she pissed me off, or how much I just wanted to stay as far away from her as I could, I missed my chance. I missed my moment to get to talk to her, to just get to hear coherent thoughts from her, to just get her to know that I'm her daughter. The relapse is rare enough in itself. Everybody just kept saying it was a 'miracle' but I can't see it as anything but a curse. It's a teasing, a joke to make you think you have so much time with a person to have them taken away again.
I'm going to sign the papers for her to get the heart surgery, even though she didn't want it, it wasn't her decision, it's mine. Because I'm in charge. People never want to be in charge when they have to be, but boy do they yearn for it when they don't have it. Look at all the attendings (no offense meant by this) who are scrambling about to secure the job of Chief. They'll want the power until they have in and then they'll just want to be a surgeon.
Being in charge sucks.
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EXAMPLE TWO
People think that when you're dying you're supposed to think all these epic thoughts. Your life is supposed to flash in front of your eyes, then there's supposed to be a bright light. Really, though, when it comes down to it, and your life is hanging by a figurative thread, you don't think about those things. You think stupid thoughts, and even then, you don't get a whole lot of time to think them before your consumed by an overpowering darkness. There's no bright light. No fat, happy angels. There's just you and your pointless thoughts and the darkness before it's all gone. I had three thoughts. Three thoughts. None of them important either. It wasn't like I was pondering what I would miss in life, or what I didn't get to see. It wasn't like a grand amount of emotion surged through my being. It was just thoughts. Three thoughts, and that's all you get. Thoughts. And then it's over.
My mother's surgery is probably going to be postponed. That was my first real thought and you know, looking back that was a freaking stupid first thought. I was supposed to be seeing the faces of people I loved and instead as I hit the cold water, I thought about how my mother wasn't going to get her heart taken care of today. All of the fatalities and injuries from the ferry would take up the ORs and she'd be forced to wait another few days. It kind of made me wonder, if when they told her I had drown if she would even remember, or even care. She didn't know me any other day, why would the day I die be any different? The water is cold, but that thought kind of chills you to the core, you know? Your own mother won't even notice if you're gone. How sad is that? She noticed when you were born, obviously, but when you die, it's like "Oh, well, that girl won't come and visit me anymore" and it's just sad.
Robby Monroe was right. That stupid kid in my stupid gym class in the 9th grade was right. He told me to join the swim team, because I can swim, okay. Why didn't I want to join? Because my school colors were orange and green and there was no way I was going to look like a felon swimming. It was just not going to happen in my dark and twisty, black wallflower high school existence. Well, that was the reason I gave and it was a reason. Just, I really didn't want to get up at the crack of dawn to go swimming in cold water. That Robby kid had a crush on me, and just wanted to see me in a bathing suit and he didn't mean it when he said it, but he was right. "You're gonna need to learn how to swim in cold water, M, if you're gonna live in Seattle." I should have gotten over my hatred of school spirit and love of black and just donned the bathing suit, built my skills and gotten in the freezing water. It just would have been better.
I hate that Snow Patrol song. I'd heard it in the car on the way to the hospital yesterday morning and it got stuck in my head. Who wants to be hearing a song that they hate as they die? Seriously! It was kind of taunting, even. Please, just save me from this darkness when that little girl just walked away and left me in the water, didn't tell anybody. The weight of water, the way you told me to look past everything I had ever learned. The final word in the final sentence you ever uttered to me was love. How mocking is that? Weight of water, and it was just stuck in my head. That was when I started thinking about everyone, really. It wasn't like last time. I could remember the last time Derek and I kissed. I didn't have that to think about, I just had these stupid thoughts and song in my head. I could remember everything that everyone had said to me. I talked to everybody that morning and each and every sentence ran through my head before it was just all gone.
[PRIVATE]
What's the point? There was a fourth thought. A fleeting fourth and final thought. Not the stupid pointless kind. I just gave up, I couldn't think of a real reason to want to live. Denny made me remember this, this was why I almost died, or did die and was revived. I might as well have just stayed underwater in the bathtub, it would have done the same. Falling in was an accident, but I didn't fight hard enough. I didn't want to live bad enough to save myself. I thought, maybe, maybe I could just disappear. Float along like I had done the rest of my life, and just stop being that person. Stop being that dark and twisty person who everything just happens to. I just gave up. It was too cold and I figured that I had fought hard enough for everything in my life and that I could just give up. Once. I could just give up and it would fix everything.
[/PRIVATE]
My mother died on the same day I did, isn't that a bit ironic? Only difference was, my heartbeat came back. It's fine. I'm fine with it. I've come to terms with it, quickly. And I should feel sad about it and grieve but I just can't because part of me feels relieved. What, really, is the point of living if you can't remember it? She was just living to please the people around her, which was basically the Chief and me and I was too angry and pissed off at her to even let her do that. I know she didn't mean what she said about me being ordinary, or anything. I know she was just trying to get a reaction out of me, and to get me to take hold of my life again. I can't say how I know, but I do.
Blankets can only keep you so warm when you're cold. It's the people around you, the people who tell you their grand, epic thoughts before, or after you die, that keep you warm. They're the people that bring you back from everything. As surgeons we're taught to put the pieces back together, to fix things and remain calm. It's the person behind the surgeon that picks up the pieces. That picks their friend up from a bathroom floor. That becomes their friend's person in their time of need. That helps a friend through a hard time and is the one to apologize for using them. That curls up at the end of the night with the person they love even after a fight. They're the people who fix things and bring people back. They're the real people you come back for.
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EXAMPLE THREE
Abandonment is a primal human fear. Children are emotionally scared by it and deep down, all of us remain that way; afraid of being left behind. As surgeons we’re taught to never abandon a patient, not when they need you and not until they are legally dead. You go through life hoping that no one will pull that plug, sever the ties that they hold to you and refuse to revive the shambles previously known as your relationship. Deep down, you know that it’ll happen eventually. Knowing is the worst part. I used to think that to not know was harder than actually knowing, but when you don’t know, you still have hope. When you’re completely in the dark, its human nature to hold onto that light at the end of the tunnel. The people who don’t know are safer. When you don’t know, you can’t be hurt until your hope is taken away. The absence of hope is abandonment.
Maybe I’m not making sense, I’m hung-over and tired and my day is not going how it’s planned. I said, “Pick me, choose me, love me.” I’m stupid, I’ve decided. I should have known, I tried to guesstimate how someone felt and I got abandoned. Surgeons should never guesstimate. We’re supposed to know. But you can never know how someone feels. It's a false hope. You work yourself up into believing you're important. You overestimate your own skills, and think your better than you are. That goes back to hope. You hope you won't fall, but you know you will. It's a falsehood that everybody has to deal with, eventually. You can never know what people are thinking, but you can hope they won't abandon you.
He’s got his perfect wife. It’s hard to hate her, she’s so damn perfect. Annoying perfect, even. She’s nice, most of the time, nicer than she should be to the woman who was sleeping with her husband. She’s freakin’ gorgeous and I should have known there was just no way I could compete with that.
I should have known. Then maybe, maybe it wouldn’t be abandonment. Maybe it would be acceptance.
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