Choices

When I was finishing up residency, I was working with some medical students. One of the students was absolutely gorgeous. She had this wavy, brunette hair that seemed to flow like water. And she had this scent to her that was so intoxicating. I found myself following her unconsciously, completely entranced by her smell.

She had a crush on me too. Sometimes, I don't know these things. My social skills are poor at best. But with this girl, I knew. Her gaze would linger a little too long. She would look down when I was talking to her, afraid to make eye contact. She kept her head tilted slightly, in that kind of daydreaming pose.

I think about this girl every now and then, and the long string of girls like her whom I have met briefly, and then have left my life. Either I was going or they were, never in those ideal circumstances you see in the movies. And so we meet and we part, with the vague notion that maybe we could've done something, but for the timing.

And I realize now that the problem was never the circumstances or the timing or whatever else. The problem was the choices I've made. When you can appreciate the choices you've made in life, it becomes very difficult to avoid reality. I've made some choices, some of which were terrible. And it became clear to me that as unhappy as I've been, it was from my own hand.

People make fun of the second Matrix movie, but there was an extremely profound line in it. The Oracle tells Neo, "We can never see past the choices we don't understand... you've already made the choice. Now you have to understand it."

When I heard this line in the movie, I thought this was so trite. But looking at my own life, I can see now that my life is composed of the decisions I have already made, and the most anxiety, the most angst is tied behind decisions that I have made and never understood. And as I shed light on them, it becomes clear to me the effects of these choices, and how terrible it truly is that we can't change the decisions we've already made.

Because for the last 15 years of my life, I have chosen everything over love. I was scared of love, and I still am. And it scares me because everything I love leaves me. And gazing with a critical eye, I can see that I have made some remarkably poor choices, in order that I could wake up in the morning and not shoot myself, but exorcising all joy from my life.

Now, understanding the choices I've made is all very enlightening, but it doesn't answer the very simple question: will I choose to love? I don't know. It's one thing to see the gears. It's another thing to be a clocksmith.

Breaking up

I was listening to This American Life last week, and the episode was about break ups. It was a strange and amusing episode to listen to, and I know that I have felt the same way at times, but it seems like when we talk about break ups, it’s usually the perspective of the dumpee rather than the dumper. It is the dumpee who is all alone, pining for a nonexistent future.

I can certainly sympathize with the dumpee, seeing as that has been my station in life. Being dumped sucks, and after the last time, I have no desire to go through that again. It is all about being hurt, tossed about like in the wake of a passing ship, and while the dumper is getting on with life, the dumpee is stuck in a continual relationship post-game report.

You know, after a football game, the commentators all sit together and break down the game play by play, finding all the faults and mistakes and errors. “In the 2nd quarter, he was far too clingy and came off as desperate. In the playback, you can see he was doing a LOT of hand holding. I think that this is where the momentum turned.” You get the idea. Maybe you even know what I’m talking about. And inevitably, a sick kind of hypothetical game comes up. Maybe if I did this, it would’ve been different. Maybe if I was better about that...

The sick twist to being dumped is that your own self-worth goes in the toilet. Here this person whom you loved and respected has determined you are unlovable, and so that becomes your own self-image, that you actually deserved this, because who could love you? It takes a long time to get back to even keel, and you dream of the day when everything stings a little less.

I for one am sick of this mental torture. I do not want to ever find myself in that place again, full of anguish and self-pity, tortured by the echo of love. I think that if I am in a relationship I see going downhill, next time I will be the dumper. I will be the one to cut my losses, rather than the one left stumbling in the dark.

I am not a mean person, and I don't relish the thought of hurting other people, but it is an issue of self-preservation. A person can only stand so much heartache in a lifetime, and I've had more than enough.

At arm's length

In medical school, I remember quite distinctly the day we talked about personality disorders. We discussed schizoid personality disorder. These are the folks who prefer solitude. They are lighthouse keepers or wander the desert. This is in stark contrast to social anxiety disorder, where a person is unable to interact with people, and this inability causes great distress.

I remember this because it was when I realized that I have made some terrible decisions in my life, choices that I am not proud of, in order to wake up in the morning and not shoot myself.

I was recently forced to do a lot of introspection. This is something that I am relatively comfortable with. I keep this blog, I write in a journal, I feel like I am pretty in touch. But surprisingly, putting a voice to my inner monologue was quite horrifying.

In my life, I've had my fair share of romantic disappointments and failures. Couple this with other issues with intimacy and relationships growing up, and somewhere along the line, I decided that I could not take it anymore. I made the quite conscious decision to hold the world at arm's length, to distance myself emotionally from all this turbulence. And without that horror, I've thrived. I've done well in medical school and residency, and I feel like I've managed to accomplish quite a bit in my life.

But it comes at a steep price. Sure enough, I have not had my heart broken in a long time, and I haven't felt that pain again, but the problem is that the pain and joy come from the same place. I have cut myself off from a world of happiness, because the risk of pain was unacceptable.

And I've watched life pass me by from my little castle, with all interlopers thwarted by the high walls and deep moat. And actually, if I am really honest about it, women have tried, some trying pretty hard, to get inside. And rather than welcome them in, I have put up more walls, and closed myself off.

This distance has its pluses. I can unflinchingly deal with most patient interactions. I've had people cry, people yell at me, the whole gamut of emotions, and I have been able to be empathic, and none of it hurts me, because I don't let them get close. They have to work on my schedule. I can deal with patients in convenient 15-20 minute chunks. They open their doors to me, but it isn't reciprocal.

It's too bad that joy and sorrow come from the same place, and that it is our greatest loves who can hurt us the most. I just don't know if I can risk it. I don't know if my heart can take it. I so desperately want to be loved, but the thought of me loving another person is absolutely petrifying.

I portray to the rest of the world a man of confidence, an outgoing and gregarious guy, but at heart, I am none of those things. They are adaptations so that I can operate in this extroverted world. And I think of how wonderful it would be to meet a girl who could cut through all of this façade and get to know the real me, and not this face that I portray to the world. She would tell me, "Hey, it's okay. This is safe, you and me," and I could finally, finally let my guard down.

And how are you, doctor?

I was sitting at the nurses station, minding my own business, and Blondie nurse was walking by. Blondie nurse is probably the hottest nurse in the hospital, and she routinely has physicians wrapped around her finger. I've always been polite to Blondie nurse, but never much more.

She stopped, and we chatted for a few minutes about my life, and then I was paged away. She wanted to know all about my career plans, and was sad to find out that my rotation ends soon. The strange thing was that she was very flirty.

I am entirely unsure of what prompted this. Although I am nice to the nurses, it's not like I do anything novel or exceptional. In fact, some nurses have a pretty dim opinion of my medical abilities. So, it's hard for me to decide whether events like this happen because nurses think I'm approachable, or if it is because they are interested.

Now, I'm not complaining that the sexiest nurse in the hospital is talking to me, but I really wonder. Because I'm not that handsome or dashing. I'm not charming or romantic. I'm not flirtatious. So I have a hard time seeing why any woman would be interested in me.

Some of my friends find this self-assessment infuriating. But I just don't see it. I don't. When I look in the mirror, I see plain, boring, chubby, nerdy. It just doesn't make sense to me why women would be interested.

Chocolate Thunder, he tells me that I lowball myself. I'm a good person, a doctor, dedicated to my work. In a few short months, I will be making six figure salary. On paper, I'm great. But I can't help but see the same self-conscious, scared kid when I see myself. And maybe I'm still mired in the college age mindset, trying to impress these impossible to please 20 year old girls.

Someone told me something very profound: "You're such a funny guy. You're really nice and friendly, hard working, dedicated, and really compassionate, and you don't see any of that. You're always so down on yourself! You need to realize that you're a fantastic guy, and if some girl can't see that, then she doesn't deserve you."

Church Barbie

... by strochka

Every week, my church has a lot of different mass times, but I go to the same mass every week because of one girl. She is a girl I casually refer to as church Barbie. I call her this because she is very blond, very pretty, very curvy, and very much an object in my eyes rather than a person.

After all, I don't know her. I have never had a conversation with her. I have in fact heard her say a total of 6 words, none of which were her name. She is just a pretty girl sitting in the next pew. For all I know, she is rude or mean or *shudder* a typical girl in her early 20's. I don't know.

I like to tell myself that she must be one of these shallow girls whom I've met so many times. Nothing is less attractive than the sense of entitlement that comes with being beautiful. I think back to high school sometimes to one girl in my class. She was gorgeous. I mean, wow, absolutely beautiful, but she was the worst person I had ever met. She was bitter and shallow and hollow. Interacting with her was sheer torture. It's like eating a chocolate truffle only to discover that it was full of vinegar and mustard.

So, I like to enjoy her from afar. That sounds far creepier than I mean it. What I mean to say is that I like to enjoy the beauty in the world, and I try not to question it. I try not to find the flaws and blemishes and cracks.

I used to go birding (aka bird watching) a lot when I was younger, and stargazing. I still go stargazing every now and then. I love to go to museums and wander through room after room of beautiful things that I cannot touch. I have sat for an hour in front of a painting of El Greco, soaking in the beauty of it. I walk through the woods and photograph things, trying to capture of beauty of it. I enjoy seeing beauty in the world.

Still, I know that there is another whole plane (as in plane of existence, not 747 plane) upon which beauty exists. I am just seeing the shadows on the walls of the cave, and am somehow content with that [blatant Plato's Republic reference]. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" is often credited as an aphorism but it simply isn't true. A bird in hand is worth far more than two in the bush, or ten, or two hundred, or even a million.

Because a bird through the binoculars is beautiful and wonderful, but it is not mine. I can only enjoy it from afar, like the Mona Lisa behind bulletproof glass. And that is the relationship I have with church Barbie.

Pharmacy girl, chapter 2

DR LOVE by 7E55E-BRN

So, still reeling from my magnificent bit of cowardice with the pharmacy girl incident, I decided to take the initiative, and instead of spending a lazy afternoon in the coffee shops, I went to the hospital, with the explicit purpose of 'casually' running into pharmacy girl. Oh, I had other things to do as well, but nothing that I couldn't have done at any random time in the bowels of medical records.

So, after nonchalantly flitting from floor to floor, running into other residents, I was tired, and ready to go home. I went down to medical records, caught up on charts, went to the cafeteria, and stopped by the bathroom before heading home. And of course, OF COURSE, as I'm walking into the bathroom, I run into pharmacy girl.

A little casual chit chat, and then off we went - me to the bathroom and she to wherever she was going anyway. And now, I have been solidly kicking myself in the ass for the third straight hour. I went to the hospital for the EXPLICITLY STATED PURPOSE of running into pharmacy girl, and caught on my way out, eager to empty my bladder, of course that is when the stars aligned.

West Coast (who asked to be called Chocolate Thunder from now on...) and Surgery Girl both chided me for being a complete pussy. I anticipate that this remarkable piece of timidity will inspire further groans.

The story of pharmacy girl

While I was on general medicine, there was a girl working with the pharmacy who I'll call pharmacy girl. She was very bright-eyed and cheerful, and had this ebullient personality which was so very attractive. I have to admit that I was smitten, and when I say smitten, I mean smitten with every possible negative connotation. I had some sort of bizarre, junior high, blushing cheeks and stammering speech infatuation that lasted a brief couple weeks, but then she was gone away to perform some other pharmacy related service, and I didn't see her again.

However, I thought about her and how she defied all of my previous stupid crushes. She wasn't haughty and dismissive. She wasn't emotionally unavailable. She smiled. She was friendly and outgoing. She was (dare I say it) somewhat normal.

So, I saw her again recently, and we talked for a bit while I was going over a chart, and we chatted pleasantly, and she had a negative left fourth finger test, and I thought to myself, "Ask her out. Give it a shot. Worst she can say is no." We seemed okay. We could have some chemistry. And so I scrounged up a little nerve.

Or I tried to find the nerve, and there was none there, so I said good-bye and left the hospital. And that is the end of the story of pharmacy girl.

Concession

friend: C'mon, there are some single girls in the program, you know... we need to have something to gossip about.
me: No, I'm not interested. I thought about it, but no.
friend: Are you sure? That would be a good match, I think.
me: No. Really, I thought about it, and no. I don't think we match at all.
friend: You say that like there's a specific person...
me: You and I both know that you're referring to a specific person.
friend: Well, just for fun... to get the ball rolling!
me: How would going out with someone I'm not interested in be fun?
friend: You can't say then that you don't have opportunities.
me: Quite honestly, I think I have conceded defeat.

My social life has come to a somewhat of a screeching halt. I was dating a bit in my intern year, but not since then, and not without some opportunities, as my friend was apt to point out. I've actually had women had expressed this sort of vague interest in me.

The problem is that I was not interested at all in these women. And it's not entirely me trying to date thin, attractive, chesty, blond 19 year olds. It's just that I can't talk to these women. It's a one sided conversation. There's no spark, no chemistry.

The arguments that I should 'have fun' and date 'just to do something' have been made to me, several times by multiple people in fact. But I can't bring myself to do it. I can't see wasting two people's time and money on a venture destined for failure. And I've done the leg work. I've talked to these women, had some legitimate conversations, but all going nowhere.

Even worse for me is that there are girls who I am interested in, but for the most part, they want nothing to do with me for one reason or another. This is not necessarily for malicious reasons, mind you, but boyfriends, fiancés, husbands, lesbian, or (the most dreaded) a patient.

I used to believe quite honestly that this whole nice guy routine was an effort that would pay off in the end, but I see now that being a 'nice guy' has really very little to do with dating. I mean, of course, it has an affect, but there are a variety of factors conspiring against me. For your pleasure, I will list them.

1. I am Asian in the heart of the Midwest. I am, quite literally, the only Asian person whom most people around me know. I am a curio. I am not dating material for the same reason that you don't have a spot picked out for hanging up a Picasso: you've never considered the possibility of owning a Picasso. Similarly, women I've asked out display not contempt or disdain or even scorn, but surprise at the thought of an Asian boy asking her out. How can this be?
   
   
2. I am, essentially, a hermit by nature. I don't enjoy going to clubs or bars or large social gatherings. I hate meeting new people, and like most introverts, such events are draining rather than 'fun.' I'd rather work. And like most hermits, my friends are also hermits, and we connect infrequently. I have tried to expand my social circle. I have reconnected with some friends. But all in all, I still would rather sit at home reading a book than go clubbing.
   
   
3. I am seriously out of shape. I need to lose some weight, yo.
   
   
4. My standards just might be bordering on ridiculous. What I want in a woman is not a trophy wife. I want someone smart and intelligent (not the same thing...), classy and graceful, eccentric and funny, with interests and passions. Now if this woman were to be 19, blond, and chesty, I wouldn't complain at all. But I've met a lot of women who were physically stunning, and mentally vapid. That's not what I want.
   
   
5. I am tremendously shy. I am. What can I say. I've tried to be more 'open' but I'm pretty shy still.
   
   
6. Apparently, I come off as mean. This will be a whole nother post at some time.

So, for now at least, I've given up on romance. I have other things that I'm worrying about, and it's not that I'm all sobbing about it like in med school. I'm not all 'woe is me, I'll never find true love. Boo hoo!' bullshit. But my life does feel palpably empty, like something is missing, and I don't really know what to do about that.

"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards." –Vernon Sanders Law

I was talking with a friend a little while back that my expectations for med school were just too high. "'How high?" he asked. "Did you think you'd be married by now?" I have to say that yes, I kind of did. That was unrealistic from the beginning, but it sort of speaks to the height that I was to fall over four years. And my friend did relay a simple truth. "I'm not sure why you thought med school would fix your problems. Med school's just an event. It doesn't change who you are."

But the real problem is that instead of making med school different from college, I sort of turned it into a repeat of the previous four years. It had the same crappy ups and downs, similar challenges, and similar results. And of course, similar regrets. Regrets like chasing after the wrong girl, like not studying harder, like making a boatload of friends but only trusting my high school ones, stuff like that.

There's a fantastic quote said by Franklin P Jones: "Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again." So at least I'm walking away from med school with experience. I can say that much. And hopefully, next time I meet a girl that's my type and the world seems convinced I should try to go out with, I won't be a moron and chase after another girl for a year or two and fuck everything up in the process.

Realizations about my love life

I was reading through the archives on this site. I enjoy it because it comforts me with the realization that all my problems are not new or special, but in fact festering boils on my existence. It got me thinking that for once in my life, I'm thinking different. Oh the situation is unchanged, notwithstanding the crap that has happened in the interval between then and now, But I'm glad that my opinion on the matter has changed significantly.

Because it's one thing to be unlucky in love. I mean, man, I've struck out more times than should be allowed by law. It's quite another thing to abandon hope entirely. Because I've made a few realizations in my life, and they're stupid realizations, but just because they're stupid doesn't make them any less true.

(1) I can't love someone if I don't love myself. I don't mean that in a narcissistic way. I just mean that when it comes down to it, loving someone else requires you to believe yourself worthy of such an emotion.

And along that line, (2) Happiness is something from within, and I have to learn to be happy by myself if I want to be happy with others. Inner joy isn't supplied by others. It's something gained from within. Happiness based on other people isn't happiness. It's no different than drugs or alcohol. It's a temporary euphoria that is lost as quickly as it's gained.

(3) Part of learning to love myself is accepting who I am. This I am working on. I've been working on it for quite some time. A couple years back, I realized that I was trying to change who I was to accommodate the love interests in my life, and that was a flawed strategy. I need to be myself, and accept that I am the best at being who I am. And that means accepting that I'm a private person, that I have a hard time sharing. I'm a goody-goody Catholic boy who'll quite likely remain a virgin for a long, long time. I draw pleasure from small things. I am very nostalgic. I get great satisfaction by pleasing others. I am conscientious. I am full of quirks and foibles and little sharp edges, and that's who I am, and there's no reason to change that or modify it.

Once I learn to accept myself, and to love myself, then (4) quite simply, I deserve to love and to be loved. I am who I am, and that is the person who deserves to be loved, not someone else.

But just because I deserve to love and to be loved, (5) that doesn't mean that I have any control over who loves me. I've been chasing after eidolons, fantasies. I did not learn until recently that finding the right person is more than attraction. It is finding a person that complements me, that is the other half of my puzzle piece in life.

(6) Love is not trying to fill the emptiness in my life with someone else, but it's trying to find someone who'll want to help me fill those holes. Love is not a solution to anything; it's a partnership. I've always viewed my life as empty and lacking, and maybe it is, but I'm not looking for someone to shore up the gaps. I'm looking for someone to help me along.

But the thing that I really came to terms with is that looking for love, real love, is playing with fire. Because the truth to life is that (7) if you want to be loved, you must love. Love isn't a one way street. And I can't be loved without loving. I can't take without giving. I can't expect a person to love me and not to love her back.

I'm still sorting through these little realizations, but I feel like it's time for me to get back into the dating world. And it's not that I have any prospects that I'm working on. It'd be nice if something just fell into my lap (no pun intended), but I think that it's simply a change in my attitude.

So, the short of the story is that I think I'm ready to try to start dating again, and that I'm kind of glad that I've had all this time off from it, in spite of all the shit I had to wade through, because I had some lessons to learn, and learning those lessons was valuable, because learning to accept myself for who I am is probably much more valuable to my existence than some scattered dates that led nowhere and would've caused a lot of heartache.

Crushes have nothing to do with love

I've known a lot of girls in my lifetime, and I have gotten my silly heart hung up on a whole bunch of them. And it seems like all the girls in my life, the ones that matter anyway, have fallen into two columns.

There are girls that I've had sickening, maddening crushes on. They are attractive to me in every sense. In their presence, I feel woozy and trip over my words. I never know what to say or how to say it. I admire everything they do or say. I find myself mildly obsessed with their lives. This is, for the most part, entirely unhealthy.

Then there are girls I'm so comfortable with that it's like we were joined at the hip. We get along like milk and cookies. We talk every day as if we haven't spoken in 15 years. And uniformly, I've been entirely uninterested in these girls, save one. It's not that they are unattractive, and it's not that they haven't been interested in me. It's just that I had my mind on other things, I guess.

I often gripe that a lot of women I know are interested in everything about me, but not me. There is nothing so annoying as having a girl describe her ideal mate, and she describes you down to what color boxers you're wearing. But you know that if she was presented with the choice between you and being locked in a foot locker full of spiders, she'd have to think about it.

I've had a pretty pitiful love life, and I have a whole list of people and situations that I enjoy blaming. But maybe it's because I've been trying after the wrong girls all along. Maybe it's because the women that are right for me are not the ones that I've been chasing after. Maybe I'm just as guilty of chasing after something I don't really want. And maybe I need to rethink the last ten years of my life.