Low

I spoke to Mum after that last post – I just suddenly felt so low! I don’t know whether it was tiredness or being away from home or the events of the last couple of days at work – probably a combination of all of those things.

I think in some ways I did well, because I felt pretty awful and yet I was able to reflect on the last few days and remember all the good things that had happened. I was looking at photos of Mae Hong Son again today and occasionally just getting a flicker of that excitement and anticipation I wrote about yesterday. I remembered what the guy from AVI and my mentor from work had said about me. I thought about how I’d handled the emergencies at work, how I’d been able to think about them clearly and systematically and how I’d been able to work it all out for the best.

I was talking about how I don’t think he understands the separation and what it really means, doesn’t understand that our lives can no longer in any way be shared, doesn’t see why I don’t want to share what I’m doing with him. Mum said that the cuts need to be as clean and surgical as possible, because I don’t want a tear – good analogy I suppose. Thinking about it, I see that the only way to demonstrate it to him is to do it; do it not primarily to show him, but because talking about it and doing it are mutually exclusive. The reality of it is so difficult. As my resident left today his parting words were, “Don’t call him!” and I was glad that he said that. I need all the reinforcement I can get.

Mum said somethiing on the phone tonight which I didn’t expect – she said that she had been really surprised during this whole time that I so lack in self-confidence and self-esteem, and that she hadn’t realised that I felt that way about myself. I suppose she’s right; I think it’s a mixture of being so extroverted and being so terrified of failure that has sort of led me to a cycle of not believing in myself and constantly needing to prove myself wrong. I guess I have always on some level then extrapolated that to the way that I think others must think of me. Mum says I need to take the comments of others on board – that I am capable, that I am talented, that I am valued and that others think highly of me – and just accept them for what they are. She says that none of these people owe me anything, none of them have anything to gain by sucking up to me, so I should just believe them and believe that what they say is true. I do know that she’s right, I have at times over the last few weeks thought about this of my own accord. It is especially hard at the moment though. My resident was saying last night that when he had a bad breakup he kept thinking, “If the one person who knows me better than anyone doesn’t want me – then who could?”. That is exactly how I feel – not just about whether people will want me, but whether people think I’m a good person, or whether anyone will love me, or whether I have real worth, even whether I’m a good doctor. Stupid. But true.

People keep telling me that my time away will be life-changing, that nothing will look quite the same again afterwards and that it will force me to reassess, reprioritise, give me new perspective and new drive. In some ways I am impatient to get to a year from now, because I want to know how I will be by then. I want to know what will feel important, whether this will really feel less important (even though I know rationally that it will), whether my career ambitions will change or whether my outlook on life will be different.

I guess I just have to live it out and see. At the moment I’m just sitting here with my computer, my candle and Ben Lee playing in the background, wondering how it will all happen.