How I lost something so vital is unfathomable, now. But then again, as we have discussed, when you sacrifice who you are, you lose what you love. And what I lost was the joy of talking to people.
Years into residency, I found myself incapable of asking follow-up questions during conversation. Depersonalized, I would observe myself talking to others, hands in pockets, nodding, and offering nothing else of substance. Stranger even, was that I couldn’t do anything about it. When I tried to ask a question, further the conversation, and actually get to know people, because you know I’m a human being, I was mute. Deprived of curiosity. It was actually painful to try, like the pain felt during the fourth set of squats with lactic acid shooting from your eyeballs. So, I stopped trying.
Last weekend I was back in Orange County to officiate a best friend’s wedding, an enlightening experience in itself, where I witnessed too the return of my will to participate in conversation.
I saw my friends for the first time in a year. Without our active participation in residency to bemoan, it freed us to talk about life after prison release. Kids. Marriage. Job changes. Mid-life crisis (my contribution). I wanted to hear about everything they were doing, but there wasn’t enough time, and as the last song played, I had questions left to question. Catching up left to catch.
As a psychiatrist, my job was to be with people. Part of that being required I ask questions from genuine curiousity. Yet, as I did this for years, listening and being with people inside of a job I did not want to do (but privileged to have gotten to do), I lost the ability to be with people outside the job. This was a slow erosion that happened over years, until at the end, I was unrecognizable to myself in ordinary conversations.
Looking at this loss and recent revival, it has me thinking about a filter for application to my day-to-day:
Make life choices that has you enjoying talking to people.
It’s too important to lose again.
To living a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD