Bruh tinder is kinda dangerous cuz it brings me into this sort of devilishly insecure and unspeakably horny side of myself. But when it goes well it’s like so dopamine inducing… like right now I’m flirting with this cute French dude and I’m just loving it, but there was a moment there when he wasn’t responding for like 10 minutes when I really almost double texted because I started to overthink and almost wanted to come on too strong… luckily he texted back enthusiastically and reminded me that sometimes you can just let the words hang out there and it’s fine.
sheep's clothingBut you see the problem? Immediately we go into the overthinking, when really I should just be keeping it casual. I feel like… oh god. I feel like my brain is rewired to always be thinking several steps ahead. And that clearly doesn’t work for these little tinder convos.
And then there’s this other dude named [redacted] who’s just giving me a weird vibe. I might end up just leaving him on read, because it’s what my body seems to be telling me to do. He’s hitting me with full sentences and shit. [redacted], the French dude, on the other hand, is way more my speed. He’s just totally my type I fear.
And let’s stop that thought right there. We’re in this shit for short-term fun, remember? It’s what we put in our profile when it asked what I’m looking for. So we don’t need to be getting all caught up in the type casting games. We can just try to be normal. Talk to him like I’m talking to a friend and not a possible romantic prospect. Oh god. Oh god.
Waittttt I feel like that actually worked. Putting less thought into it and just kinda letting things rip. Not worrying about how things will be received. Just being myself! Not gonna even get into any of that right now in here.
Oh god I can feel myself obsessing… I forgot how fun this feeling is. And very vulnerable. Cuz like… you never know when they’re gonna stop responding… but that doesn’t matter. Like let’s focus on what we need to focus right now!
Whew. hard not to overthink but sometimes you just have to let it breathe. Set the phone down and trust that you’ve said enough for the time being. Let the other person speak. They’re gonna bring other shit to the table. Let them bring that shit in question, shall we? Yes, of course! And anyway, we’re gonna head out in like 15 minutes anyway. Anyway used twice in one sentence.
When he says he can tell you’re funny… STOP! Omg this is embarrassing. I’m like smiling at this internet French boy. Ladies and gentlemen… they got me! I’m still capable of being gay. Wow. what a rush. Holy crap. Oh man. Uhhh oh man. Okay, stay calm.
I’m not a creepy person. I can be normal and funny. It’s easy. Let’s keep going. Oh god. This is so weird. I’m actually sort of a psychopath, am I not? Like… if he could see the stuff I’m writing rn. But I guess it’s more endearing than anything. Not like I’m saying I wanna climb inside him and rip his bones off and use them as swords or something. I’m being perfectly normal. Being autocorrected to benign, which I think is also true.
Wait shit I gotta go!!! Time to go!
I think I’m actually like depressed bruh. It took tinder guy to say something about it. A "student depression" or something. And then he stopped responding. Like… okay wait yeah he’s right. I think I needed that. Because hold on… I’m still fucking depressed. I tried to dress up that naked truth in all kinds of disguises like a “disgruntled narrator” and all these little side quests and trying to find a purpose in life and shit…
And honestly I think it was that decolonization bender I’ve been on that’s making me fucking depressed. I feel like there’s nothing I can really contribute. At least not when I’m in fucking med school. Giving my life away and whittling away at my “mental health,” allowing myself to sort of just circle the drain, isolating myself from anyone who’s ever loved me… this shit stinks!
Am I supposed to drop out. That question is so fucking old and tired that I actually just rolled my eyes. Like I’m sick of asking it and trying to answer it. I’m so fucking tired, bro. I think it needs to be over. I think I need to call it. The narrative… who gives a fuck about the narrative. Who really cares if I’m a drop-out or a stay-in. It doesn’t fucking matter. I can just choose my own life and let it go. Drop the fuck out after three years and actually three and a half years of devoted service to this stupid ridiculous bullshit. I don’t know, man. It’s fucking silly and ridiculous for me to keep going. There’s nothing about this that I like. I like the socialization aspect of it, but I could get so much more of that, and in forms that I actually don’t fucking hate, ANYWHERE else in the fucking world. My god, dude. What is this?
Maybe I never learn. Maybe I never learn. Same lessons over and over. Same decisions reached. Same debates had, never with a different result. So why do I keep bringing it up? The fact that I keep asking myself to reconsider it is pissing me off. Like we need to either do it or not do it. It’s just hard to do either. If I do it, I slip further into isolation and depression. If I don’t do it, I become that guy who couldn’t finish med school. Do I just take a year off or some stupid shit like that? Finish January and take a “research year” to do some other stupid bullshit? And if I end up liking the leave of absence and deciding I don’t wanna finish med school?
Lowkey… it seems like January is actually a decent place to pause. The pause doesn’t have to be a stop. I can just take a goddamn leave of absence for mental health reasons. Just be away from it for a fucking year and see what happens. Let this year be epic as shit which it clearly wants to be, and cut off all this medical bullshit for the time being.
I think this is something I should pursue. This is the part where I start getting crazy to the point of near-psychosis, the point that that psychedelics dude warned me about in his emails. He said to take a leave of absence and go to a zen monastery. That could be something closer to the move. Like we need to switch something up, because it’s just simply not working. I mean… [redacted] is taking a research year! So is [redacted]! I guess… I guess I just couldn’t stand the thought of coming back to this fucking place. So maybe I don’t have to. Either way, I don’t have to think about that right now. If I don’t want to come back, I don’t have to come back. But what feels the truth right now is that I dion’t want to go any further right now. It’s feeling a little too retarded. I don’t know where I would go is the thing. But I just know I can’t be here. Do I just hole up somewhere and figure my shit out? That doesn’t seem right, either. I feel like whatever I do would have to involve some kind of interaction.
I don’t know. The fact of the matter is I don’t fucking know. I don’t know what I want to do or where I want to be or who I want to be with or what I want my life to entail. The thing about faith, though.
Who I really need to contact is myself and my god. I’m contacting that god right now, and using him to help me contact myself. I don’t need to continue with this shit if I don’t want to. Everyone else is taking research years. I can take a fucking research year my damn self. I’m going to research whether life is better out there somewhere else. I can finish this last month of clinical year and then say "hey guys I wanna tap the fuck out if that’s okay with you." And there’s no way it won’t be okay with them. I think they’d rather I take a year off than drop out altogether. In fact, I think if I were to present the idea of dropping out to my dean or someone like her, she would say "okay, but why not just take a leave of absence instead? Who knows what perspectives you’ll gain on that year away. You can always just quit after, or you can come back with a renewed perspective and a rested spirit and who knows what other experiences from this big year." It makes you think.
No because like… I don’t want to take step fucking one. That’s going to be a huge waste of time. I’d rather not do that if possible. Like… oh my god. Fuck. i don’t want this at all! I don’t even want the MD! Maybe… hm. Maybe I take the year off and I come back to this version of myself next year and am like damn! I was so incredibly burned out! I’m so glad I took this time off so that I could discover ____. And insert whatever I’ll have discovered by this time next year.
I mean, it’s a decision that just simply makes sense. A research year. I’m researching the real world. It’s an option.
The temptation now is to look at their Kafkaesque stupid dumb website and see what the leave of absence policy is. I’m not doing that, because I’m at a point where I need to talk to a real person about it. I don’t need them to help me process it or whatever the fuck, because I’m pretty sure we’re already doing a very thorough job of that on our own, thank you very much.
Take a year off. Just do it. You know you want to. Imagine finishing this month. Taking the [exam] and the [exam] and that let that be it. No more after that. Just two extremely artificial and unnecessary things between you and a YEAR-LONG break. It is making a lot of sense. You’re strung out. You’re depressed. You’re passively suicidal. You’re imagining violence. You think you could get to active ideation if you stay here long enough. If you do this whole lottery game. It’s gonna get uglier from here. That feels sort of inevitable. But the way to avoid it is to just take off a year. That’s easy. Anybody can do that. Why not?