Pauses

I find today I am restless. Probably because I came back from an escape from my real life and obligation for a month, to be slapped in the face by the fact that I had NOT run away from my life at all. Or those little to-do lists I had kept hidden suddenly came back. It got me thinking about punctuated breaks in life, and what is so scary and so appealing about them.

I’ve had many a pause in my life. Most of them I did not chose explicitly. They were summers, or unemployed months, or just months in transition. They never sat easily with me. Especially when I was given the luxury to do with them what I wanted. Why is that? What is it about those moments of remaking in our lives that makes us so worried we won’t use them as effectively as others. Or worse, other people will judge us if we don’t use them at all.

I guess it becomes much harder when those moments come while you are part of a group of overachieving people, who use breaks to pile on more things they “should do”. I speak now from the boring standpoint of a first year medical student who is somewhat disappointed with what the undergraduate medical experience looks like.

In the first eight months of school I saw my personality go from someone who enjoyed listening to the radio, reading the paper, going to galleries; to someone who barely had time to comb my hair. So when the school year ended and I had the chance between research about small protein transmitters on the outside of brain cells and taking a summer for myself, I did something most people in my class would never do... I took the summer for myself.

Initially there was a lot of “shoulding” that went around. Shouldn’t you be doing research this summer? Shouldn’t you be studying more? Shouldn’t you be volunteering at an old age home? I even found myself doing it. Shouldn’t I take that offer from a professor to go do research in the Congo? I had desperately wanted to all year... but all of a sudden, I was tired.
I wanted to do all those things, but had grown up enough to know I was in no place to do any of them well at this moment. For once I made the decision that I needed this summer for myself, to heal, so when the time came for me to be useful for others, I truly would be.

I have spent the last month escaping responsibility and writing and painting and doing yoga. It has been a difficult ride mostly because of the guilt associated with finally doing what I want, being creative and enjoying myself thoroughly. I am allowing myself to get to know me, before life becomes too busy again. And maybe that’s what’s different about me and my colleagues. I finally feel like I need to develop my relationship with myself. I need to better understand who this person is I am supposed to become.

I am working on the guilt too. Being honest with what I know about myself, what I need, and being okay that it isn’t the same as everyone else