girlfriends

Picking up my college roommates from the train station, the first thing M says is: Look at A's boots! A is sporting a pair of resilient chunky ankle-high hiking boots, prepared for our hike at Sleeping Giant. She has small hands and feet for her size, and the combination of petite and hardcore in the shoes give immediate amusement (and continual throughout the day as we talk about how to maximize the use of her boots during our hike).

I haven't seen these girls for a few months, and there's no need for hello, only laughs.

On our hike, I naturally read the map wrong, but we do manage to reach our destination. Along the way we talk and talk, and I'm reminded of how different conversations are with different people. There's a certain silliness and inappropriateness and openness specific to my interactions with these girls, these girls with whom I went through such a defining period of growth--not just the confusion of college but the daze of post-college and the feigned maturity of post-post college.

And it's with them that a weekend of girlfriends began, a weekend where I'm deeply reminded that I am a girl, and that it is amazing to be one. With M & A, we run through the gamut of past and current boys and flings, past and current fashions; the quality of kisses (and so on), the quality of our own bodies and how to be self-accepting; the irrationality of moods and ups and downs, and how we cope. We share the insecurities that come with being female and a person, freely and honestly because we know it's common among us and because in the end they will be sweetly funny and not damaging.

It is nice to share the trees with them, and a part of my life with them, and they appreciate it too. It's a long hike that tires us, but we reach the tower I keep telling them is the destination--it's a short tower that is anticlimactic as we approach, but it holds the view with the breeze as they fit into the arches of the tower's windows. We reward ourselves with ice cream (two scoops, which proves to be too much), and some napping at home before dinner.

The bed is where we gather before their departure, in the cozy style of a sleepover. Which lends itself to sharing photographs, commenting on male facial hair and body odor, talking about people from college I haven't thought about in ages, wondering whether people notice when you wear the same outfit ("I don't judge, but I notice"), comparing our stretch marks. In between these there lies what's more conventionally considered substance--jobs, future plans, philosophies and approaches to day-to-day and to things broadly. But when they leave I'm aware that there is incredible weight to everything we share, the kind that makes me paradoxically, wonderfully feel full and light.

*

It's this lightness that carries me through the night, where three of my med school girlfriends and I go out to dance. During dinner with M, A, and the wife, we tell M & A about our dance plans.

M: You're going to dance, just the two of you?
Wife & me, simultaneous: *shrug* we do it all the time!

(This night there are four of us, but we have gone out with just two many a good time). It's an eclectic crowd, the four of us girls, but we share the strong desire to dance that precludes caring about being the only ones on the dance floor. At Barcelona, this means having the entire space to ourselves, and I'm again so happy to be a girl. At Black Bear there are more people and songs that bring out the inner excitable. Being with girls who move with distinct styles and without any thought other than to have fun, and whose fun is so apparent in their faces and bodies, is a constant source of energy, and the fun grows exponentially with every second.

It feels so good to go all out, to both be aware of our physical selves and to let go of self-consciousness.

*

On the next day, with these same girls we make dumplings and watch Shakespeare's As You Like It as the Cabaret. I get sleepy during the play, in which I pay more attention to the use of space and creation of atmosphere than plot. And I think, what range of experiences I can have with the girls in my life, and what depth I reach in each one.

These ladies make me feel that at baseline we're something to be grateful to be: people who are capable. Of having all sorts of negative and positive feelings, from silly and jealous and insecure, to confident and affirming and persistent. It's not any one thing but more the spectrum, that I love.

precognition

M told me awhile ago about a phenomenon called precognition, where people can process things that happen in the near future, without consciously knowing it. This unconscious absorption can then manifest itself in thinking about what will happen in the future, before it actually happens. In some experiments, subjects are shown images of two curtains and asked to predict under which curtain contained a picture. They were then shown which curtain was correct, and even though they had no idea before being shown, they predicted the curtain correctly more often than would be predicted by chance. The idea is that something outside the usual senses absorbs this future experience, or the experience "travels" back in time to you, so that your mind has glimpsed it before your senses do.

Since he told me about it, he's mentioned some examples that have happened to him. I am by nature like most people, resistant to ingrained, familiar processes of thought that make sense to me mainly because I haven't given them much thought. But that stubborn narrowness exists more in the immediate than long-term. The willingness to continue considering something, combined with M's natural way of pushing me to be more open, makes the world much bigger and wider, and richer.

The other day, I was telling M about a blog I read. A few days before that, I decided to finally comment on this person's blog that I've read over the past couple years. A little while ago she became sick and needed a bone marrow transplant. I was pretty jarred by this, the sudden change in a stranger's life; somehow those take on the regularity of those more familiar to you. Her blog moved to a different website and became focused on health updates. I'd read it only sporadically, but recently became invested in reading it more regularly. I like her way of taking things as they come, and how her qualities that were associated with her old life--being out and about, active, running--still seem present despite not being able to have that life anymore. I'm not sure why, after all this time, I decided to comment and tell her a little of my connection to her blog.

As I was telling M, I remembered that I was struck by how she mentioned doing "laps" around the hospital, walking with her IV down the hallway. One of the things I'd liked reading about was her running, and I was struck by the contrast. It also made me think of how sad I've been over my rusty hip, and not being able to move to the same degree as before. Compared to her change, it's not much of a difference, but with the effect this small change has had on me, I can imagine how much more difficult such loss would be. I think this is one of the things that prompted me to comment.

I'm not sure why, a couple days after posting the comment, I brought it up to M. I introduced it on my own and we had a long conversation about bone marrow transplants and donors. A few hours later, I am told that a friend has just received a letter about being a possible bone marrow match for a 51 year old man. Long story, I'm involved in communicating to this friend that she's received this letter, and I'm struck by the coincidence. M is the one to point out possible precognition.

Though experiments are centered around having precognition of something that happens just several seconds later (not several hours like my case), things like that make me feel that thoughts are in some way sent out to the universe. It's not so straightforward, like telepathy or the idea that thinking something will happen will make it happen. More that energy and thoughts exist in forms we might not feel or know directly. I don't know how much this changes anything other than maybe to consider and feel things with slightly different awareness. Which as far as measuring value of being open to the incomprehensible and unlikely, seems more than enough.

saturday & sunday

On Saturday M and I take a short road trip to Rhode Island, the one New England state we didn't visit on our early summer road trip. Our windows are down the whole time. The drive is mostly on 95, then for awhile along a smaller road with trees whose freshness we can smell. We drive over the bridge leading to Newport. We pass by the mansions, and look for a beach with waves. After some logistical hodgepodge of parking, coins, inquiries, beach-hopping, and so on--we make it to a warm beach with some waves where M can surf and I can be a bum. The water is chocolate brown, the brown coming not from chocolate but from massive amounts of algae. It feels good to be in it; it's been so hot. M catches one very long wave which makes him happy and a good amount of other ones too, and it's nice to see him happy in this way. After he gets out of the water he sits looking at the water while I fall asleep with his hat over my face, and when I wake up we walk out onto a cliff of boulders by the sea. There's a large one with three sides from which you can climb up, so we clamber over it for awhile and this is my favorite part--the confined yet endless exploration. Then we throw the Frisbee around, to warm up to get back into the water. He wants me to get comfortable going underwater in the ocean. So we jump into waves for awhile, one hand in his to keep from dying and my other hand over my swimsuit which slips too easily. After several of these, M looks at my back and tells me we have to get out. I follow, and seconds later feel the urgency of his return to shore--the algae living in the water is host to tiny crawling worm-like bugs that bite. We spend a good twenty minutes trying to wash them out in the same water where they swarm. We find a "shower"--a two-second stream of water giving about a fourth the volume of a faucet. There's only one, so we take turns, pressing the button for second and third streams before giving it up to someone else waiting and getting back in line for more. I can't do much about the algae now growing entwined in every strand of my hair, until we're at home and I shampoo it out half a dozen times. To get there, we drive home, in the dark now, still smelling the same trees through the windows.

On Sunday we do three loads of laundry and get groceries. M has completely run out of shirts, and I've eaten my last egg and piece of bread. And our things from the beach need much cleansing. I stock up on fruits and veggies, and he buys masala sauce and naan to make our own chicken tikka masala dish. I'm glad to have the basics in abundance, and eat two peaches, handfuls of grapes, an orange and an apple. Our attempt at Indian food is good but needs more cream added to the sauce, we decide. Next time we'll buy cream.

adjustments

I've had hip pain for the past few months, which started after a run where I tried to increase speed, after months of steady running. I'd had this type of pain before and back then I went on a long running hiatus, and even after getting back to it after half a year or so, hadn't gotten back to where I was. So it was frustrating to have it happen again. This time around, I was able to get back to running sooner than last, but the pain stayed, happening during other stretching and exercising. So my classmate referred me to a friend of his who's completing the physical therapy program at USC. I talked to her, and one of her classmates, last night for an hour about my hip. They got my history, watched me do some squats, and diagnosed me with hip impingement. They told me that I need to work on strengthening the smaller muscles involved in dynamic movement like running, and that I need to stretch my hip flexors to open up the hip joint, especially since so much of my exercise entails hip flexion.

I tried the exercises today before p90x and already noticed a difference. And like with other chronic pain, the absence of pain is noticeable; normal becomes prominent. It will take longer to go away completely, but I'm very happy with the change made by this attention to small motions and interactions.

*

I had another interview with an ALS patient today. It was a full day venture, as his home is an hour drive from here, and our interview lasted two hours, and I stayed for lunch. He talked about how he notices sudden differences in his motion. One day he can stand on his tiptoes to hang home decor, three days later, he can't do it at all. He first suspected problems when he developed foot drop. When going down the stairs, he can't flex his feet and his heels come down hard on each step. The trick, he said, is to walk downstairs backwards.

one-time meetings

Being a quiet person and someone that doesn't usually register on anyone's radar on first meeting, I believe in the need for time and multiple interactions to get any significant sense of someone. It goes without saying that you usually need more than a first impression to get to know someone, but I think that it's hard to base even small things on a first interaction, depending on circumstances. M thinks you can get more from this than I give credit, and I think it's true that I should give more credence to these things, even as staying open to what else might inform your perception and understanding of someone.

Two interactions today made me think of this even more. The first was meeting with the person who will be writing a letter for my residency application. Residencies require a letter from the chair of your department, and if you aren't so naturally inclined to networking like me, you might not have met this person before you need a letter from them. So they set up a meeting to speak with this person, so that they might get to know you enough to write a letter about you. The person reads your CV, personal statement, has a conversation with you, and writes the letter that same day. Going into this, it felt like a routine part of the process, something to elicit skepticism but something needed to be done. Afterwards, I was surprised at how much was exchanged and received, and how glad I was that this person would be writing about me. I don't know if he has always had this ability or has cultivated it over a lot of people interaction, but at the end of the forty minute meeting, he had picked up on different themes important to me and connected them in the same way I perceive and feel them. I was glad on the one hand that some of my thoughts had been conveyed in my personal statement, which at the time of writing felt a little distant. On the other hand I felt that a lot of this understanding came from him--what he noticed, what he listened to, what he asked. It was a pleasant surprise to feel that an important part of me had been shared, and it is something to aspire emulating.

The other was an interview with a patient, for my research on terminally ill patients. It was the first time I'd met anyone with amytrophic lateral sclerosis (AML, or Lou Gehrig's disease). This disease affects a person's muscles, such that there is progressive decline in the use of your arms, legs, throat, and lungs. Most people die from respiratory failure several years after diagnosis, after losing the ability to walk, eat, talk, and finally breathe. Knowing rationally how devastating this must be, I was a little unsure what to expect. In the hour of speaking with him and his wife, an incredible couple, they shared a part of their story not yet voiced to anyone else. He had never talked about dying before, and as he did, a lot seemed to pass between us--not just the sadness, but also the lighter moments, had weight. As hard as it was, I felt pretty lucky to receive so much from meeting a stranger. I suppose this is the nature of all interviews, when you expect to get some sense of someone from an interaction structured to do so, but always having been skeptical of this notion, I was surprised.

Maybe I wouldn't have trusted the second interaction in the same way if I hadn't had the first one; after all, who can say what we observe is true or what bulk it comprises. But so it often goes, that each meeting is isolated and connected.

daily happiness

There's something about continued, sustained small reasons for gratitude. Currently, I'm happy for summer dress weather, the company of an ever-encouraging friend while I doggedly, slugglishly write my personal statement at the library, red cheeks so hot after a workout that a cold shower feels delicious, and having him at the end of the day for thoughtful conversations and silly brawls.

being back

I've been back in New Haven for little over a week now, and already feel full of things. This sensation is familiar, and I'm glad for familiarity of such a nice feeling. The sense that a lot has been done, a lot to be done. I'm writing a little rambly and frazzled right now, as warm-up for writing my personal statement for my application to residency. I have less than a year left at medical school, and part of that year will be invested in trying to get somewhere after that year is over.

But it's also a year to have on its own. Since being back, M has started teaching me how to swim, which has been an experience to rank among my top in life...it might seem silly that something so common becomes like that, but I think there's a lot to that, that I'm saving up somewhere to put down somewhere at some point. Continuing to p90x and to climb, and building stamina even as much of it is still hard. My right hip, which started acting up after a run a few months ago, still feels funny, makes me feel old, and presents a concrete reminder of effort and movement.

Hoping to see as much as possible this year, more road trips and more farther trips and also more local exploration, with a list of new places to run. There will also be trips to interview, and new hospitals to see, cities to see in new contexts. Through that, would like to keep the old growing and close.