In our tale of self-becoming, desperation is demanded. It’s how we show the powers that be that we care, that we’re willing to do anything and sacrifice everything, to earn back union with ourselves.
Six months from residency graduation—the true summit of the medical education, not to be confused with the false summit of medical school graduation—I almost quit. To my therapist, I said I was done, ready to turn around and walk my happy ass right off the medicine mountain. Finally, I didn’t need to make medicine work to know who I was.
Though, to quit could deliver fatal blows to other parts of my life. How would my fiancee (now wife) and her family support our pending marriage if I quit medicine right before we wed? How would I pay back my loans? How could I live with being that close to finishing and quitting? What precedent would that set?
But I needed to quit. I was done. Or, so I thought.
After revealing the medicine escape to my therapist—to my benefit, she didn’t endorse or deny my course, only holding it up for me to make my choice— I began to see the consequences of quitting, then. Aside from healing an ego wound from the past, leaving didn’t serve me yet. Graduating would, because after, I’d have more choices, operating from a position of strength, not escape.
So, I developed a plan to survive the last six months, despite the knowledge I was done. This is where things got desperate, and I hit my knees.
Above my closet was a ledge, where I taped twenty-five, one by two inch strips of paper, each adorned with a person, idea, place, or quote, anything related to something I loved. For each of the twenty-six weeks of residency before me, I had a reason that was bigger than myself to survive it. Each day, when the urge to walk mounted, I thought about who or what was on that week’s scrap. And when I got home Friday afternoon, I pulled down that scrap of motivation, and said thank you, one week closer to freedom.
It wasn’t pretty. My wife, when we recently traveled to Orange County and stayed in that very apartment with my old roommate, said that witnessing the scrap paper spectacle was the moment she worried most about me. It was dire but what was needed to to earn my shot, which I get to live out now.
Desperation, though unbecoming, is how we find our footing in our tale of self-becoming (this week’s essay serves as another lesson in desperation). So, do what you have to do to survive up on the mountain, even it means you have to hit your knees.
To living a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
