fucking metaphors and shit.

man. so, recently: stress galore, bad mood galore. i'm having one of those periods of extreme stress at work, where i start self-doubting just a little bit.

i mean, it's impossible not to. when you choose the path of medicine, you choose it early. while your friends are off smoking pot behind the high school, you're joining clubs and doing sports to show the colleges you're a well-rounded person. while your friends are changing their majors 17 times and taking human sexuality, you're taking molecular biology and human physiology and immunology and endocrinology to prep you for med school. there's no real room or time for exploration - you better crank the fuck down and get shit done, or you get left behind.

what ends up happening, though, is while the fact that you're SURE you love this shit, you're POSITIVE you wanna follow this path, is the only way you'll even survive all the rigors of taking it - you always, always retain this little seed of self-doubt. cuz i've never had a chance to really explore. i never took human sexuality or intro to astronomy. i never took any of the hundreds of cool, random classes in college that my friends did because i was always, always, running with my nose to the ground and my eyes on the prize.

so now that i've almost got the prize, now that i'm locked into this very last phase of getting the prize, i have these moments when it's just fucking overwhelming (like it's supposed to be, heh), and...

shit. see, i even reason it out to myself when i'm ranting. this is why sometimes i wonder if maybe i DIDN'T pick the right path. if maybe - just maybe - out of the hundreds of other paths i could've taken but never even tried - one of them was the "right" one. because i never LET myself wonder. not aloud, at least. not on paper, either. all the doubts are in my mind, and as soon as i start going into doubt, i talk myself out of it.

i'm having trouble expressing this, i think.

the bottom line is, i'm afraid, sometimes, that i've made the wrong choice. the idea terrifies me because i'm so way, way, way beyond the point of no return. but i never even looked to both sides before crossing the point, so there's no way, really, for me to know. i've always just forced my gaze back on center whenever i've tried to look, and i do that even now, when i try to look backwards.

seems like cheesy metaphor's the only way i can say this. heh.

i am fucking plagued by doubt right now. just ... haunted by it. i don't know why. not really. i'm stressed, yeah, but i'm not that stressed. but i look around at all the bright-eyed faces of the 3rd-year med students just starting their rotations and i wonder how they can be so certain of themselves. i look around and wonder how they can be so absolutely sure their path is the right one, and how i could've, once upon a time, been so blindly sure, as well.

i'm still convinced it is the right one. hell, if it wasn't, i think i would've realized it and bailed by now. but still.

still. the fucking doubt, you know?

i just need some way to be certain. absolutely certain. but i think that's one of those things where i'd be looking for an answer that might not even exist.

and of course, there's also the fear that this ISN'T right for me. i'm cut out for it but it's not cut out for me. does that make any sense? that idea terrifies me. that i could've worked so hard, 28 years of my life, one third of my FUCKING LIFE, to come to this point, and maybe - just maybe - be wrong.

==

this is why i've been so fucking on-edge lately. the slightest things set me off. the slightest, tiniest things make me go off. my stress at work feeds into my doubt feeds into my stress feeds into my doubt, and i haven't had a real break since.. hell, since i can't even remember. it's been just one thing after another for so long. grant applications. papers. patients. new wards. new shit to learn. new shit to practice. and then my dad, and his fucking company - he's been starting one for the last 3 years or so - he didn't have any employees for a long time so i was basically doing his shit as well. and there's just been no respite for...jesus, to be honest, i think for about 2 years. the last time i really had no stress was a week-long break i took in the summer of 2001.

i need a fucking break. this winter, i'm taking a fucking break. 3 weeks, and i'm not going to do shit. i'm not coming online, i'm not going to work. i'm going to fucking europe or something and i'm going to wander in the shadow of the wonders of the world and not think about conferences, meetings, the real world.

look at me, spewing my troubles across the page. i hate doing this. i fucking hate unloading.

==

i'm dividing this up into chunks because my thoughts are in disconnected chunks. heh.

==

so anyway. tonight. random bad mood again. god knows what set me off. the smallest things make me go off these days. i think maybe it was because another friend of mine was grumpy, and it just kinda... i don't know. infected me. that has a way of happening.

heh. so yeah. my bad mood just exploded on me like a fucking thunderstorm out of the blue. i always feel bad when that happens, because someone's gonna take the brunt of it sooner or later, and usually they don't deserve it because when i'm in a bad mood, most often it's something that has NOTHING to do with anyone but me.

so then i went offline. went for a joyride. was just gonna go for an hour but it kinda went long. i drove up to marin county past the golden gate bridge and i came back; i was still kinda revved up somehow, and i kept having this urge to just floor the pedal and go faster and faster, which i recognized as a pretty fucking dangerous urge.

it's like i felt like maybe if i just drove fast enough i could outrun the sense of doors closing on me.

that's what i feel like sometimes lately. that doors are closing on me. like everyone around me is so fucking placid, so fucking happy in their place, and somehow i'm still searching. it's like their fucking lives are already over. they're just settling down to go through the motions now, and me, fuck, i feel like my life is still just getting started. or it should be. i feel like i should still have unlimited possibilities in front of me.

but then i'm afraid i don't.

hell, i know i don't.

and this feeling of closed doors - coupled with this feeling of doubt - it's tearing me apart. i can't, i don't know how to deal with it.

wtf happened to college? heh. wtf happened to 18 years old?

uurgh.

==

you know, i wrote this up meaning to tell this little story about my joyride, not spill my tortured guts. heh. so yeah: story.

so i kept driving right past my place. went from the 101 to the 280. southbound. drove past the bend of the mountains and the city (god it's still so fucking beautiful...at least there's still that) vanished behind me, and all there was was the night, the highway, the few cars still there.

i went all the way down to san jose where 280 hit 101 again. then i came back up.

so i'm driving north. and then i'm like, outta fucking gas suddenly. i passed this sign saying next gas 18 miles and i was SURE, dead SURE, that i'd be able to get all the way home. well, at 18 miles sign i had 1/5th of a tank. by the end of the 18 miles, i was down to 1/16th. so i'm like shit, i better fuel up, right?

so i pull off the freeway.

guess what.

NO FUCKING GAS. CLOSED.

shit! go back on the freeway. go another 5 miles. pull off at another sign. go like 2 miles out.

NO FUCKING GAS. CLOSED.

by now i'm in the red, the light's on, i'm really worried. and i was only 5 miles from home by then, so i was like fuckit and i pushed it. i was coasting on neutral whenever i went downhill, man, and finally i got to a shell that was open, like 2 blocks from my place.

0.7 gallons left.

sheeeeeeesh.

now that would have and did get me home. but i just kept thinking what if i'd dawdled a bit more? taken one more exit to come down from up north? or two, or three? hell, i coulda run out in the 18-mile stretch. had to sit there and call my gf to come rescue me, and shit.

anyway, heh. sheer terror kinda blew all the doubts out of my mind, so i guess the joyride did some good. 'course, now that i'm home, trying to record the incident, i ended up recording my mood instead, and dredged them all up again.

fuck.

==

so remember what i said, when i said i didn't want to go home yet when i was coming back down from the north? i felt like i still needed a few miles to work some shit out. it's like running, almost - you keep doing it and after a while you get past the agony of exhaustion and your limbs somehow unkink and you can just run forever.

that's how i felt. i felt like driving forever. i went south all way down until 280 merged back with 101, and then i had a choice: 101 north: SAN FRANCISCO; 101 south: LOS ANGELES.

you have no idea how close i was to taking los angeles. i'm sure i wouldn't have gone all the way. but i don't know where i would've stopped. i didn't want to come back. i wanted to keep on driving until the sun rose, see where i was then. shed my skin and start anew, or some poetic BULLSHIT like that.

but, yeah. i came back. fuck. i think i'll always come back, and that's why i have these doubts. because i'm not placid enough to never leave at all, but i'm not brave enough to keep on going.

metaphors again. heh.