I sat at a table with my family, watching friends and co-residents rejoice through hugs and chiming clinks of fluted glass. They reveled. Don’t get it twisted, I reveled too. We were done with residency; it was over. The finish line of our marathon that began with our first A in first grade was crossed. Joy took flight.
Yet, there in my seat, as I awaited recognition and formal receipt of my marathon completion by form of paper certificate, listening to a beautiful speech about these years being the best years of our life and the promise of our would-be careers and the fortune of our future communities to have us as physicians, I knew I didn’t belong and didn’t care to belong. Anymore.
All I wanted was to feel like myself again. And that feeling was not psychiatry.
I recently devoured The House of God. What a book—outlining the fictional intern year of Dr. Roy G. Basch—that makes one consider the empty promises of medicine. The book makes one wonder if it was worth it.
Over my lunch for the past month, I traced our neighborhood creek to a bench with a view, where I would read as many pages as possible before entering a trance into the forest. How long did the trance last? Five minutes? Thirty minutes? I wasn’t sure. I had the thousand-yard stare, remembering suppressed hospital memories. There in the forest I saw fractures of the soul. I saw what was surrendered to survive. And I won’t deny, at the hands of The House of God, I saw streams of compartmentalized emotion flow down my cheeks.
Was it worth it? What did I give up to get here?
Tuesday night, my class of co-residents met for our quarterly, self-led journal club. This is not mandatory, like the hundreds of required meetings of residency. No CME credits were offered at the end of the hour-long meeting either. Nope, just a chance to catch up, share what’s stoking everyone’s curiosity, and watch children pop into the Zoom screen to say hello. When these get togethers started, not long after graduation, I considered opting out. I’m not a psychiatrist anymore, I thought. I don’t really belong anyway. What’s the point if I’m not practicing? But I kept going, compelled really, and wanted to see the people that know something about me others cannot. And last night was my turn to host discussion; so I reviewed The House of God.
As we parsed through the novel’s themes and its infamous characters, finding parts of our story within, I understood how much I appreciated these people. And how much I felt myself, while I was with them.
When Covid-19 ushered the world onto Zoom, our weekly didactic meetings as a part of our residency training also shifted virtual. I have spent weeks of my life with these people, face to screen, on Zoom. As a consequence, our group has a well-trained habit and flow, almost a muscle memory for our interactions.
Last night, the flow, at least for me, was different.
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Gone was the usual self-consciousness while speaking. In its place was contentedness with what I said and what we discussed. No doubts about my contributions. On camera, I looked older, I must say. Something about my eyes was saggier than I remembered. Yet, I cared little about that and more about how their lives were going.
During previous meetings, numbering in the hundreds, I participated with that unresolved, ambivalent part of myself. But last night, I was just me: the psychiatrist, the furniture refurbisher, the writer, the guy trying to figure it out, the guy proud to share the journey with these people, and finally, the guy I wanted to be at graduation: myself.
I belonged and wanted to belong. There. I was connected with the parts of me that will always be a psychiatrist. That loved parts of psychiatry. That realizes now that parts of those years were truly the best years of my life. And that it was worth it.
In one of the last passages of The House of God, Dr. Basch’s girlfriend Berry summarizes why medicine was the best thing that’s happened to him, despite the darkness:
This might have been the only thing that could have awakened you. Your whole life has been a growing from the outside, mastering the challenges that others have set for you. Now, finally, you might just be growing from inside yourself.
It’s a story as old as medicine and a damn good reminder:
We must belong to ourselves before we belong anywhere else.
From a life I was not, I learned who I was and learned 32 lessons I’ll never forget. Get my free e-book outlining each lesson, HERE.
