Why did I stay inside medicine for so long? Why didn’t I quit after a year? Or two? Or seven? I always knew what I wanted—which was to quit medicine—but I took one wrong turn and kept driving. For eight years.
Why?!?!?!?
My best guess is that I needed it.
I went to medical school because my inner conviction wasn’t yet strong enough to steer my car. What occurred next, as I traced the tortuous highway through medical school, past psychiatry residency, and into board certification, was a series of challenges that forced me into hard choices. These navigational choices—do or don’t, right or wrong, bad or good—distilled what was once a weak sense of self into pure resolve. Along the way, not that I knew it, I was earning self-belief, so that when the day came to make the right turn, on time, I’d make it.
If you’re driving through somewhere hellish, somewhere you never in your life imagined you’d be, maybe it’s just a wrong turn that’s getting you closer to right. One challenging choice at a time.
To livin’ a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
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