FIFTH (and final) YEAR: the change

This is exactly what everything in my life seems to be doing.
I get feelings like a lot of things around me have suddenly begun shifting and pulsating and changing and morphing into unknown things.

And this "unknown" is the only thing I am afraid of. It scares me. It terrifies me. It leaves me paralysed with fear. I am used to having control over everything around me. But when things become uncontrollable, I honestly feel like I am losing my footing. I do not feel grounded. I feel like the ground might give way and I will not be able to grab hold of something to get myself to that stable ground again.

This feeling of not being in control is scary.

The only solution I have come to is:

"Accepting the unknown."

Or in simpler words, going with the flow. Come what may, and I shall live through it and become stronger and happier.

BREATHE.

Because if there is one thing that stays with us all the time throughout our life, it's our breath. I need to practice to let my breaths, the whole act of breathing be my grounding.
My breaths should be all the ground I need.

BREATHE.

BREATHE.

BREATHE... 

When I don't know what to do...

I just think that people just keep getting stupider and stupider and stupider as they grow up.

The amount of stupid things that adults do makes me wonder whether the word 'adult' should be used for us. The word 'kid' is more like it. Because that is exactly what we become, without us knowing. This not knowing is the creepy part. Because an adult is absolutely unaware of what their acts do to other people, just like most kids don't know how their acts and behaviour affects other kids (and adults) around them. We do not call kids stupid because they are at a learning age. But I personally don't think we adults are any better.

My observations are based on the acts and behaviour of various politicians, teachers and business tycoons and of course, adults in general.

So, whenever I am faced with a medley of difficulties and unpleasant circumstances in life, where I suddenly find myself making messed up, stupid decisions, I stop my train of thoughts and ask myself this:

What would Allah Almighty want me to do?

And most of the time, I am satisfied with an answer in my heart. These are the points in my life where I feel truly blessed to be following a religion as beautiful as Islam.
In order for us adults to not make stupid decisions or at least try not to, I believe this is the key.

But how do I remember to ask this question to myself in times that do not allow you to have a clear head?

There is a solution for that too. This is where Divine help comes in. In order for the above question to keep popping in your head, one must be steadfast in observing the mandatory five times salah and in reciting the Holy Quran (the only Book, whose author is not a human).

Life becomes bearable.

FOURTH YEAR: the mincemeat

Mincemeat is exactly what comes to mind.

I'd like you to imagine a glob of mincemeat on a sophisticated dining plate with two googly, but hollowed out eyes staring up at you. Creepy.



I had become creepy looking. I looked like a vagabond, a truant at the side of the road, a scaredy mice. A failure.

My eyes looked dead to me. I'd often be reminded of my hobbies that included story writing, painting, sketching, sewing, blogging, playing sports.

Thinking about these things would almost drive me to quit medicine and instead run after the things that I enjoyed most.
But I couldn't.

Because helping people out was more important to me. I wanted to help people out of their pains, especially the poor ones. This little but strong thought kept me going until I reached my final year.
This is the thought that still keeps me going no matter how hard the going gets.
I knew that the tough get going.

THIRD YEAR: the struggling spider

Every day was pain, and now that our wards had started, all of a sudden we were supposed to know the body examinations, the investigations, the management and treatment, the complications, the side effects of all the new drugs that came as a whiplash to our baby faces, the signs and symptoms of every single disease, the differential diagnoses.

EVERYTHING.

It seemed never-ending.

And worst of all, we weren't guided. I felt like someone kept shoving chunky, dry, stale bread by the pounds down my throat and if I wasn't able to swallow it quickly enough, the shover would resort to punching it all the way down using the fists, till my esophagus clogged, till I gagged, till I could no longer breathe.

SECOND YEAR: the wilting flower

Let's cut right through the suspense and reveal that I am the wilting flower.



In a world where there was no guidance, where you had to figure very single thing out, from finding out which books were the best to study from and wading through the library books to get an idea, peeking over the shoulder to catch a glimpse of which book your staunch competitor was reading, to asking teachers which books they thought would help us in our initial stages (to which we usually got completely unhelpful answers) to failing in tests to swallowing your pathetic pride and grabbing your seniors to help you out, and to top it off, dealing with extreme self-consciousness, anxiety, a generous helping of depression and an extra uncalled-for insulating layer of fat as your body's response to keep you protected from the big, bad, stressful external environment, you most certainly felt painfully lost.

Little did I know that everyone was going through the same effing thing that I was going through.

But I was not to know this until I had reached my final year. And this too I had to figure out on my own.

FIRST YEAR: the ass****

Frankly speaking, I was an asshat in my first year of MBBS. Having done O Levels and A Level with exceptional success, I had entered my first year of medical college with all the narcissism and obnoxiousness of a high-nosed, know-it-all cow.

I would never be friends with me. How some of the first few friends tolerated my unpleasantness is beyond me. Little did I know that this attitude of mine was soon to be put to test and that my next three years would be...



or like I say now: 'I would never wish upon any of my enemies the terrible times I have faced at this medical college.'

I hated most of the Professors and teachers here in this medical college. I found them to be rude, demeaning and highly narcissistic; most of them were sadists, including the principle.

I seriously, in all honesty felt stuck, like the baby that gets stuck in a condition called shoulder dystocia. It is an extremely dangerous and painful condition and most of the time, the baby expires.

'Na idhar ki na udhar ki', as Pakistanis would say.

One of my very close friends would call these difficulties that I faced, "desirable difficulties".

YEAH, EFFIN', RIGHT!

I am 100 percent sure, no actually, one million percent sure that I did NOT desire these difficulties. Nuh-uh!

But my dear friend shook her wise head and said, 'desirable difficulties are the kind of difficulties that you would never want to face in your life, yet they are important in order to shape you into a stronger, better person, to bring out all those sides in you that will help you conquer this eccentric phenomenon that we know as life.

(If you want to read more about it: read Malcolm Gladwell's book 'David and Goliath'.)

Anyone who wishes to enter into this mayhem we call medicine, please know that the aforementioned wise words (indeed) will need to be kept in mind most of the time. The words are bound to escape a forgetful mind like mine but they are true nonetheless and have acted kind of like an anchor whenever I felt like I might be having a myocardial infarction or a sad attack of an absent seizure.