Thursday, October 23, 2014

Where do I go from here

Over the last few weeks a lot has happened in some areas of my life and in other not so much. I’ll begin by talking about Fall break, which was about two weeks ago. I went home with my best friend Devi to visit her family and friends in Thorton Colorado (just outside Denver). The trip was a long one. It takes 8 hours to drive straight there (not exactly going the speed limit). We gained an hour on our way there and lost an hour on our way back. We went in Devi’s car which unfortunately (or fortunately) is a stick shift, which meant that I could not help with the drive. I did my best though to stay awake and keep her company.

I was really excited for this trip. One, I was going to finally go mountain climbing (a task I had been planning and failing to do for almost a year now), two, I was going to see the places that my best friend loved and had told me about, and finally, and most importantly, I was going to get the opportunity to reconnect with my dearest friend. During the first two months of school, I had been anything but a good friend. So caught up in my own suffering, I found it difficult to talk opening and closely with her. Each time I spoke with her, I would watch her face frown and her eyes intensify with a mixture of worry and pity. It hurt me to see the hurt in her and I knew that as someone who had just come back from a life changing journey of her own to India, she was suffering in much the same way I was. It was my hope that during this trip we could get back to the core of our friendship and it did. I think that is what made this trip the best for me. No matter what I saw, or did, I got a best friend back and I got to make some new memories with her.

We only spent 3 and ½ days in Colorado, but it was filled with plenty of activity. Devi had numerous favourite coffee shops to show me, and that is what we did. We also left a little time for work, as the first day was spent homeworking (yes I made that a verb), with a little break through a park. This break was actually quite a nice surprise as the park near the library (where we spent the rest of the afternoon) had hundreds of prairie dogs…they were extremely adorable and I had never seen them so up close and personal. The next day we went to downtown Denver and I got to admire the long pedestrian walk way and some of the finer points of Denver’s public transportation. We also just saw the sights and sounds of the city and I was once again struck with the ways cities function in the US.

Now, I have been looking at Med schools and a lot of my choices have reflected a very careful consideration of the environment around that med school. I have looked at schools in cities which I think would have some of the lifestyle choices that I want to experience. Denver is on that list (University of Colorado, Denver). I was really hoping that Denver would feel new, and fresh and innovative…but it didn’t. It felt like Indy, or KC, or any other American city I have been to (with a few exceptions). I was a bit disappointed. This did kind of scare me. Maybe the feeling I was looking for, the public transportation, the nature cityscape, was a dream or a fabrication that I was never going to find again. I tried not to let this bother me. There are plenty beautiful things in Denver as well and I was grateful for the opportunity to explore it with a local.

We ended the day in Denver by going to the art museum with Devi’s mother. It was a great experience. We saw a local exhibit from a oil painter that I found captivating. We limited ourselves to two exhibits and I was thoroughly impressed with the scope and beauty of the museum. There was a moment though that stopped me dead in my tracks. I have made great strides in my ability to get over Oxford and my experience. I no longer feel the weight and longing that I did and I can usually talk about it freely without having to revisit the depression that I felt. But something about walking through the art museum reminded me of one of the last times I had been to an art museum, the Ashmolean near the end of my stay. It was as though the wind had been knocked out of me and I wondered if I wouldn’t collapse where I stood. Just another reminder that you can’t run away from your past and there will always be scars.

The last full day we spent in Denver was the one that I was looking forward to the most. Getting up extremely early (5am), Devi and I set off for Estes Park to go mountain climbing. We went to one of her more familiar trails and set off in the early hours to reach Tiger lake. It took about an hour or so to drive to Estes park from Devi’s home. When the car turned a corner and stretched before me was a valley which contained a small town beside Estes Park and the snow capped mountains just beyond, it was breath taking. I could feel my self grow more excited. We started the trail at about 8am (this was after grabbing coffee at another one of Devi’s favourites). It is a good thing I had a lot of enthusiasm because it was a constant uphill battle towards the lake. We climbed so high that it began snowing and both Devi and I covered ourselves back up in layers. I felt the challenge, but always kept up with the quick pace that a natural of the mountains, Devi, took. We reached the lake, after crossing some rapids with the bridge out, about 4 hours later at noon. We were getting a little tired, but mostly we were cold. We didn’t stay too long before turning around and making our way back. Sometimes you never realize how long you have been going up hill until you start going down it. It was a bit worrying going down, as the trail was littered with jagged rocks and once or twice I landed on them wrong. I tried to keep cheerful, but by the end of the journey, I was hurtin pretty bad. My hips were surprisingly the first to protest and I was relieved to reach the car. That said, I felt very accomplished. I have a fitbit pedometer and all around fitness calculator, which I wore through the whole journey. It felt good to accomplish the 16 mile hike round trip and climb the equivalent of 288 flights of stairs. I like to feel that I have earned my day, I have earned the opportunity to live, I have demonstrated my youth and fitness. Though it is clear it wore me out, as I crashed at 10pm that evening (an early night for a college student).

The last day we enjoyed some more time with Devi’s family before making the long and exhausting journey back. The drive back was a lot harder than the drive there, but I was grateful to have gotten to take the journey with my best friend.

Since coming back, I have continued to balance my social and academic life. It is working out better now, but I am struck by the constant grind that is academics at Jewell. I still struggle finding meaning in all of it. One of the good things that has happened is that my Medical School application is finally live and I have begun filling out the numerous secondary applications for the 9 schools that I am applying to. This has gotten me thinking about what I want to do after med school (I realize this is looking a bit far). I have begun to try and imagine my life as a doctor. There is one thing that has been rolling around in my head quite a bit. I have developed a fierce affection for infectious disease (this I’ve had for a long time) and I have also become very sensitive to global crisis. For awhile I joked about working for the CDC combating infectious disease in the lab, but with my new found global interests, I am thinking that maybe it would be better to look at a more global organization. I am honestly considering a career with the world health organization. Now there is a part of that which terrifies me. The idea of going into the developing world (far from my western amenities) is a struggle for me, but I also really like the idea of helping people and being there to fight crisis. I’m not adverse to putting myself at risk for such a goal either. I also like the freedom that such a career would give in terms of livability. Being a part of an international organization will give me the opportunity to see the world and possibly be based in any city I like. The restraints that I have now become aware of as a United States citizen may be more flexible as I truly get to be a global citizen. I’m of course not committing to anything yet, but it has been on my mind and it will take some time for me to sort the reality of the situation to the fantasy that I have constructed in my head. But it is worth mentioning.

I guess to conclude, I am trying to make the most of my situation here. I am trying to incorporate the lessons I have learned and the experiences I have had to my future in a real way. I still talk with people from the UK every day and I am touched by the friendship that I have found there. I am looking forward to visiting again next summer. There is a community there and it is waiting for me. There is a part of me that will never feel whole again without it. In the mean time, I am trudging forward, intrepidly and with a little bit of weariness. But, it is safe to say, all things considered, I’m doing just fine.

Until Then,

Adventures Await!

Thursday, October 2, 2014

This is what Friends are For

The last two weeks have been more of the same. By that I mean, I have been crushed and beaten and despite my efforts to be a good person, I have failed. Despite this, I have really validated some of things I learned about myself over the last year and have come to new revelations about myself. It is very difficult to express grief (I feel offended by anyone who describes it as angst). I have also reached the point where I refuse to let myself wallow, because honestly that is what I have been doing. I have allowed myself to take joy in grief, particularly twisted satisfaction in the form of self perceived martyrdom.

The week before last was homecoming. I have my own reservations about the nature of homecoming and particularly the way my university practically forces everyone to participate through the strict homecoming competition. Even with my reservations about the meaning behind such activity, I do generally enjoy the opportunity to work towards something and I think by now, most of you know how competitive I am. It was probably during the practices for homecoming that I realized how vital it is for me to have a creative outlet. We were practicing our song and dance for competition and the activity, the theatrics of the event sent me into a creative high of un-abandoned joy though perhaps a bit chaotically. The opportunity to be theatrical, to improv, and creatively express myself had been so stifled since my return. Without regularly role playing (or GMing), I was missing a piece of myself and it was very clear that this was a major component to my unhappiness. To some degree, this realization spurred my seeking alternatives, and I have, though tenuously, found a group of people to role play with again.

Another problem with homecoming for me is how it affects my health. A good majority of homecoming requires screaming and cheering as loud as possible (in order to win the competition). I suffer from migraines on occasion. Migraines for me are triggered through exertion of my voice and result in aberrations of my vision followed by a painful headache (enough to knock me out of doing anything), and if I remain conscious, regional numbness and tingling. Even if I take the maximum dose of ibuprofen, I still get a headache. Not to mention, the next day, I am usually scattered and suffer from secondary lack of focus and mental fortitude. I avoid migraines as much as possible and have even become attune to notice when I am approaching the point of no return for them. Every year that I have participated in homecoming, I have gotten a migraine. Of course, this year was no different. This was not made better by my required participation. It makes me feel awful to let down the members of my sorority. I want to be able to participate, but I am always hesitant and it is not often understood my need to step back to avoid disaster.  

So homecoming was busy and emotionally draining. Fortunately that weekend I was able for the first time in two weeks to hang out with friends. I felt revitalized (well perhaps not physically, yay parties). Friendship is all I need to sustain me. For the first time in weeks, I actually felt a considerable amount of peace and happiness, even when everything else in my life was a reminder that nothing had really changed.

This last week has been far less eventful, but still a reminder that I’m not through the woods yet. There is a degree of distance that I have undergone. The emotions are less intense, but I will admit that this has left me wistful. A reminder about the impermanence of everything. I will admit that this has brought on a considerable bought of nostalgia. As I mark the one year mark from when I left Oxford, the ability to visualize that time has become so clear. Though the feelings and emotions associated are held at a distance with the bittersweet mark of nostalgia.

One of the classes that I am taking, and I don’t think I’ve complained about on this blog, is my Critical Thought and Inquiry capstone (for non-Jewell people this just means final course in the core curriculum). It is a class which focuses on the relationship between Plague Piety and Public Policy. Now you might be saying, “Kayla, didn’t you pretty must take this class in Oxford through your human growth and development epidemiology course?” and the answer would be yes. Yes I did. I could teach this class most days. Yet another example of the frustrations I am having with this year. But ignoring that fun little tidbit about my life, the reason I bring it up is to talk about one of the books we are reading in it. Camus’s Plague does perhaps the best job capturing some of my emotional states over the last few months. In his book, he follows the narrative of town in Algeria as it is hit by a plague and enters a quarantine. In particular, his writing in the first part of act 2 is particularly poignant. At this point in the story, the town has shut down its boarders suddenly and without warning for most of its people. This has left a number of people trapped inside the town and a number of people trapped outside. He spends most of this first section discussing the feelings of separation that the people within the quarantine zone suffered. The following are quotes that I think capture the many moments and frustrations that I felt I faced and thus felt great empathy for.

 “It was undoubtedly the feeling of exile --- that sensation of a void within which never left us, that irrational longing to hark back to the past or else to speed up the march of time, and those keen shafts of memory that stung like fire” (Camus 71).

“Therefore they forced themselves never to think about the problematic day of escape, to cease looking to the future, and always to keep, so to speak, their eyes fixed on the ground at their feet” (Camus 72).

 “Thus, too, they came to know the incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in the company with a memory that serves no purpose. Even the past, of which they thought incessantly, had a savor only of regret.” (Camus 73).

 “Hostile to the past, impatient of the present, and cheated of the future, we were much like those whom men’s justice or hatred, forces to live behind prison bars” (Camus 73).

“’But, damn it, Doctor, can’t you see it’s a matter of common human feeling? Or don’t you realize what this sort of separation means to people who are fond of each other?’
Rieux was silent for a moment, then said he understood it perfectly. He wished nothing better than that Rambert should be allowed to return to his wife and that all who loved on another and were parted should come together again…
‘No,’ Rambert said bitterly, ‘you can’t understand. You’re using the language of reason, not of the heart; you live in a world of abstractions.’
 The doctor glanced up at the statue of the Republic, then said he did not know if he was using the language of reason, but he knew he was using the language of the facts as everybody could see them---which wasn’t necessarily the same thing” (Camus 87).

"Abstraction for him was all that stood in the way of his happiness. Indeed, Rieux had to admit the journalist was right, in one sense. But he knew, too, that abstraction sometimes proves itself stronger than happiness; and then, if only then, it has to be taken into account" (Camus 91)

So, hopefully his words can better express the way I have been feeling. I hate to have to defer to the words of another to express myself, but I was struck by the skill that these passages had at capturing those feelings.  But once again, I foresee your comment. You say, “but Kayla, you are not in a quarantine. You are not physically prevented from going places. Probably most all, you are not faced with death and loss in the same way as the people in this book faced them. Surely your emotions could not hold the same strength.”

To that I say, I think they do. The quarantine is not imposed by the government, it does not result in physical death and the people I know and care about are still within touch via Skype and many other means of communication which makes my position all the more privileged. However, the internet does not contain the same reality as real life and is subject to a number of conditions that aren’t necessarily always true. In particular, does the other person have technology capable of communication, do you or the other person have internet. Images can not replace physical presence. I am not free to go anywhere. I am restricted by convenience. Limited by what is inconvenient. And the more I am absent in those people’s lives, the more they diminish in significance and reality as I do for them. Perhaps we are all quarantined in such ways, but the situation is made painfully apparent to me through this abrupt transition. I am struck each time by how much my life in Oxford feels like a fantasy. My travels must have happened in my imagination, because the memory is no more real than television. That is what is most painful. Reading this passage of Camus’s book nearly brought me to tears as I found myself face to face with my own reality.

All this being said, the only way to move forward is positively. I have to keep trying to make things better and I have to keep fighting the oppressive feeling of exile. I have learned that I don’t advocate for myself when I am suffering. I am more inclined to value the suffering of another over my own. I will trap myself into complaining about my own suffering but not doing anything about it.  It is self-centered in a way that is self-gratifying and I need to make changes. So I am trying, one day at a time. For now though, I may dwell in some nostalgia, but only for a moment.

Source: Camus, Albert. The Plague. New York: Modern Library, 1948. Print.