Cycles, Circles, and Staffs

In undergrad, I dated a girl that I kind of thought I'd end up marrying. I can't recall why I thought this, other than that we made for a good story (like one of those "How We Met" stories that they show throughout "When Harry Met Sally"). We broke up you know, and then I moved to another city, except those two things happened in reverse, so there I was in this other city and I decided to take a little time to reflect - just for me. To figure out, really, if I could be alone. Of course, MOST of the women in this city weren't what I would call "moderately good-looking". There are some exceptions, as always, but for the majority - the ugliness was overwhelming. So I say all of that to say that it was easy to be alone, especially with friends like the aforementioned exception to the ugly rule.

Then I got back to the Metroplex, and by that time I was so lonely that I was literally hitting on anything that shaved its legs. And guys, if you're out there, I have to say that girls find this perhaps the most repulsive trait of all time. Having no standards is truly the most obvious sign of desperation, and if you're a Mad Player of the Ultimate Game, such as myself, you need to be free of as much desperation as possible. It took a while for my more attractive semi-humble-pseudo-confidence to overwhelm the desperation, and for things to get right back to normal.

I tell you this story to eventually get back around to the dating scene in which I've found myself this past year. As a Medical Student, you are prime to overwhelm the ladies that are looking out for their future. You are almost destined for automatic pre-approval in the credit check of romance. You're not quite a Doctor, but you might as well be to the local college hotties. This is the cockiness of Male Medical Students - knowing that you have this advantage - and it's really not something you can blame us for, since the system is meant to function like this. It's guaranteed - if you can get to this point, this Medical Student point, you can automatically kick yourself up a whole extra integer "On a scale from 1 to 10". That kicks me all the way up to 11. But I digress.

I found a girl that was, in her natural form, pretty perfect. The only problem is that circumstances and situations and even things like Faith had carried her into such a state of conflict with what I would describe as her natural form that she very rarely resembled that state of perfection. And I don't mean "perfection" as in she had no flaws. I just mean someone whose flaws I was very much willing to overlook because of how much potential I saw in us (in other words, the good qualities were of such a width and depth that there was hardly to be anything gained from attempting to find those minor impurities as a stain on her overall quality). Suddenly I feel as if I'm objectifying, but this time, that's not my point. In any event, she was a fantastic object, but torn in several directions at any one point by her competing desires.

Had she, at any point, fully devoted herself as a slave to any of these desires, I could have figured that out and gotten comfortable and made decisions based upon that. However, she never could, and I could never figure out where her motivations were - and if there's anything you should know about someone whose motivations you can't understand, it's that you never learn to trust them. How can you trust someone if you don't know what causes them to act a certain way? How can you extrapolate their behavior if you have nothing consistent to base it upon? You can never trust a person's words - they're much too prone to exaggerate the mood of the moment to the detriment of truth or clarity (ie, I want to sleep with you, therefore I love you). So, when dating her, I felt unsettled, untrusting. Uneasy really. There was SO MUCH there, but there was SO MUCH MISSING. I wonder if that's the nature of all relationships - if you can take that statement and make it universal. Maybe people with successful marriages make it work simply by ignoring the missing parts, or by trusting that they'll get filled in later, at some later moment of the marriage, like when their spouse becomes a habit, or incontinent... Or both.

So now I'm back to that stage of helpless desperation, and it strikes me that regardless of any status betrothed by the title of Medical Student, regardless of my sexy sense of style or amazing hair or inspiring personality, the same episodes from the entirety of my past keep repeating themselves, spelling out in perfect clarity the truth of the matter - that it's me, that it's always been me, and that anything that's been missing has been on my end, and no amount of explanation or self-interrogation is going to change that. Something needs to change in order for something to change. One can't keep doing the same things and expect different results.

So what is it that changes? Is it expectations, or is it settling for some "Love Less Visceral"? Is it commitment beyond the introductory stage no matter what hardships are presenting themselves? Is it pursuing different kinds of girls? Is it the timing of things, or the focus of the courtship, or the manner in which everything plays out? Is it relying more on other's objective advice, or maybe (more likely) less?

Whatever it is, there's plenty of time to find it out. Another year might do it - maybe after I come up for air on the other side of boards, I'll have it all figured out. In the meantime, I'll waste my introversion energy on school work, devoting myself to that more constant muse - the serpent and the staff - the maintenance of life.

Second Year, Test 4

I will end up a Cardiologist. I'm almost certain of this. Only 8 more years, and I'll be there. 8 years of devotion based on 5 weeks in the classroom studying pathology of the heart. Does that seem a little extreme? Do you think rotations will change that much? How dull could Internal Medicine possibly be?

My hands sweat like you wouldn't believe. It's a good thing I'm so charming and good-looking - that makes it alright that the hands sweat like that. So there it is.