expectations

Being back in the Bay Area feels less like a familiar flow and more like a sudden dislodging. The feeling arises mostly from a disconnect between the immediacy of expectations and the slow buildup of adjustment. Being home should feel right; graduating should feel like an achievement; starting residency at the place I've been striving towards for a vaguely long period of time should feel exciting. These are the expectations, the kind that everyone reinforces with congratulations and questions of what's next, and the kind that I personally build with the need to affirm my decisions and values (because if I'm not happy, I probably did something wrong, right?). There are waves of rightness, like when I drive over the Bay Bridge or when the moon's so bright it lightens the black ocean at night. But honestly, over the last week as I've been looking for a place to live in the area I grew up, and preparing for the orientation to the career I've been educated for through my twenties--things don't fit.

  I'm pretty surprised and bummed by this, but I momentarily escaped some of it by visiting M in La Jolla, and in conversation with him and thought on my own, I've realized that these feelings feel bad due to some faulty expectations.

  *The expectation that because home remains in one place, my relationship to it would be similarly stable. Growing up in the Bay Area, I couldn't imagine another place I'd rather return to after sufficient exploration of the world. While living on the East Coast, I loved it. I haven't met many people from California who love the East Coast as much as I do. But I always assumed I could leave it for California, seamlessly. In fact, it was the move from West to East that was seamless--the ties to MA and CT and the state I drove in & through, were woven quietly and gradually, and as they were stitched I didn't notice that this tightness was drawn from loosening ties to my childhood home. The bulk of my development, at least as I feel it now, came from the places and relationships of the East Coast. Coming back to California, I expected only the renewal of my old connections to the place but instead there was an abrupt pull of my attachments to the other coast, without anything to immediately replace it.

  *The expectation that the end goal of a process should feel better than the process. The excitement of being a doctor and not a med student hasn't hit me. I was excited on the day of graduation, but somehow I think has that more to do with it being a part of medical school than with it signifying my transition to doctorhood.

  *The expectation that the right decisions should feel right, right away. My decisions to pursue this residency at this place seemed to form naturally over the course of who I am and who I'd like to become. It seemed to me that the result should follow a naturally free-flowing course that just fits. Instead, I find myself having a lot of doubts about whether I'm right for this, whether it's right for me. I feel clumsy.

  Looking over these, some things come to mind. All of these unfulfilled expectations have the potential to seize me with self-doubt and fear...and they have. But recognizing a couple mistakes on my part lessen this power to frazzle me--mainly, that I shouldn't expect so much, and so quickly. Just because these things haven't happened doesn't mean they won't happen at all, and when they have happened in the past they've always taken time. I've just never been as frazzled by waiting, because in the past I wasn't waiting for them to happen. They just did. I've been so spoiled by things falling into place that this time around, I actively expected them to.

  I suppose that's a part of accumulating experiences and having bases of comparison. I know that this step up to MD is seen as a culmination of what's come before, but I think that maybe the best bet is to step into it with a certain blankness, and openness to what might happen instead of what's supposed to happen.