In the months before medical school started, I wanted the same thing I wanted in the months before Ieaving medicine: an answer to what I’d do instead of medicine. Man, I needed that answer.
In both periods, the answer never came, and I was wrong about my needs. When I did ultimately resign from my job, it wasn’t because I had my answer or had it figured out. Nope, I left medicine because it was necessary to survive as myself.
That is what I needed: to be myself. Which could only occur with space. In the pauses, I had to figure out who I was after medicine. At the end of the road, things cleared and answers appeared (in this week’s Lay With Gators to Walk With Gravitas, I expand on how this happened).
At times, particularly in the moments it seems hardest to say it, there’s art in saying “I don’t know”. That phrase led me to a solitary morning where I sat on our porch, drinking coffee and staring into the hills. For some reason, I desired to write. So, I wrote. And kept writing because it felt good. That morning was far from an answer, but it was a start.
A start is all we really need, available anytime, as long as we’re willing to say “I don’t know”.
To living a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
