Archive for the ‘The Serious’ Category

The year was 1965. A man fell in love. His partner loved him back deeply, and they decided to commit their lives to one another. The only problem was that the government in the state they lived in forbade their marriage.

You see, the man was an African-American and the woman was Caucasian. They were citizens of the United States, he was allowed to vote, to fight for his country, but he could not marry the woman he loved.

People called their love unnatural. They couldn’t explain it. It wasn’t something they chose, it was something they felt. They were in love just as every other couple they knew, and they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together in a marriage. Just as all other citizens of the US were allowed to.

Some people hated him. They quoted the bible. “When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites . . . you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them . . . Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son.” Deuteronomy 7:1-4 (Abridged)

But they pushed on. They fought on. And in 1967, the Supreme Court of the United States declared in the decision of Loving v. Virginia that:

“Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.”

And so they married. And lived a long life together.

———–

The year is 2011. A man fell in love. His partner loved him back deeply, and they decided to commit their lives to one another. The only problem was that the government in the state they lived in forbade their marriage.

You see, the man was in love with another man. They were citizens of the United States, they were both allowed to vote, to fight for their country, but they could not marry the person they loved.

People called their love unnatural. They couldn’t explain it. It wasn’t something they chose, it was something they felt. They were in love just as every other couple they knew, and they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together in a marriage. Just as all other citizens of the US were allowed to.

Some people hated them. They quoted the bible. “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” Leviticus 20:13.

But they pushed on. They fought on. Only, unlike the African-American man, the hatred has not slowed, the progress has not been made. These men, in love with one another, not trying to convert any other men, not sexual deviants, just two men, in love, still cannot marry. The Supreme Court has not yet said that “Marriage is one the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival.”

Oh wait. Yes they have.

50 years ago the Supreme Court granted the right to marry to interracial couples, saying that the anti-miscegenation laws were a violation of the constitution, despite public outcries and outrage. And now, all this time later, we see how awful the earlier laws were. We see how unfair and discriminatory they were. We see how we have wrong. And yet, we continue to commit these wrongs even today.

I can only hope that in the next few years we wise up, we learn from our past mistakes and we expand marriage to include same sex couples. To let them have the “basic civil rights of man” granted to all other Americans.

Maybe then freedom will truly ring throughout this nation. Maybe then we will stop hating each other for our differences and celebrate those differences as the stuff makes our country great.

Today has been a bad day.

I don’t want to discuss the details because sometimes personal matters need to remain personal. This is one of those times. I’m sorry for the vagueness, but I need to protect myself right now.

Sometimes life astounds me with how quickly things change. Sometimes it’s from day to day, others from moment to moment. It makes it harder when the moments just before the crash were good ones, it makes the change harder, the adaptation slower.

The downward spiral is harder when you start higher.

What I realized today, amidst the struggles that I am wading through is that there cannot be a good day without a bad one. There would be no way to measure wonderful days if you also didn’t also have the miserable ones. There would be no way to be thankful for the good times if you couldn’t remember the bad ones. There would be no calibration, no scale. The good days might be more forgettable if we could not realize how truly good they are.

I am not thankful for today. I will not pretend to be, because that isn’t the truth. I am hoping just to go to sleep soon and therefore to have survived it. I expect the days will be hard for a while to come. And when I look back on these days, I hope I don’t remember them for the tears and frustration, but rather for the realization that times do get better. That things will improve.

The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears. -John Vance Cheney

I didn’t publish this last night because I wanted to give myself some time to digest the news of Osama bin Laden’s death. His assassination. I joked on twitter a lot, mostly because I am one of those people who never really knows how to act in important moments. And because I’m just classy like that. But most of all, I wanted time to think about it because I had mixed emotions. Before you scream at me, let me explain.

I think Osama bin Laden was one of the greatest evils the world has seen. I think the lives he has cost both in our country and abroad represent the acts of a person who probably deserved to die. He was terror, in a human form. He was evil, personified.

But I cannot, in any sort of good conscience, celebrate his death. I don’t have ill will to those who do, I just can’t be one of them.

I have never been a proponent of an eye for an eye. I’m a turn the other cheeker, in the metaphorical sense. I certainly wouldn’t offer up more innocent American lives to terrorists, but I also wouldn’t turn to war, I wouldn’t add more killing. That’s just not how I am. I believe in peace, I believe in diplomacy and while I am not really sad that at least one terrorist leader is no longer walking this earth, I can’t be glad that we killed him, I can’t rejoice that we murdered another person, no matter how horrible he was.

If murder is wrong, I can’t stand up and be excited that we have become murderers. We can call it assassination and use big words, but the result is the same. A human life is gone. We may be better off without his presence in this earth, but when I cheer for this country, when I feel good to be American today, it’s not because we killed an evil man. It’s because I have hope that this will mark the beginning of the end of wars abroad, of death and destruction.

If you can’t understand that, that’s okay with me. I don’t expect it to be something that others jump on board with. I realize that for some, this brings closure, for others, a sense of justice. And I respect that. Just as I hope you will respect that I’m not jumping for joy today.

“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

I posted a comment on my facebook page and on twitter the other day, and it was meant to be a little tongue in cheek, but also, kind of true. It said, “Please let me know if you’re planning to vote for Donald Trump so that I can unfollow/unfriend you immediately.” A little mean, yes, but mostly meant as a joke. And to my surprise one of my high school classmates commented that he actually thought Trump had some good ideas.

A back and forth rhetoric got us onto the topic of immigration and it took all that I had to stay quiet.

On my last clinical I had an opportunity to see a different view on immigration and all I want to do is stand up and scream about it. You see, one of my patients was an American citizen but his mother and father were not. He was 20 years old and undergoing strong chemo and radiation for a spinal cord tumor and had been in the hospital continuously since November. Alone.

He had some family in the general area, but they could only come by every few weeks and to make matters worse, he developed some infections that required him to be on isolation indefinitely. For months he was alone in his room, no roommates, nurses only allowed in when gowned and gloved. This kid could literally not have been more alone if he tried.

In a family meeting his aunt came to ask the doctor to write a note. She said that our patient’s mother had been trying, for weeks, to come up to visit him, but the United States government denied her the documentation that would make her trip legal. She wasn’t applying for citizenship, she just wanted to spend some time with her son. To take care of her child. And the government said no. They said she was not allowed to see her son unless a doctor sent a note saying that he was dying. Ironically, though he was in the hospital, with active cancer and several other problems, he was not sick enough to see his mother.

He was not sick enough TO SEE HIS MOTHER. I can’t wrap my mind around that at all.

It broke my heart and it made me disappointed because I think we’ve reached a sad and scary point. We won’t let mothers drive 4 hours from Mexico to see their sons in the hospital. It wasn’t an elaborate scheme to move here and stay illegally, she wasn’t going to collect social security or have a job and not pay taxes, she just wanted to care for her child. And we wouldn’t let her.

I am not silly enough to think that there aren’t others who have abused the system, but at what point did the almighty dollar, did our repudiation of immigration, the very thing that got all of us here, exceed our capacity to care? I was disappointed when Congress failed to pass the DREAM act which would’ve given immigrants living here already, being educated in our schools already, access to financial aid for college. While it was being deliberated, my facebook stream was filled with people who hated the idea because we didn’t need anymore people on Welfare and stealing jobs.

I feel like I might have missed something. We seem to have given up on giving anyone the benefit of the doubt anymore and last time I checked, plenty of American citizens were on Welfare, were not paying taxes. We live in a black and white world and apparently if you are an immigrant, then you must be here to steal resources, period.

And I’m calling bullshit.

We need immigration reform, absolutely, but we don’t need to close our borders, we don’t need to refuse to let mothers visit their critically ill, but not terminally ill, sons. We live in this country because our families were allowed to immigrate. We are not citizens because we passed a tests or did something extraordinary, we are here because at some point, someone in our family moved here. So why is it that we are now so willing to prevent others from doing the same?

I just wonder where we would be if hundreds of years ago, people had turned their back on my family when they came to this country for a better life. I wonder if they would’ve sat silently while mothers were kept from their sick sons, simply because of where they were born.

Last week I got an email from Facebook letting me know a friend of mine had added me to group. When I went and investigated I realized it was a group for my 10 year high school reunion, which is apparently coming up this fall. It was kind of fun to see all the people from high school and it actually made me really excited to see old friends.

And then we got a message from our class president. At first I didn’t realize that it was from her because she has a different last name now, like many of us. And her new last name jumped out at me for some reason. I recognized it, but I couldn’t figure out why. It’s not a common last name, it wasn’t the last name of her high school sweetheart. I was stumped. And then it hit me.

It’s the last name of a girl who made my childhood a living hell.

Our class president’s now sister-in-law was a ring leader of my bullies in elementary school and she was one of the few kids who continued to bully me into junior high. I remember one day in 7th grade when she and her friend followed me into a bathroom to tease me where the teachers couldn’t stop them. They surrounded me while I washed my hands, called me names, told me I was fat and ugly and that I would never have friends because no one liked people like me. And even though they stood there telling me that I was fat, in that moment, I felt like I was shrinking. I could see my reflection in the mirror and I felt ugly and fat and weak.

I grew to hate myself because of this girl.

So after my memory of that bully was jogged I did what any normal person would do, I googled her. I was kind of surprised at how many links the search came up with because her name isn’t a very common one. Surely they couldn’t all be her, right?

Or they could.

It turns out that she is now a professional make up artist and has worked for a lot of celebrities in the past few years. Oh and she’s on twitter. And she has 19,000 people following her.

I’m not sure what I expected to find. I guess I’d hoped she wouldn’t be successful, that at some point, karma would catch up and she’d have to deal with hardships like the ones she inflicted upon me. I had hoped her life would be just a little bit harder, that she’d get a little taste of the struggles she caused me. But apparently that isn’t how life works. And as I read through her tweets and saw her face for the first time in over 10 years, I felt small again. I felt like that 12 year old girl in the bathroom all those years ago.

And then I felt worried.

What if she found me the same way I found her? What if she saw that I am still in graduate school, that I live in a tiny apartment, that we’re drowning in debt? What if she saw that I’m still not as thin as she is, what if she saw pictures from college when I fought anorexia and then gained all the weight back?

For a moment I was tempted to block her pre-emptively on twitter, or to tweet to Ellen Degeneres (who follows her) to let her know that this girl is one of the bullies that she has been speaking out against. I just wanted to find a way to hurt this girl just like she had hurt me. I know revenge is not a particularly pretty thing, but it’s what I wanted.

But I put my computer down before I could do anything I would regret.

The next morning, when I got up the tv was on and I found myself watching a music video countdown for the first time since I was 16 years old. And a song came on that caught my attention.

Done looking for the critics, cause they’re everywhere.
They don’t like my jeans, they don’t get my hair.
Exchange ourselves, and we do it all the time.
Why do we do that? Why do I do that?
Pretty pretty please, don’t you ever ever feel
Like you’re less than fuckin’ perfect.
Pretty pretty please, if you ever ever feel
Like you’re nothing, you’re fuckin’ perfect to me.

I almost burst into tears on the spot. The video was like a 3 minute clip of my life. And suddenly I knew what I needed to do about the bully from my past.

Nothing.

I needed to close her twitter page, I needed to stop thinking about her. She has no place in my life or my mind. I have a good life. I have a husband I love and who loves me back. I have a wonderful family, I’m heading into a career that I am proud of, and in the end, it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.

This is my life, this is who I am. I need to stop caring about what other people think, to stop trying to reach some invisible standard I think someone set somewhere. I am not a kid anymore, this is not elementary school and I’m done living like this. I will not live in fear of bullies, I will not live in my past.

This is my life and though it may not seem perfect, it’s fucking perfect to me.

(The video is a little…graphic, I guess. Probably not best to watch in front of kids, though this is the more work friendly version.)

I was reading through some news stories on CNN the other day and I saw one about parents protesting at a school. I used to be a teacher, so these kinds of things regularly attract my attention, but never has any upset me like this one.

These parents were not protesting the school for better education or for a wrong that had occurred, they were protesting a child. This child is not violent, in fact, she’s only 6. This child has not committed any noteworthy mistakes, she’s not a behavioral problem. The thing is, she has a peanut allergy.

Peanut allergies are among the most common food allergies and some of them are extremely severe. In some cases, if someone nearby is eating something containing peanuts, a child can have an anaphylactic reaction, meaning their throat closes up and they cannot breathe. This allergy is literally life threatening. Which is why my mind BOGGLES that parents are protesting the school’s method of helping to protect this 1st grader.

The school’s accommodations for this allergy requires all children (not sure if it’s all in her grade, or class or the whole school) to keep lunches outside the room, it requires the children to wash their hands before entering the room and after lunch, and though it is not in effect anymore, they used to require the kids to rinse out their mouths after lunch. So, basically the school is trying to get the kids to wash their hands at times when they already should be and do something that GASP could improve their dental hygiene. Yea, you should definitely go protest that.

Their complaint is that it’s taking away school time, which, I’m sorry, is complete bullshit. To properly wash your hands you must scrub with soap for 15 seconds. FIFTEEN SECONDS. Oh boy, how can you get any classwork done if you spend an entire 2 minutes a day on hand washing? And putting lunches outside, yea, I’m pretty sure that takes a solid hour of time away from learning.

This child is entitled to a public education in a safe environment and as someone with food allergies and as a decent human being, I applaud the school for the measures they have taken to protect this child.

I had a student in my homeroom and one of my classes who had a similarly severe peanut allergy. All her teachers met at the beginning of the school year and were trained by the nurse and the child’s mother on when and how to use an epi-pen for her peanut allergy. We were told that if we had peanut butter at lunch that for the safety of the child we should wash our hands thoroughly and if possible rinse out our mouths. And you know what? We all did it, happily, for the safety of this child. It didn’t take away my free time, it took a mere few minutes each day to keep a child safe. You’d think parents would have a similar list of priorities.

And that’s why I keep wondering what the hell is wrong with these parents. They are protesting at the school and while they say they are not protesting against the child, I think that’s just a line of crap to make them feel better. Their goal is either to get the school to loosen the restrictions or to get the child sent elsewhere, and neither option is acceptable to me. If it was their child, they would want everything done to keep them safe while at school and yet, they’re carrying signs and encouraging their kids to get the school to stop keeping another child safe.

Shame on you, parents.

This child is entitled to the same free public education your kids are getting and her safety, like your kids’ safety has to be a priority. Instead of standing up and holding signs protesting that your poor babies have to WASH THEIR HANDS twice a day, maybe you should take a minute and be grateful that you don’t have to worry about your child’s throat swelling up at school.

Or take a moment to be grateful that selfish parents like you aren’t encouraging the school to risk your child’s health. To risk her very life.

While I haven’t written about it at length, my health has been kinda crappy lately. I’ve been having more major headaches than usual and I’m struggling with some long term side effects from the headache meds that are not really doing their job. Add sleep deprivation to the mix and basically I’ve been a hot mess.

There have been several days where I have wondered if I would be able to make it through a full day at my clinical. There have been several days where I’ve wanted nothing more than a big long break from everything. Where I’ve just wanted some good news, good change. I’ve been having a lot of small private pity parties.

And life has been doing a really good job of giving me perspective.

I’m working with children who have profound injuries, children who have brain damage, who have cancer. Yesterday I met a kid who has been fighting Leukemia since he was a year old, he’s 4 now and he’s running out of treatment options. I also met an 18 year old girl who is so sick from her chemo that getting out of bed exceeded her energy reserves for the day.

Last week I met an 8 year old who was in the hospital with a new diagnosis of a bone cancer. We met her on her first day of chemo and she was a happy, bright little girl. She was worked with us happily that day, but when we came to see her the next day, she was incredibly sick. Each day we’ve tried to see her since then and she’s gotten sicker and sicker. Her smile fainter and fainter. Today we found out that despite the chemo that has been making her violently ill all week, her tumor has doubled in size. In a week. She will probably end up having her leg amputated.

Everywhere I look, I see people who are fighting battles that make mine look trivial. And this perspective doesn’t make my head hurt any less. It doesn’t make me feel less exhausted. It doesn’t make the side effects of the medication any more easy to manage. But it does make me realize something- people have survived worse than this. Children are managing pain and sickness that I will hopefully never understand. Their parents are standing strong in the face of fear I hope to never know.

Things are still far from good here, but looking around, I know that I can manage. I can function despite this pain, I can do what I need to do so that I can help these kids, these families to find a way to manage too. And though I may not make a huge difference in their day or their lives, I can say without hesitation that they have profoundly changed mine.

Last night I saw a video that was making its rounds on the internet. It wasn’t a video of someone singing or a celebrity making an ass of themselves like usual, it was a video of a boy being bullied. And then of him fighting back.

I know that many people have written and will write about what happened to Casey Heynes, and I’m sure many will say it more gracefully, but I need to weigh in.

I was bullied mercilessly throughout elementary school. My bullying was almost exclusively done with words and only very rarely with physical action, but there was some of both. Each night when I’d think about what had happened on the school yard that day, I’d wonder why I hadn’t fought back. Why I hadn’t stood up for myself. I would have dreams where they were terrorizing me and I would swing my fists, but never actually hit them. No matter how hard I tried, I was never able to fight back.

So when I saw the video of a young boy fighting back against a bully, my reactions were mixed. On the one hand, I don’t condone violence and I wish it had never happened. On the other hand, I’m kind of glad that the bully got what was coming to him. Maybe that makes me a monster because he is a child, but I’m sorry, he deserved it and I hope it hurt (not did permanent damage, but I hope it really sucked).

That bully walked up and punched another kid in the face. He taunted him, he had a friend TAPING it. There was nothing that wasn’t awful about what that boy had planned and began to carry out. And yesterday, he saw a consequence, for what is probably the first time, for his bullying. He now knows that treating other kids like crap might get you treated exactly the same way.

And if that was the end of it, I probably wouldn’t be writing this. But the thing is, Casey Haynes, the boy who fought back, got suspended. And yea, he probably deserved that for what he did. But the bully did not get punished. A kid who set out to terrorize another child, who punched him square in the face, didn’t get punished. How is that fair? (correction: according to commenters both boys involved were suspended for 4 days. I was getting my information from a news clip I saw last night, my apologies.)

Given how big of a problem bullying has been and has become, it’s clear that our schools are not doing a good enough job of dealing with this kind of behavior. I don’t say this to be critical of schools, I used to be a teacher and both my father and step-mom are principals. I know how hard they work and how much they care about their kids. But this is unacceptable. The bullying shouldn’t be happening in the first place and at some point, we have GOT to start punishing the bullies. I don’t care if they use their words or their fists, letting them continue to treat other kids like crap is not okay. It’s just not.

I’m 27 years old and when I watched that video for the first time and heard the other kids cheering the bully on, I nearly burst into tears. Bullying isn’t a simple act, the feelings it generates do not go away as soon as the words or the action stops. It’s more than that, it’s deeper than that. Bullying makes you feel inferior, it makes you feel like you’re not good enough. It destroys self-esteem, it changes you to your soul.

I can promise without hesitation that bullying hurts a hundred times more than hitting your leg on a brick planter. In fact, if someone had offered me the option of the bullying I received or the brick planter, I’d have chosen the latter in a heartbeat. The bully got off easy. His leg will heal if it’s even still hurt. Casey will take longer. This probably wasn’t the first time he’s been through this and while he stood up for himself and probably won’t be taunted again, he will have to live with the memories of what his classmates have done.

The bottom line is that we need to do better. We need to stop bullying in schools, we need to raise our kids so that they understand that it is unacceptable when they treat each other badly and we need to punish those who bully.

Yesterday, a boy in another continent stood up for himself and the world took notice. We can’t ignore this anymore, we can’t pretend like it isn’t happening. We need to fight back with our words and our examples, so that our children don’t have to find a way to fight back for themselves.

In December, I got an email from a professor asking if any students were interested in coaching basketball teams for the YMCA near our school. I won’t say that I jumped at the opportunity, but I thought about it for a while and decided that it sounded like something that I would be able to squeeze into my schedule and that I’d really enjoy being a part of. So in January, I began spending 2 hours a week with a bunch of 7 and 8 year old girls.

On the whole, the experience was fantastic. I had a really great time and my players did as well. They don’t keep score at that age, so it really is all about having fun and I think we accomplished that each and every week, and hey we played some pretty good basketball too. But there was one thing that nagged at me.

I had one player, who was on the younger end our age group, who hadn’t played much basketball. She gave 100% at each practice, no doubt, but she wasn’t a stand out player. Since it’s a team sport, it was no big deal, she was a great defensive player and I did everything I could to lift her up and make her proud of the improvements she made throughout the season, just like the other players.

But her dad did not.

Every time we took a water break during practice or between quarters of the game, her dad called her over, away from the other kids, to tell her what she needed to do better. He would yell at her while on the court, even in practice, to play harder, to do x, y, or z and he almost never commended her for doing anything right. There were multiple days where she left practice in tears. Not from an injury, from her dad.

I am not a parent, and I know I’ll get criticism for this, but I am horrified by this father. I think he is doing the exact opposite of what he should be doing with his child. Yes, encourage her to participate in sports, yes, encourage her to play her hardest, to give it her all. Yes to all of that. But to berate a 7 year old for not getting rebounds when she is clearly afraid of getting hit in the face with the ball? Or to yell at her across the court in a game because she made a bad pass?

No. I’m sorry, no. That is not how you raise a child, that’s how you break one.

Each week I could see more and more of this little girls’ sparkle fading. I could see that basketball became less fun and more exhausting, not just physically, but mentally. And all I could think is, is it really worth this? Is having your child be good at something really worth tearing them down to get there? Do we really care so much that our kids are the best at some sport, more than we do about their happiness?

I think that there are a lot of parents who are doing a fantastic job. In fact, two mothers from my team were talking and one suggested that the other’s daughter should definitely play college basketball (and to her credit, this kid is outstanding at basketball) and her mother replied, “only if she wants to.” I wanted to hug her, I want to put her on a pedestal, because this is what we should be doing for our kids.

We’ve somehow set our focus on first place, and everything else stopped mattering. And I think that’s wrong. And I may not have children, I may not know the first thing about being a parent, but I watched a child dissolve because she was constantly reminded by her father that she wasn’t the best. I watched a child feel like a failure for doing the best she could. And I don’t think I need to be a parent to point out that we need to do better.

Let your kids be kids. Let them do things that make them happy, even if they’re not the best. Let them try new things and even occasionally fail. Be there to pick them up, to give them a high five and tell them that you’re proud of them.

And mean it.

On Friday I saw my physical therapist at a last minute appointment because my neck flared up suddenly in a very short period of time. She asked me what had been going on that may have started the flare and I told her about exams and a few life stressors and she looked me in the eye and gave me some ugly news. She said that if I didn’t get my stress under control that my neck would continue to be a problem.

I go back and see her again tomorrow and let’s just say she is not going to be pleased.

The stress kind of snuck up on me. It’s not that I didn’t have stressors, it’s that for a while I’ve been doing a really good job of compartmentalizing. In one compartment I had the stress of being sick for over a month. In another compartment I had the stress of being told I’ll need another brain surgery. In another compartment were my midterms and in another, an upcoming project and an upcoming clinical rotation. I tried to focus on one thing at a time, but before I knew it, the background stress grew to a deafening level and I could hardly focus on any one thing because there were so many others begging for my attention.

For the past week and a half I’ve had a twitch in the muscle just below my right eye. This morning for no apparent reason (except stress), I broke out in hives all over my back. I’ve had an absolutely unrelentingly bad increase in my normal headache for the past 3 days and sleeping has been difficult to come by.

I am slowly, but surely, unraveling. And the most frustrating part is that it’s my own fault.

Yes, there are a lot of things going on and most of them are outside my realm of control. I’ve actually done a pretty decent job staying up to date on most of my classes and studying in advance instead of at the last minute, but I’ve put such a tremendous amount of pressure on myself this semester, that I don’t see how I can possibly succeed.

I made a decision two years ago to go to this program even though my sister was not just a graduate, but a stand out graduate who later came back to teach one of the courses. I knew that there would be added pressure from that, but I felt comforted because I had changed my last name prior to starting and because we really don’t look anything alike. And then the name change didn’t really work and word travelled through the program, and everyone knows I’m her sister and that’s not a bad thing, but it’s harder than it would otherwise be.

My sister is a neuro-focused person. She treats neurologically compromised patients, she’s writing a textbook on neuro treatment techniques. She is important in her field and she is really good at what she does. I’d love to spend a day just watching her treat patients because she is astoundingly good at it. That said, I do not care for neuro. I just don’t, I don’t mind some parts of it, but as someone who has experienced neurological deficits, I don’t think it’s a field I would be happy working in.

This semester is all neuro. Every class is neuro based, neuro focused and our big project involves a neuro patient. It’s a tough semester for everyone, I’m not the only one who is stressed. But somehow, I found a way to make it tougher. Because I feel like I can’t just be okay, I have to be amazing. I fee like if I don’t get As, my teachers (all of who know that I’m my sister’s sister) will think less of me, less of her. My sister’s reputation proceeds me and even though no one has asked me to, I feel like I need to live up to the standards she set. I feel like not doing as well as her makes me a failure.

I’ve created stress where it doesn’t need to be and I feel like I’m drowning in it. I’m forgetting who I am and how important it is for me to be me, for me to just give my best effort and celebrate my victories, however small. I let the expectations, my expectations, grow out of control. I set the bar too high and now I’m somehow surprised that I can’t clear it.

I don’t want to go to physical therapy tomorrow because I don’t want to have to face what I already know. I am making myself sicker, I’m making myself hurt more. I don’t want to face the fact that I am, in many ways, my biggest problem.

Because that’s one I don’t know how to fix.