Flavor Tripping

I'm in the middle of moving--it's been quite the busy/stressful/crazy week. Today, I had a meeting about my status in my program, which I'm sure I'll blog about later.

In the meantime, I ran into an article in the NY Times today about Flavor Tripping. Apparently, these berries--native to Africa--numb the sour and bitter taste buds, drastically changing the perception of foods in which these tastes dominate. Supposedly, lemons taste like candy, stout beer tastes like chocolate, and shitty tequila tastes like lemonade.

And I totally want to try it.

Drive-Thru Conversation with My Boyfriend

[after talking to his bank on the phone]

"You know, it would have been really embarrassing to overdraft my account at Sonic."

"Almost as embarrassing as overdrafting while buying Mall Madness as a birthday present for your 24 year old male friend. Because you were talking to your boyfriend on the phone and not paying attention to your PayPal account."

[stare]

"Just saying..."

Perfect Place, Perfect Time

Today, I took my car to the local Chevrolet dealership to have its damage appraised from my recent brush with a truck. Luckily, the truck was fairly high, so when it hit me from behind, it mostly affected my trunk, which is now crunkled in. The bumper, however, is almost completely unaffected [a few scratches, etc] and the car is completely drive-able.

Of course, the other driver's insurance is paying for all of my damage to be fixed. At the dealership, they gave me paperwork to fill out, so I took it to my car and hastily transferred the information from my registration to the paper.

The estimate expert walked back with me to my car. We surveyed the damage together, and he asked me to open the car. I rummaged through my purse for my keys. And couldn't find them. So, I peeked in the windows, and there they were. Lying on the seat. Of my locked car.

"I think I locked them in--oh, yep. They're in there," I said.

Of all the places in the world to lock your keys into a car, I highly recommend a car dealership. I was invited to sit on a shaded bench until they found the technician who is especially good at unlocking car doors. Within thirty seconds of his arrival at my car door, he had it unlocked. I had my keys in my hand before the estimate expert was done with his paperwork.

And they didn't even charge me.

But I Could Not Think Of Anywhere I Would Have Rather Been To Watch It All Burn Away

The seasons here can't read calendars, and it already feels like full-blown summer. In the morning, right before nine o'clock, I walk to school and feel like I am dying. The summer here is so ostentatious, so over-the-top. The greens and blues pop and beg for attention. There is little to no reprieve from the heat. I walked out of my house at 6 PM; on my way out, I saw that our inside thermostat read 80.

Again, I'm stuck taking to the evenings to run errands in my non-climate-controlled car. I get the pleasurable muted tones of dusk, the dusty pinks and burgeoning sodium-colored lights of the city and the windows next door. Place this against a backdrop of Death Cab's newest cd, Track 7, and it starts to take my breath away. This time of day feels like a long sigh, feels like lying down after I've been on my feet, feels like my spine cracking back into place.

But I know that it will get worse, that the walks will become more unbearable, that soon enough there will be no way to escape the sticky heat. The days will be not be full enough, and the nights will not be full enough, and the summer will slip by. It will be too hot, and eventually I will start wishing it away.

Still, knowing this, I recognize that I have no concept of the misery that will come. I've felt it every year of my life, almost 23 years. I've marched it; I've hiked it; I've driven it for six years, only one of those in air conditioning, that blessed summer when the LeSabre still felt like magic, before it started falling to pieces. Before I started falling to pieces.

The human mind has an amazing ability to forget this type--and any type--of misery. I always find that I can't remember how much it hurts to have Novocaine injected into my nerves, that I have no concept of the pain I felt when I shattered my back. I can't ever remember the extremes of temperature, what it's like to be shivering and cold or how frustrating it is to sweat immediately after stepping outside the door.

Although I try to stop myself because I know it hurts too much, I look at pictures and I see the ghost of myself in them, the empty space where I should be sitting on steps. I can imagine a thousand situations, a thousand different scripts and endings where I am still there. But this is the situation, this is the script and the ending. This is the way I chose to go, and this is where I am. I have no doubt that it is better this way, but it doesn't stop the absolute stabbing hurt. It doesn't start the sobs that overcome me in therapy, the ones that come when I finally think I'm strong enough to talk about it, the ones that don't stop until I start "intellectualizing" and turn off the part of my brain that hurts.

But at the same time, I marvel at the ability to remember that misery can end. The part of me that helps me forget the August heat, if only so I can make it that far, is the same part that allows trust and openness when I have had so many reasons to remain otherwise. I notice that it is harder to get over that hump, that I don't talk as quickly or as freely as I did. I try to think more, to pay attention, to trust definitely but carefully.

I notice, too, that it feels distinctly like growing up.

The Apologetic Touch

Last night, we went to see Prom Night, a terrible but unintentionally hilarious movie about a girl who is terrorized at her Senior Prom by a psychopathic ex-teacher who had become obsessed with her years prior.

This is a movie we've been intending to see since before it came out, but school obligations made it almost impossible until now. It's been out for a month, and we saw it on a Thursday night at 10:05. The theatre was empty except for us.

The three of us filed in: Joe sitting in the middle, with a seat between him and Jacob, as per Jacob's unspoken man-rule. I asked, jokingly, if Joe wanted me to skip a seat too, and he shook his head. As I pulled the seat down, it caught my little finger. "OW, FUCK!" I exclaimed.

"That is exactly why I wanted to sit beside you," he said.

We had arrived more than 20 minutes early, so we had the pleasure of sitting through Regal's entire pre-previews show. After a few minutes of terrible previews, Joe started poking me. This escalated, as it does on an almost-daily basis, to a flurry of limbs as he attacked and I defended. He's not a touchy type of person; he doesn't believe in excessive hugging. If he's touching me, then it's almost always intended as a light attack, something to pass the time or an opportunity to see me flail around [see: empty tank of gross motor skills]. It reminds me a lot of my brothers, who still take time out of their oh-so-busy schedules to wrestle me to the ground or to pick me up and toss me around. These fights are innocent--not malicious or dangerous--but they are always taken, by both parties, with the utmost sincerity.

Jacob has stopped paying attention, and we find his inattention both endearing and perfect. He's become completely desensitized to the entire process, the sideways glance and poke that always results in some well-waged battle, a fast waltz that we have choreographed meticulously.

After the movie, we stood by the side of the road, after midnight, waiting for the AAA repairman to change Joe's stripped tire. He stood in front of me, blocking me and an impending migraine from the blinking lights of the truck. One poke led to my wrists pinned behind me, his knee placed lightly in the small of my back, pushing my torso forward. Jacob was beside us, looking on his iPhone, not batting an eye in our direction. My elbows went on the defensive, when suddenly, my arms went lax and came into my control again.

"Oh, your metal back!" he said, "Your metal back." His tone was concerned and almost-embarrassed that he'd forgotten. I tried, as I always do, to remind him that I'm fairly hard to damage. That I have, post-surgery, taken Judo (and been thrown), been in two car accidents in which my car was rear-ended (the second being last weekend), and that I get tossed around all the time, because I'm little more than five feet tall. When you're short, I reminded him, people like to throw you around.

But etched perfectly in my memory, his hands shoot out uncontrollably as he lays them on my arm, my back. I'm turning around, my head is tossed over my shoulder, and he just keeps touching, lightly, my arms. Can't stop repeating "your metal back, your metal back."

Later, we talked about the apologetic touch, his tendency to put that hand out when he's worried that he's hurt me or when he says something that I take poorly, either something I take the wrong way or something that makes me explode. It's not an act he thinks about, we both acknowledge, nor does it happen very often. It's completely instinctual, the idea that this single touch can communicate something that words fail. Which, I imagine, is why it works so well.

My Name, My Song: Pt. 2

On the Sunday before our final, the end of the second of our long study days, Joe sent me the lyrics to a song he had decided was mine. With phrases like "This time you'll listen to the movement of your body/How it keeps on despite you and it frightens you" and its chorus of "Jenny, you're barely alive," he was right. He went on to explicate how it fit, moving his hands the way he does when he's explaining something important or beautiful, the same hands that describe synapses and plasticity, the hands that can't stop telling me how perfectly The Postal Service describes DC every time we listen to the first track of Give Up.

So, we listened to the song together, letting the phrase "metal bars" stop us in our tracks, if only for a nanosecond. Letting it constantly remind us of me.

When I got home, I sent him the song my parents had chosen for me, chosen as "mine," when I was a baby, just as they chose songs for my siblings when they were born. My song was "Jennifer, Juniper" by Donovan, and I often imagine it as a backdrop for those first tenuous months, when my parents--one week out of college--found themselves saddled with a tiny needy person. I had colic, and I can see my parents walking around the room with me, during the day or late at night, singing the words, a love song to their first-born.

When I walked into his house the next morning, he played "Jennifer, Juniper," and so it was the next few days that we began our days with the song my parents had chosen for me, ending it with the song he had chosen for me. Each day somehow managing to travel through an entire lifetime, from a time I was "entirely replaceable" as he would say and had nothing but two people who called me "Jennifer, my love," to a time when I "could not be replaced" as he does say, a time when I drive over treasures in the street because I must, if only so I can stay barely alive.

My Name, My Song: Pt. 1

Hi internets, my name is Jenny. Some people [my late grandmother, my high school calculus teacher, the director of my program] call me Jennifer. Some people [my lab, my friend Sam, my gay roommate] call me Jen. [In the case of the latter, it goes something like this, "Jen is soooo fabulous." I'm now allowing that as an acceptable nickname].

There is much debate on how much personal information a blogger should include in their writing. Some bloggers include full name, names of children, location. Some include their names, but leave out the names of their children. Some use pseudonyms for either themselves or for their children.

Why bother, some may ask. And the general answer is that blogging can be a pretty dangerous affair. People lose jobs over their blogs. People offend friends and family members. People blog about the things they don't want to--or can't--talk about in other forums: confessionals about parenting, frustrations with any facet of every day life, the constant struggle of living with [even treated] mental illness. Inherent in the form is the idea that one can hide behind one's words, that for once our words are sufficient to paint the portraits of ourselves, to color our insufficiencies and dreams, to shadow in our fears and hurts.

I have many reasons to stay anonymous here. I'm a student in a medical school who is often frustrated with her situation. I talk shit about administrators and classmates. The anonymity allows me to be honest, to write boldly about the way I am feeling. It allows me to admit that this isn't easy, that in dark and less effectively treated moments I obsess with warm razors. It allows me a place to pool and explore my feelings with permanence, something I won't have to remove when I become a doctor, when people start googling. It allows me control over the one thing I insist must be in my control: the power to designate who knows and does not know about my illness.

But, at the same time, it feels a bit empty to remain nameless, to be floating around with no anchor. The naming of things is important; the naming of people, more so. It's hard to tell stories about my life without attaching my name to them, because stories with names are inherently more powerful. And if not more powerful, then at least somehow more real.

So, I'm making the decision to include my first name. Still no mention of my school or city; still quite anonymous, stalking through the hallways of school with the knowledge that this is here, that anyone of my classmates could stumble upon this site and not know it's me. A thought that makes me comfortable and even, really, pleased.

And, I guess, tomorrow I'll continue with part two, which is the thing that made me start thinking about naming myself anyway.

After We Looked at My Damaged Trunk

"Tell me that's not pears in your backseat."

"Yeah."

"You're not going to eat those, are you?"

"I don't know."

"You can't eat those!"

"They're SHELF STABLE!"

"They're FRUIT!"

Can I Kiss Your Dopamine?

Shadows On Our Eyes Leave Us Helpless, Helpless, Helpless

What a bizarre feeling, the end of one year. Knowing that I won't have to study like that again for three months. Walking into the house, thinking of all the books I can read now. Thinking of how my time has suddenly expanded.

It's weird because it feels like there's no closure. Although I know more that I did initially, it never seems like enough. I wonder when I will stop feeling like I am playing doctor. I wonder if I will ever feel like I know enough to succeed, to do right by my patients.

It's exacerbated by the still-not-knowingness of my program. I thought once I got here, that would be it. No changes for eight years; plenty of time to settle in, get a house, buy books to fill it. Enough time to buy a fish who doesn't have to be shunted around in a sandwich bag; enough time, even, to buy a dog or two. Enough time to build a life.

But I don't know if I'll even be here more than one year, if I'll leave and get a PhD somewhere else before returning here for third and fourth years. No time to get a dog or even a fish.

But I've built a life. It's not the life I had imagined I would build here, but it's better and more wonderful. Joey and I have managed to survive--and flourish--in a year apart. We've been stronger and better than anyone--certainly anyone who doubted--could ever have imagined.

I made new friends here, and built better friendships with friends I already had. I've made friends who accept me with my shortcomings: the lacks of motor skills, the lapses in attention, a mental illness that, when untreated, drove so many people away.

Tonight, I was telling a story from that point in my life. In between all of the moments of laughter, all the moments we couldn't pull it together. I told a story, a real story about things I don't often like to talk about. And when I was done, Joe told me I should write a book about that time, and I told him why I don't think I ever will. "Your story is beautifully tragic," he said.

We talk about how I've been through more things in my almost-23 years than most people have the opportunity to experience in a lifetime. Not good things, but things that made me able to relate to people. Things that make my pain very real.

But soon after, the laughter picked back up. It carried us through dinner, the ride home, ice cream and the bowling alley. It carried us, like it always does. Between our moments of solemnity and silence, the moments when we are honest and vulnerable, between these moments our laughter carries us.

In one year, I've managed to build this life. The end of the year is not so much an end as we would like to make it. One Monday, I will make the same walk I've made the last year. Joe will make the same drive. Jacob will look for a job for the summer. We will meet for dinner, for video games, for anything that makes us feel sane and alive. Between all these things, our laughter carries us.

Last Day of Studying, Med School Year One

S'mores at the table. Sometime after the boys finished singing Fergie's "Big Girl's Don't Cry" to me.

The Accumulating Detritus of Quotidian Memories

I'm sitting at Joe's table at 8:30 in the morning. I feel exactly the same as I did when I left nine hours before: sleepy, nauseous, disconnected. The lack of sleep is starting to build into a plaque that grows and pushes at the back of my eyes, at the pit of my stomach.

I think about how I used to love this feeling, thrive off it. The slight tremble in the hand that held the coffee or a spoon of cereal. I would feel, all day, no matter what, that I was going to throw up from the exhaustion. I anticipated the inevitable collapse, but it would always come days after I imagined it would.

By the end of freshman year, I could go a full day on only three hours sleep. Later, in my sophomore and junior years, I--and my mania--had whittled the time down to fifteen minutes. When I was manic, I could go a week getting somewhere between .25 and 3 hours of sleep a night. The hours of my day were expanded, had oozed and seeped until I considered 3 AM a part of my day, as valid a time as noon or 6 PM.

But this morning, I sat fatigued, hand shaking as I brought a spoonful of pink yogurt to my mouth. I felt like shit.

The old me would probably call this iteration of me a pussy. But I don't ever want to go back to thinking that that feeling is normal. I don't ever want that life again.

About the Header

Our lecturer on ADHD pulls up a slide on which he has analogized the symptoms of ADHD to performance on a gauge. Attention skills are lower; hyperactivity higher; misbehavior higher, etc.

Joe immediately started drawing gauges for me in the lower right corner of his notes. One month later, this header was born.

The beautiful swirls were created with brushes made by Stephanie Shimerdla.

Also, test week has pretty much officially begun. So I may be scarce around these parts for the next week. But I'll return. I promise.