Almost grown

It’s been a long time, far too long. When I finally sat down to write this essay, I got confused: should I tackle a serious topic, tell you where I’ve been, or maybe just forget about Essay O’clock altogether?

My latest essay goes back to months and months ago, the boycott had just ended and we had to pass our two semesters’ exams. I remember very well the joy of getting back to uni again because I was fed up with whatever that chapter of my life was.

It was a stressful time having to pass a lot of exams all at once and we all were under a lot of pressure, a pressure we all wanted to escape so we could get back to normal life.

Except, coming back was not as beautiful as I thought it would be, as a lot of my classmates,  I had to endure a draining, intense rotation that sucked the soul and life out of me. I also decided that I wanted to pass “l’internat” and started to cut sugar out of my diet. The combination of those three sent me into a spiral unlike anything I’d experienced before.

A residual anger has never left my side after the boycott, I was mad at our professors who didn’t stand up for us and at a whole population letting a government do as it pleases  without any proper accountability, not just regarding the medical students situation back then to be objective- although I do have a tendency of making my problems everybody’s problems, but also facing the different shapes and forms of limiting freedom of speech, censorship and silencing of journalists, marginalization of the inhabitants of Haouz, the silent disparaging passing of laws that unfavourably and damagingly affect citizens, the rising “zlayjiya” propaganda hiding behind nationalism, my sworn enemy “the green project” and the list goes on.

My undiagnosed lingering anger and exhaustion, the leftovers of the damages the boycott had caused, the constant stress I always find a way to put myself in like preparing ‘l’internat’ even though I didn’t care much for it, which is a point we will get back to later; have slowly yet surely turned me into someone I used to despise seeing in other people, someone full of vitriol, bitterness and negativity, which I was ashamed of being until I decided that it was time to confront myself.

For some time, despite my constant dedication to always learn and become a good doctor, I lost sight of the human side of medicine and for a while I only saw the disease instead of seeing the person, the sickness instead of the sick. I almost forgot that I was always dealing with somebody’s father or grandmother or brother and I found myself overlooking the human experience, which was the essence of everything, behind the illness.

From forgetting that patients do not know as much doctors know, to empathy fatigue, to dealing with actually rude patients, to emotional detachment, to feeling over worked and underpaid, finding an excuse to my regrettable behaviour was the easiest thing to do, and while I do understand myself, I just wish I didn’t really have to.

But I think what has opened my eyes to this matter was when my dear lovely beautiful grandma had to have knee surgery, I kept wondering how healthcare professionals would deal with her. I hoped nobody looked at her the wrong way, or had in their voices the slightest tone of being annoyed, and I wished that whoever had to engage with her looked at her with nothing but empathy and care. But what goes around comes around, how could I wish for that if I couldn’t act upon it myself?

It opened my eyes to what I had mistook for professionalism; simply show up at the hospital and just do the job without caring about anything else, as long as the job is done. I realized it for what it truly was; a dismissive behaviour towards my patients or dare I say, a dehumanization of individuals.

Not asking my patients how they were doing that day, forgetting to smile at them, failing to reassure them about their conditions, or neglecting to ask if they needed anything else, maybe slip in a little harmless joke to make them feel more at ease, putting more effort into my tone of voice and a little more effort to look at them with gentler eyes, It seems so small, but those gestures are the heart of care, something I’d lost sight of until my grandmother reminded me. They were not direct requirements in the job description, but I should have tried more.

Acknowledging my wrongful behaviour after that incident with grandma made me feel like a man who has to always be reminded that a woman is always someone’s daughter, mother or sister, a realization full of shame and disappointment. (In hindsight, I realized the irony and sorry I had to drag men down with me in this one)

But one thing was sure, the next time I walked in on a patient, I viewed them differently, I found it in me to joke with them and give them more patience to explain their conditions. It was undoubtedly relieving to know I was not the only one dealing with such unpleasant unfortunate feeling whenever I talked to my med student friends, but it was not a validation to continue the same cycle nor an excuse to keep behaving the same way.

Of course nothing is as hard or difficult as change, it is an everyday act of opposition and resistance towards the toxic yet easy habits you could adopt to free yourself, even temporarily, from the extra weight this job comes with, but I am hoping I never forget that I don’t want to make somebody feel worse than how they already feel.

Speaking of change, I celebrated my 25^th birthday about 3 months ago, and people really don’t lie about this age. It’s an age that somehow clicks in your brain once you get to it, not exactly at the same day as your birthday obviously, but maybe a few days or weeks before or after.

Everything feels calmer and less intense somehow, nothing feels as serious as it was, which feels ridiculous too because I am only 25 not 75; and the human body has never felt as mundane or absurd to me as it does right now, and as much as I love taking care of how I look because it makes me feel good, I wish we didn’t have to constantly cook and eat well, or wash and do our hair, or shop for new clothes or work out or sleep. The constant maintenance our bodies demand is oddly exhausting even though I enjoy expressing myself in different ways through hair, clothes, makeup and seeing satisfying results of having a good diet and exercising, I just wish we didn’t have to deal with these things every single day.

Weeks before “l’internat”, the post-25 clarity hits me mid preparations, and I realized even more how I genuinely don’t want to do it. So what did I do? I kept studying obviously because life is not a movie in which I see the meaning of life and instantly change perspectives. I mean don’t get me wrong, it is a challenging path full of difficulties and it teaches you a lot I am sure, and I respect people’s dedication to it and admire it, and I do have dedication, I have what it takes to face challenges and I always strive to do more and learn more, but those were not the reasons for which I took the road to that destiny. The more I look back, I can clearly tell that I had no business there, it sure taught me a lot, humbled me a lot, but the more I thought about it, I couldn’t lie to myself, I was only trying to get in to feel good about myself for reasons I don’t feel like detailing in this essay. I finally had to admit that I only wanted to do “l’internat” because it existed, because it is marketed as the road of excellence, which regardless of if it’s true or not, is not ever a good reason for anybody to pursue a goal… just for how it looked. My rigid ambition was fed by external perception rather than genuine desire- not because I truly wanted to learn more, since wanting to be a good doctor comes from an intrinsic will regardless of your status, and certainly not because I had a specific specialty in mind since the one I set my eyes on is generally always available in residency.

Back to 25, as I was saying, everything feels somehow lighter and less serious. So what, if I don’t graduate by the time I set in mind?

So what, if a professor yelled at us for whatever reason?

So what, if I don’t want to do the things I planned my life around anymore?

A lot of “so what” s. Not in a depressing way but in a freeing one.

The same things that used to happen at 22 and I used to see as the end of the world are now to me just another day.

I feel like my post-25 clarity has helped accept my failures and delays in life with so much grace (and let me tell you, I have never been graceful about anything negative in my life), and be more accepting of the fact that life has different timelines and choices for me, which I am learning to be more flexible with.

All I feel like I care about lately is pausing time. Like going to a café for an espresso and watching people go by- old men are really onto something with this one, silly me thinking they were only there for the coffee while they were collecting moments from around.

And even though time doesn’t really pause, for some time it just feels like it does, and that is one of the few moments I am the most serene, when I am immersed in those small sensory-rich moments, watching nannies pick up kids from schools, or teenagers shopping, or hearing some guy’s phone call with his girlfriend, or co-workers’ discussions after work, cars going by, birds chirping, the sky shifting colours. I savour each frame of what is in front of me at a time; I am humbled by the snippets of other people’s lives. This is my form of meditation, with eyes wide open, and my way of appreciating life, being part of the sounds and colours of life, in the middle of it all, taking time to acknowledge it and for a glimpse of a second; it feels like life has always been beautiful, like no problem has ever existed.

The feeling of wanting to trick time into not moving grows bigger, and as I live for an instant in that illusion of frozen time, all I do is be nostalgic and think of the past, like when  my mom used to pick me up from school and make me my favourite meal, or when my dad would let me skip school sometimes because I didn’t want to learn a poem we had to recite the day after, or to memories of my siblings and I growing up, or waking up my grandmother at 6 am to make me couscous, or demanding from my grandpa to get me a computer when I was only 7 and him getting it for me because he couldn’t refuse his first granddaughter’s wish, amongst a plethora of other warm memories.

I think about how I will never get to live these memories again, the same way I lived them before, with the same little feelings of a kid who still knew so little about the world and whose inner voice hasn’t really developed yet so she would say anything she has in mind directly and innocently, that is if she had a thought, instead of overthinking anything.

And as I live in my nostalgia, a lot of moments pass by, moments that become themselves nostalgic too because I never miss finding a way to romanticize the past, and so wherever I am in life, I will always mostly live in a past moment, which is why I will always think time is flying, why I will always look for ways to pause it. I keep circling that same loop, voluntarily and willingly.

And I don’t think I mind. It’s not an escape, just the way I choose to live. At least for now and it makes me happy.