And Light There Was...

How about a trip to the past? Let's go back to the beginning... Doubtful that anyone but my dear La Colleague will remember this: And Let There Be Light

It's been 5 years. 5 completed years of ups, downs, and all kinds of craziness...
4 years of med school, 1 hell of an intern year, at first and in prospect seemed like ages, but now, in retrospect, nothing more than a few years in memory.

Faithful readers will know the meaning of the word "Checkpoints" in my posts. Well this is a checkpoint if there ever was one. The end of the intern year. The end of one hell of a year that's been the one and only time I have ever questioned my choice of career. Gone. And not a minute too soon. But with the pleasure and euphoria found in a savagely hard fought victory over it, came the sadness of another turning point in life. A turning point where all - yes, all - of my class friends (so much more than just classmates) have packed up and left for residencies in the states, leaving me with another round of fighting with my sense that I might want to do the same. And this is where my mind wanders off into a land of what ifs, buts, and alsos, driving me further into this wicked cycle of thought that I will not bore you with.
What it boils down to, though, is the impossible difficulty of accessing a surgical residency program in the US. Sure enough, none of my friends who are leaving have chosen surgery, and happily all of them were lucky to get the match for an out of this world opportunity for life and career. Kudos to them all.

For Gracie, for Mayssam
So here we are, gone each in his/her direction. In the 'hecticity' of it all, there seemed to be so little time for us to get to do any real talking, the only thing you and I are any good at. So I had little or no opportunity to say what a great 5 years these have been. And I know that I will, sometime, or as we say so untruthfully here in Lebanon... Tomorrow, or where 99.9% of human productivity, motivation, and achievement is stored.


Love, always.

Of Friendship and Lack Thereof

What happens when you run out of outlets? What happens when your friends are leaving, one by one, caving to the attraction of a random civilized country with hope for a decent and secure future, and you're left counting how many of them you have left? Two or three? Or is it one? Shit I don't know anymore!
I'll tell you what happens. You're left with two or three mindsets that cooperate or take turns tearing your sanity apart, each one taking partial or complete precedence over the others depending on your mood and how your day is going.

On the rare but welcome good day, you'll feel optimistic about present and future -like I felt when I wrote my previous post-, and keep thinking to yourself, "staying here isn't so bad! I've almost got it figured, and it feels good to be home!" Expected, from someone who's already failed -miserably- to capitalize on the golden opportunity of a medical career in France due mostly to nostalgia.

On the more common average day you tend not to think about it too much. Because on the average day you have a lot keeping you busy, and there isn't much time for thinking and musing about life and its roller-coasters. You do catch a few ideas flying by, but these don't tend to materialize into something meaningful by the time your attention is caught by something else.

We're left with bad days. It is on those bad days, those days when you just can't seem to find anything to do with your time, or when you just seem to have woken up on the wrong side of the bed, that these thoughts go wild. You feel stranded, isolated, wondering what the hell you're doing at home or wherever you are. Your outlets are numbered and each has his/her own set of problems and obstacles. They're busy. You don't really feel like their gossip, trivia, and pettiness, even though you love them. She's unreachable! S. is in the U.S. B. is in the U.K. N. is in Kuwait, K. in Dubai, R. in France... I could go on...
And this is when it gets to you the most. Because what are you left with, if not memories of good times and intrusive thoughts and feelings of all sorts that make you question your own sanity sometimes? or a bad mindset and ensuing reactions and overreactions that can ruin friendships and relationships? And what can you do with these thoughts? Well you can either swallow them, or throw them in someone's face. I tend to do the latter, often with bad consequences, but that's another thing I never seem to learn.

But you know what? All that's about to change. I'm done. I feel like I've been changed. Yes, BEEN changed, by these circumstances. I've let them get the better of me, something I don't usually do.
I've gotten a few remarks which I admitted to, again, something not everyone around me is used to seeing. The changes are in motion, things will be different from now on.

Here's to not keeping all your eggs in one basket.

For those of you who know what I mean...

No Comment...

No comment, because I can't say how it feels to connect with someone like you do when that someone is your patient. And even less when you spend hours in that room talking and talking and end up wondering if you'd ever meet someone as interesting, as insightful as them, and with a story as captivating as theirs...

There's no describing it. Much like there's no describing what it felt like when I got this note after saying goodbye to Mel, who was leaving the country for good. It felt like saying goodbye to an old friend.

Goodbye Mel, All the best.

Cinema Paradiso, a Blast from the Past

There is nothing better than that feeling you get when you come across something from the past. I don't know, I guess this may be the appeal, the incentive, or maybe the lure, that makes people dwell in it so often, and sometimes indefinitely. Ranging from that once-in-a-while sweet, harmless nostalgia to downright pathological, disabling failure to progress, this feeling of familiarity and comfort found in one's past is probably, and to my experience, the reason why so many people struggle or fail to move on to new pastures.

The other day I tagged along with M. for a short DVD shopping trip. We were both flipping

through the monumental stacks of DVDs, and were ready to go home, nothing of note having been caught in our respective nets, when I heard the clerk making a recommendation to a girl (and a nice looking one at that!). I overheard: "you should try Cinema Paradiso..."

Instant flashback to 1990. I was eight years old, and we had just moved to a new place in Beirut. A brand new TV set, a brand new VCR and a nice VHS to christen it with.

Cinema Paradiso, an award-winning film by Italian filmmaker

Giuseppe Tornatore. I remember it so vividly; it was late, one of the first quiet nights in the post civil war era. The living room engrossed in the somber yet elucidating light provided by a solitary candle placed on top of a run down coffee table, I waited, anxiously observing the clock's every move, in anticipation because at midnight, we get to enjoy the luxury of electricity again.

I fell asleep on the couch, to be woken up at midnight by my mother, who was just as anxious as I was to watch that new movie.

Perhaps ironically, the theme of the movie circles around letting go of one's roots, of one's past and all that it entails, as it so powerfully follows the life of Salvatore di Vita, affectionately called Toto, as he morphs from that 5 year-old kid with so little on his mind, through a hormone-laden teenager, and into a grown man with aspirations to a career and success.

Always the sucker for blasts from the past, I jumped on that thing like there was no tomorrow; I drove back home in a daze, and the mere sound of the two words "Cinema Paradiso" brought my mom to tears. To say that watching this movie 20 years down this long road was an emotional experience would be a masterpiece of understatement. So many powerful scenes, and a theme and topic that remind me so poignantly of my own childhood, my own journey through life, proved to be nearly too much to handle. I guess that my having been through the experience of leaving home and loved ones behind meant that I identified with Toto in the movie.

Ironically, a movie riddled with nostalgia, departures, and separation from the past, has reunited me with mine in a way my clumsy words will never be able to describe.

Why so afraid of the past?

Dear Sarah...

I came in and you were there. I sat at the table and you were around.

With your fresh looks, you stood out from the crowd. With your enticing smile, you caught my eye. There is something about you that played with my mind all night. Is it that smile? is it your hair? Or is it just as simple as your being at such odds with all of our dearly held ideals, self-ordained stereotypes and mundane ideas and clichés of the laws of attraction, that I just couldn't let it go?

So I told you. And from that moment, you knew my secret. You blushed and smiled. I did the same.

I was struck, and I knew so little. At an unfair disadvantage. But I will brave it.

I told you, and it wasn't that simple. He has your heart.

It's not to be. Not for now, maybe not ever. Or maybe...

Thank you for a pleasant night.

A Sunday From Hell

I had been dreading this day for a while. Sunday, July 19, 2009. Bidding farewell to loved ones, saying goodbye to friends. All on one day seemed like torture. And it turned out to be even worse.

This just in: friend and fellow blogger wondering: "Is it true that Lebanon is now nothing more than a pit stop?" This is a question to ask indeed...

I live here, I grew up here, and even for me this is just a pitstop.

For everyone who woke up one day and decided they wanted more from their lives than this place had to offer; For everyone who is contemplating the thought of leaving; nothing more than a pitstop. That Sunday, I said my goodbyes to my aunt in the evening, and to one of my best friends from childhood later that night... Very eloquently, this sucks.

Flashback to Sunday, late afternoon:

It was a long drive to Ballouneh, where my auntie N. lives. LiveD. Mixed emotions flying in the air. There was a distinct feeling, or taste, to that trip. Everytime we went on that noisy drive singing silly music and hopeless songs, there were great times. Barbecues, nargileh, and that sweet feeling of a family reunion every few weeks. Not this time though. This time round, this warm familiar feeling was overshadowed by foreseen grief and heartache. N. is going to Canada. She's taking her incommensurately adorable kids -this from a hardened official kid hater, remember?- and she's going to start a life somewhere else.

Somewhere where she won't have to worry about making ends meet every month, somewhere where people are actually people, somewhere... Don't worry, I'm not gonna start another tirade about our dearly cherished country, if one can call it that. No, I've done that before (read). What matters now is where she's going, and who she's leaving behind. This is the second time that this country has done this to my family. And what's worse is that it's about to do it again. I'm going to have to leave, again, for my residency. And that Sunday, this was always on my mind and I felt like I was suffocating.

My grandmother worse for wear, my grandfather's voice choked out of him as he desperately tried to hold back his tears, my uncles and other aunts in no better shape, and my tears clouding my last sights of N. and her kids, we left Ballouneh for a silent trip back to an insipid Beirut.

Goodbye N. We love you so much. We miss you already.