Like you absolutely grow up way too fast when you have a sibling with disabilities because you either start thinking or are influenced to feel that you have to be a parent or a grown up to help your sibling when truly your job is to be a sibling with some awareness that your sibling requires different kinds of care. And that can either end up making you direct resentment to the wrong person (aka your sibling and not your parents for neglecting your needs as another child in the home) or feeling like you have to handle responsibility at the same level as your parents that they should be shouldering and not you, even to the point where like all the desires you may have, you may even believe you have to set them aside to be of help.

And it sucks cause growing up you feel like you cant talk about any negative emotion about these circumstances or your environment, especially feelings of neglect or isolation, without looking like a bad person, feeling guilty about having these feelings in comparison to what your siblings is going through, like you're being selfish or a brat, and often as a result you end repressing it and putting it in your head that you have to ALWAYS be good so you're not adding more burden to the situation at home.

And its wild cause like parents need to instead foster siblinghood amongst their kids, not making them fit into adult roles or worse, doing the opposite of this and leaving them in the dark when it comes to what their siblings are going through and ultimately making them feel like an outlier. This would be far more helpful in the future for all siblings involved given that a majority of people with disabilities that have siblings, end up with their siblings being the people who are most constant in their lives, even more so than parents because we unfortunately are more likely to outlive our parents. When we have the opportunity to have space and desires for ourselves with support from family, to have fostered lives like anyone else where we have the ability and assured space for ourselves then family, I think making the switch to being our siblings main source of support and care wouldn't feel like an extension of that environment of, dare I say, enmeshment? that can happen. And not to mention I highly fucking doubt siblings with disabilities appreciate that their siblings act like parent figures all the time when all they went is a brother or sister, someone who treats them like a person with their own autonomy that their parents can sometimes unfortunately fail at.

It crazy cause like I think now that me and my sister are adults we understand that WAY more than our mom does LMAO I sometimes try to do things for her from years of habit and conditioning to always be looking after her and she'll be like "Stop. You're not my mom and I can do it" or "Hey I need space, go away and draw or something " and I'm like damn ur right ok! LMAO started realizing I could be far more of help to my sister as her sister than as her psuedo dad and it absolutely is true. Because now that's shes dealing with trauma, my sister doesn't trust anyone else in my house with her feelings or what she needs, let alone her words except me now that I've slowly started to change our dynamic. Everyone has to basically communicate with her through me now that's she gone non verbal with most people.

Weight Vs Health

Hello! I am your friendly neighborhood healthcare provider/mom/writer.

Since I started my journey in medicine, I have been met with so much criticism about how my own health would effect how my patients respected me. Lets back up to the beginning with my childhood and relationship with food began.

I grew up in Georgia (still live here) so southern food and fried food and sweet tea were really all we had growing up. In my baby book, my first food other than Gerber jars was listed as Biscuits and Gravy. I was a pudgy kid from the time I started Kindergarten to the time I graduated high school and became a fat adult. Please understand that I do not use the word fat as derogatory, but simply as my own truth. I was the youngest of five kids, my mother and father had a very healthy and happy marriage (still do) and to be honest all of us have struggled with obesity issues at one point or another. My mom who always meant well for us, grew up on a household where she was the only overweight person. My grandmother, gods rest her soul, was not really supportive of my mother and had a long history of bulemia. I remember she used to take baking soda for her "stomach ache" every night, it was not until I was much older that I realized she used it to throw up everything she had in her stomach. My mom was always self conscious and when she was a kid she was bullied terribly for her weight. She feared she was grow up to be alone, but my dad swooped her off her feet. She admitted to me once, that it was not until their 8th anniversary that she truly believed he loved her. My oldest sister was never morbidly obese, but as soon as she was out of the house in her early 20's she went on a hardcore diet and lost nearly 100 pounds. Now she is so terrified of gaining weight, her tiny frame requires iron infusions to survive, which causes lots of gastrointestinal issues. Her twin brother, both of them 18 years older than I am, used to run 10 miles a day to keep skinny. I remember how he talked about all of his dates he would go on. He broke up with many girls for being too fat for him. Imagine how I felt hearing this. Looking down at my baby fat belly and thunder thighs at the crisp age of 12. He used to take me to the movies once every few months. I think he forgot that we were in two different worlds age wise and he would tell me how I should never date until I am in my 20's because boys only want one thing and that men are selfish. Talk about projecting... My middle brother, who grew up the size of a bean pole, had his metabolism catch up with him when he was in his early 30's. I think his weight had to do with getting married young, becoming a father to two wonderful kids and seemingly having the perfect life. We never had much of a relationship when I was a kid, but what we have now is nice. A few years ago he had to have a 14 hour thoracic surgery because the hernia he had ignored for 10+ years tore through his diaphragm and created a vaccum in his chest. Every deep breath he took, pulled his liver, stomach, large intestine, etc under his rib cage, his left lung collapsed without his knowledge. Thankfully, he survived and is doing wonderful. He had to go two months knowing that he may die any moment as no surgeon would complete the surgery without him losing 30 pounds first. My middle sister, who is my best friend in the entire world has always struggled with her weight. Longer than any of us have. She had terrible abdominal pain all her 20's and was met with "just lose weight" until finally they discovered (after she BEGGED to have a CT) that she had a disease called diverticulitis. Now, if you do not know what this is, a brief discription would be: a colon disease in which small pollups develope on the inside of the intestines and catch food and debris (certain foods exacerbate this more than others) and those pollups become inflammed. Very painful. VERY painful when one has a flare up. She went through another year of having to be in and out of the hospital for treatments. Finally, a doctor saw that she needed to have a partial colectomy. One and half feet removed. Her intestines had been perforated by the time they had done the surgery, had she went even a week longer, she would have gotten gangrene, gone septic, and died. All the while this is going on, she was gaining weight. Specifically in her lower quadrant and legs. Her

legs would swell and depending on the day, she could not fit into anything but leggings. She was also met with (even after surgery) "just lose weight." I watched her workout, meal prep, struggle with so much pain in her body, that she would just cry and curse her body. Turns out, after 4 referals and paying to go to the only vascular doctor in her network, she was diagosed with lipidema (I would also like to note, SHE found her diagnosis before any doctor did). Lipidema is when the body produced fat in regions on the body that is NON metabolizable. Basically "just lose weight" was never going to work. To this day, the only thing that works is liposuction. Even then, the fat will come back. I must note, this causes extreme body pain. Similar to fibromyalgia. (Which is hereditary and all the girls in my immediate family have it) My sister is honestly my hero, she fought to figure out what was wrong with her because all anyone in healthcare could see was fat. Then there is me. I have always been obese. It never bothered me until I was in the 11th grade and had gained 30 pounds in the summer before school started and everyone at school could not stop talking about how big my ass was. The boys nicknamed me "donk" and as most of the fat girls can tell you, you either cry, or you become your own worst enemy and make a joke of yourself. No one can hurt my feelings more than I can. To make my story short. I finally got to a comfortable weight around 18 years old. When I started college I was thicc with two c's. I felt pretty, probably the only time I ever did. Then, what I can only describe as the trainwreck that got me where I am now happened in August of 2014. My best friend and the love of my life died of a heroine overdose. I never grieved properly, mostly because I (still to this day with my family other than my sister) never came out of the closet as bisexual. I was too afraid. Couple that with drug use, getting into a horribly abusive relationship and getting pregnant, bad pregnancy with complications, giving birth, etc... I put on 160 pounds in 3 years! I went from 185 to 345 pounds. My heaviest weight being 370 pounds. I now fluctuate between 280 and 311 all year long. Most of that is fluid buildup in my legs as I also have (you guessed it) lipidema... One thing I forgot to mention is that you can have latent genes for lipidema that will appear after your body goes through trauma... like childbirth or surgery. Couple that with the fear of being fat and being raised in diet classes because your own mother feared that you would be made fun of and you have me... someone who approaches everything they do with an overweight patient so cautiously, lest they end up like me or my family.

I can safely say that after living 27 years in my own shoes, if you come to me as a an overweight patient with issues, I am going to dig through every option and while I may suggest a diet change or working out (because they are very important) I will never tell someone that the soul reason they are sick is because they are fat. Because even at a current 289 pounds, my body fat % is lower than my muscle mass %. You can be fat and still be healthy. You can be fat and have your labs come back totally normal.

Fuck any doctor who tells you otherwise.

A Split Second (Part Four) [Bryce Lahela x f!MC]

Pairing: Bryce Lahela x f!MC (Dr. Claire King).

Chapter Rating: T.

Word Count: 3.3K.

Description: She might not know what her faith is, but someone reminds her how to hold on to it. TW: guns, violence, blood. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. 

Disclaimer: Characters, storyline, and parts of the dialogue are taken from Pixelberry’s Choices’ Open Heart. They fully own the characters, dialogue, backgrounds, etc. MC Claire King’s background is my own creation, based off of MC in-game’s personality.

Author’s Note: I’m sorry this took so long!! And I’m also sorry because there is one more part after this XD But that will be the last part, I promise!! This chapter took on a life of its own. Bryce isn’t in it, but it’s definitely something that I realized Claire needed in the development of this story. If you’d like to be tagged please let me know! I don’t count people liking the actual post because I don’t know if that’s you wanting to be tagged XD so be sure to comment and tell me!

Tagging: @commander-rahrah @jaydito-tjjd @anotherbeingsworld @shakespeareanwannabe @bitchloveskcbaseball @wisegirl9 @rookie-ramsey @mrsdrakewalkerblog @omgjasminesimone @frenchieswiftie @jamespotterthefirst @elladines @thanialis @lucy-268 @sherrylove @bloomingsivan @lahellacute @araihc-ce @ltimeisanillusionl 

Enjoy! 

Claire’s favourite time of the year was Christmas. She loved decorating her home, she loved watching Christmas movies, she loved giving gifts, really loved getting gifts. But despite her favourite holiday centering around the birth of the figure of the religion, she didn’t know if she could call herself a Christian. 

But that didn’t stop her from sitting in the back pew of the hospital’s multi faith room. It was a small place, roughly the size of the diagnostic team’s room, with three pews on either side of the room. She had expected for there to be a giant figure of Jesus painted in stained glass on the window, but because of the place being a multi faith room, they couldn’t. A tall podium sat at the front of the room, probably for when leaders of the faith came to speak to the people desperately seeking any kind of reprieve from the worry that plagued their every waking moment. 

Admittedly there were a lot of places Claire could have gone. The cafeteria, where she could have stress ate until Bryce’s surgery was over, but with G.S.Ws there was always the chance that complications could arise, and she wasn’t sure how much her poor stomach could handle, especially when she thought about eating anything her stomach clenched. 

She briefly considered a supply closet, but she could still remember the burning shame she felt when June found her there crying her eyes out at the news of Kyra’s relapse. It was too risky, especially because of the coming and going that arose with the need for supplies in there.

Then she thought about waiting it out in the resident lounge, but there she’d be surrounded by her friends. She’d have to talk with them, listen to them give reassurances that nothing would happen to Bryce, but Claire didn’t want to listen to empty promises. Her friends had seen her in bad states before: blood soaking her scrubs, exhaustion draining her face, the occasional stench that emitted off of her when she was so caught up in a case she forgot to shower. But she didn’t want them to see her like this: eyes bloodshot, nose red, tissue tucked into her sleeve for easy access when a rack of sobs hit her like a freight train. She just wanted to be somewhere she could shut her brain off. 

That was when her mind flashed to the multi faith room. It was always quiet in here, save for the odd sniffle or sob that came out of a person while they prayed for their husband to make it through the night, their sister to make it through her surgery, their grandfather’s diagnosis to be anything but what they feared the most. Otherwise, it was a place where people came to find some shred of peace. The silence was comfortable; it was a recognition that everyone in the small room was suffering somehow, but who found companionship with each other in the sense that they all sent their pleas to a guy sitting on a cloud in the sky. 

Tonight, though, the multi faith room was surprisingly empty. Someone had to have been in there earlier, because the collection of candles that sat on the table in front of the podium were lit, the flames of each individual candle small but creating a larger, stable symbol of hope. Each candle represented an unknown person, a life no one knew, a story untold, but every tiny wick created a sense of solidarity, the knowledge that someone was thinking of you, that this point in time, there was a place in the darkness where all hope was extinguished, but burning on as a deliberate point to prove that your life mattered, that it was being prayed for, that you were being fought for. An ember to glow with the reminder that someone wanted, needed you to stay.  

All the same, she chose the pew in the very back. She huddled against the armrest, tucking her knees under her and curling into the side as much as she could. She rested her joined hands under her head in the hopes that she would be less tempted to check the watch on her wrist and despair at how long the surgery was taking. She made Dr. Emery promise that she’d page her as soon as the surgery was over, but she didn’t know how long that would take, so Claire settled in for what could possibly be the longest night of her life. 

Her eyes hurt, her head aching with exhaustion now that all the adrenaline had flushed out of her system. She was still in the blood soaked clothes she had been in when she tried to cover Bryce’s wound, but she couldn’t bring herself to get up and change out of them. Instead she lay there, the high air conditioning blasting through her clothes and stiffening the material, chafing against her chest. Still she didn’t move. Her memories of Bryce paralyzed her. 

She relieved every single moment backwards right from the moment he had been whisked into the O.R. room all the way back to the first time she had seen him in the changing room on her first day in Edenbrook, when she had no idea who he’d become to her. Back then, he was just a meat headed jockey; someone fun to hook up with, but who Claire thought was the ‘no strings attached’ type, which was fine with her, because as each day passed she found herself more and more enamored with Ethan. But then Ethan left, and Bryce stepped up to help, and she finally started to see him in a new light. No, he wasn’t the type to buy you a drink at the bar, flirt with you just the right amount, laugh when he knew you wanted him to, knew just what to say to reel you in, and then go with you back to your place and then be gone without a word before you even woke up the next morning.

No. Bryce Lahela was the type to make terrible jokes. He talked during movies. He bought shots for his friends because he had heard they were going to compete against each other. He laughed at everything you said: your good jokes, your bad jokes, especially your terrible jokes, the ones you made because you knew only he would laugh at them. He’d bring you back to his place, lavish you, make you feel warm and loved and safe, and then the next morning he’d bring you breakfast in bed to share, even if it was just toaster waffles and he ate all of the strawberries even though you pleaded for him to spare you at least one. Bryce was safe. Bryce was loving. Bryce was home. 

And she didn’t know if he’d die not knowing how much she loved him. 

The idea twinged her chest, slowly spreading through her like a parasite, devouring all threads of hope and spitting out something that was ruined and beyond repair. She squeezed her eyes shut when she felt tears brimming, and she curled herself into a smaller ball, if that was even possible. It was as if she was hoping that the more she compressed herself, the more she’d be able to crush the pain that snaked her muscles. 

She faintly heard the doors to the chapel opening. The thought of sitting up crossed her mind, because she was technically in a place of worship and she really shouldn’t have her feet up in a pew, but then she thought that this was a place people came when they were desperate, when medicine and hopeful statistics and the comforting words of doctors weren’t enough for them. Those people who were in no place to judge how she dealt with her emotions. So she kept her eyes shut, drinking in a shuddery breath through her mouth. 

Movement in the chapel, footsteps echoing softly on the carpeted floor. The footsteps grew louder, and suddenly the seat next to her dipped with a weight of someone sitting down, the body heat of their dress pants brushing against her feet. She still kept her eyes shut, though. If someone needed her presence just to feel like they weren’t alone, so be it. 

“I’ve known you for a little over a year, yet I never knew you were religious,” the agonizingly familiar voice said and Claire’s eyes immediately snapped open. She dropped her feet to the ground and sat up, turning her head so her eyes met his soft blue ones. Ethan gave her an easy smile, the look you’d give a child to reassure them that a needle was nothing to be scared of. “You didn’t peg me for the type to be singing Christmas carols about Jesus.”

Claire sniffled, blinking heavily before finally turning to face the front. “I mean, I decorate a Christmas tree and I paint Easter eggs, but I don’t know about church every Sunday or not mixing certain types of cloth.” She tilted her head back, letting her neck rest on the back of the seat. “But when I needed a place to be by myself, to be quiet, to feel some sort of peace… this is where I ended up.”

Ethan stared at her. At the wrinkles around her eyes. The dryness of her nose that came with the repeated rubbing of tissues. The redness in her swollen cheeks. “Lahela’s still in surgery.” 

Her chest dipped. When she didn’t respond, Ethan continued. “That was the last update I could get from Harper. She’s the best. She’ll do what she can for Lahela. She--”

“I don’t need you to tell me what I already know, Ethan,” she cut in dryly. The words came out harsher than she intended. She always spoke cordially with Ethan, professionally, nicely even, considering that their split hadn’t really been… amicable. But now, tonight, she didn’t have the room to decipher the lingering tightness in her chest whenever she looked at him. Any emotions she felt tonight were for Bryce, the man she had only become certain of when she was on the verge of losing him. 

Ethan went silent. “Then what do you need?”

“Just distract me.” She turned her eyes to him without lifting her head. “How did you find me here?”

“Aurora Emery saw you in here,” he responded. “She didn’t want to disturb you, though. But when I ran into her and asked if she’d seen you, she told me.”

She wasn’t sure if she should murder Aurora or thank her. She didn’t necessarily want to see Ethan but… but even after all this time, she still associated him with comfort, especially when he wasn’t open about it, which wasn’t what she wanted. 

His leg bounced, his foot tapping against the floor. “The cops were looking for you. They wanted a statement.”

She cocked a brow. “And?”

“And I told them I didn’t know where you were,” Ethan answered. He gave her a once-over, taking in her frazzled appearance. “I figured after what happened, you wouldn’t be in the mood to really talk to anyone. Besides, Sienna had already filled us in on what had happened, but they wanted an eyewitness report.”

The corner of her lips turned up slightly. “Thanks for that.”

“I know this is probably a stupid question,” he started. “But are you okay?”

“Someone pointed a gun in my face today,” she hummed. She lifted her head and gave Ethan an incredulous look. “Would you be okay?”

“No,” he admitted. “But I’m honestly surprised you’re as calm as you are.”

The anger she thought she had suppressed, that she hadn’t felt in months, flashed through her. “I’m not as fragile as you think.”

“Right,” he acknowledged, the word lingering in the awkward air she had created. Claire squeezed her eyes shut and crossed her arms over her chest, sinking back into the weathered cushion while ignoring the discomfort of the wooden top. 

After a few more silent seconds, Ethan finally said, “So… Lahela, huh?”

She didn’t even bother opening her eyes. A snort escaped her lips before she could stop it. “It’s a little late to play the jealous ex, don’t you think?” 

“No, I know,” Ethan quickly backtracked, his tone filled with alarm, but with a forlorn undertone that Claire only recognized because she was well versed in the language of Ethan Ramsey. “I just meant… he’s a good guy, if you had to pick someone.”

Claire couldn’t help but wonder if Ethan was trying to imply that he wasn’t a good guy, but she didn’t have the strength or energy to launch into that discussion. Instead, she said, “He is a good guy. The best, really. It just took me a while to see it.” Her shoulders deflated. “Too long, if I’m going to be honest.”

“I’m no stranger to feeling like you’ve waited too long,” Ethan said quietly. The words cut through Claire, though only deep enough to leave a superficial wound. “But I’m sure Lahela knows how you feel.”

“He doesn’t,” she retorted. She opened her eyes to see Ethan staring at her, confusion raising his brows. Claire pushed herself up so she sat properly. “He thought all he was to me was just a rebound. But he’s not. He’s everything to me. He makes me happy, feel warm, feel safe…” To her horror tears blurred her vision. She didn’t want to be the type of person that cried to her ex about her current boyfriend (though Claire wasn’t even sure that was who Bryce was to her) but here she was. Yet instead of making her feel awkward, Ethan just waited patiently, his face neutral, his eyes betraying none of the emotions she wondered he felt hearing her talk about someone else to him. He dipped his chin for her to continue, and encouraged, she did. She bit her lip to keep it from wobbling and sobbed, “But I couldn’t do the same for him. He got shot because of me.” 

Ethan put a hand on her shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze. “Rookie, pull yourself together.”

That nickname. One she hadn’t heard since her final day as an intern, when he had accidentally let it slip before correcting himself with the reminder that she was no longer an intern. It was a nickname she had loathed when he gave it to her; it made her feel impossibly small and feeling like she had to live up to it. But over time she began to associate the challenge that came with the word rookie, the drive that made her want to work harder, the validation when she realized that at some point, the word had turned from a nickname that Ethan had given her because he hadn’t known her name to a name that she had built a positive reputation around. Claire King: the Rookie of the intern year of 2019. The best of the best, the woman who refused to let herself be broken. And now, with Ethan using it just now, those feelings came rushing back to her. 

She straightened her back and instinctively raised her chin, like she was poised to report a diagnosis or defend her actions. Ethan gave her an approving smile. “Bryce didn’t get shot because of you. If he did, it was because he loved you, and he would rather it be him in pain than you.”

“But I didn’t ask him to do that!” Claire sobbed, unable to contain the despair slugging through her veins. 

“You didn’t have to,” he pointed out. “The moment Bryce had seen that gun pointing at you, he had made up his mind.”

She gave him a look. “And how do you know that?” 

“Because if it were me, I would have made the same decision,” he revealed, 

The tension was so thick in the air around them it could have been cut clean through with a knife. “Ethan…” she breathed.

“I know,” he said, whispered. The words were so simple. Short, one syllable each. Yet they were heavy, wistful, filled with the joyous memories of a life that had been, haunted by the possibilities of a future that might have been. If she wasn’t Claire King, junior fellow on the diagnostic’s team. If he wasn’t Ethan Ramsey, the country’s best diagnostician, and the leader of the diagnostic’s team. It was a truth that went unsaid, the mournful melodies hidden by the words of a promising love song. Their love was one that was fleeting, never meant to thrive, never meant to see the light of day, never meant to go beyond the secret wishes that things were different. 

She darted her gaze away from him, focusing on the stain on the patch of carpet that she was praying was coffee. Ethan cleared his throat. “You can’t blame yourself for Bryce’s choices, or even for the gunman’s choices. All you can do is have faith that Harper is amazing at her job and that Lahela is strong enough to make it through the other side.”

She chuckled humourlessly, giving the empty space around her a long look. “Ethan Ramsey, I had no idea you were such a poet.”

Ethan snorted, and that launched the both of them into a fit of laughter, tears streaming down their cheeks and clutching their aching sides. They would finally sober up, but then one of them would break again, and then that would make them lose it again. 

The door to the chapels opened, and a short old lady took one step in and turned to find the source of laughter. When her disapproving gaze landed on Ethan and Claire, they both stopped laughing. Instead of stepping inside, the woman clicked her tongue in disbelief and shook her head in disgust before stepping out. Ethan and Claire looked at each other again before dissolving into another round of laughter. 

Finally, after what seemed like ages, Claire’s laughs ceased. She wiped at the corner of her eyes. “Thank you, Ethan,” she said. “I needed that.”

“Hey, I’m a doctor,” he offered, a familiar twinkle in his eyes. “It’s my job to make people feel better.”

A smile graced her face, while the ghost of one tugged on Ethan’s lips. It was a gesture of understanding between two people who had loved and lost, and who recognized that while ending things had been the right decision, they would always need each other in their lives. It was in that moment that Claire realized that she and Ethan had needed each other, but were never meant to end up together. In Ethan, Claire had found a mentor, someone who understood her passion and who recognized her talent, who could push her to be the best she could be. In Claire, Ethan had found someone he had been wandering for years without-- a true friend. Someone who listened without judgment, who offered solutions, who reminded you of what mattered in life, someone who was just there when they needed you to be. 

And in Bryce, Claire thought, she had found a true partner. In Bryce, she had found the person she was meant to end up with, who would swing their joined hands obnoxiously while they walked down the street while she apologized to passerbys but who did it because it brought a smile to her face. In Bryce, she found someone she knew she could count on to never run away. In Bryce, she had found her soulmate. 

Her pager buzzed. The vibration froze her, rendering her unable to move. With an encouraging nod from Ethan, Claire sucked in a steadying breath. She was ready. 

She pulled her pager out of her pocket. Looked down at the words that, regardless of what they were, would change her life forever. 

He made it.

I just happen to stumbled upon ur account and saw that you'll be quitting med school. I have a dilemma that I want to share with someone. Im a newly enrolled first yr med student and classes just started a week before. But I'm starting to form some doubts whether I really want to be a doctor or not. Its not that I cant handle the academics its just that do i really see myself being a doctor in the future and actually feel happy about it.

I dont even know if being a doctor is my dream anymore or just my parent’s.

Hiya! Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me, anon! I don’t know if my answer will help you or not, but I will try to do my ABSOLUTE BEST to reply!!

Ok so. Med school. Tricky stuff. I’ll tell you a little bit about my background and what I’m up to right now to give you a Good Feel about how things are going after the decision I’ve taken and whatnot.

I got into med school about 4 and a half years ago, and like any student who worked their asses off for their desired universities’ entrance exams, I was beyond ecstatic when I found out that I had gotten in. I started attending lectures, group discussions, student projects, and for the first few years, I felt like hey, I think I can actually do this! The exams were pretty tough, I can’t say I liked pharmacology and neurology, but I passed just fine and so I thought that things were going to be fine.

[Narrator voice] things were, in fact, not fine.

I started having doubts around..3rd year, I think? Everything just started to become so dull no matter how much free time I was using to do my hobbies (drawing and doing art in general) and I think that was when my depression started to really rear its ugly head. I started to miss classes, isolate myself from my friends, stay in bed all day, and the only people that had kept me sane were my family and a few close friends of mine telling me to take care of myself when I was too depressed to do so. I tried thinking about whether I’ll be happy being a doctor in the future, and then I noticed that I couldn’t even imagine myself in a white coat, working in a clinic and talking to a patient.

This is when I finally realized that all this time, my wanting to go to med school wasn’t even because it was my dream. It was my parents’.

I struggled a lot to get through some of the days, but I managed to keep up the facade in front of my uni friends until I finished 4th year and received a “degree”. (In Indonesia, finishing 4th year of med school grants you a “bachelor of medicine” though you can’t really use it for anything yet until you’ve finished 2 more years of clerkship and get a “dr” in front of your name).

Clerkship happened after 4th year. If I had to use one word to describe clerkship, it would be hellish. I don’t know if this is how it works in every country, but in Indonesia, clerkship demands med students to attend hospital shifts with inhuman amount of working hours. We had to do 36 hour shifts every twice a week, and 9 hour shifts every other day. This might sound pretty light to some people, but it was super tough for me what with the amount of additional assignments and exams that we still had to do during our rotations. 

After 2 months of clerkship, my depression grew so much worse to the point where my best friend (bless her heart) had to call me almost everyday to help me sleep at night because the thoughts in my head wouldn’t leave me alone. Finally, I called my sister who lives in a different city to fly to where I was living in to take me to see a psychiatrist. It didn’t help because my doctor was super shitty about my condition (“all med students experience depression at one point because med school is just that hard, don’t worry, I’ve been there”) but I did take the meds. And I was planning to carry on with clerkship, until one day the meds gave me orthostatic hypotension (it was one of the side effects of the drug that I was taking) and I fainted in the middle of a surgery. When my mom (who lives in another city) found out about this, she was livid. She flew to my place right on that exact same day to take care of me, though she hadn’t known about my depression yet at the time.

The next day, I told her everything. Like, everything. About how med school had truly been stressing me out, about how I didn’t feel like med school was the right place for me anymore, about how clerkship had been making me feel like I was a worthless piece of shit because the doctors kept yelling at me, about how clerkship had also been making me realize that I wasn’t good with patients and that their lives are literally in my hands and that a single mistake could lead to their death and how I could never live with that much guilt in my life, about how I was so tired of being too sleep-deprived to properly function everyday, let alone to stitch a patient’s cut-up hand back together.

I told her that I wanted to quit. And so I did.

And you know what? It feels amazing.

I’ve been sleeping regularly for the past few months. I get to draw everyday now, and still make money out of doing commissions. I interact with my family a lot more and I don’t check up on them only when I need them to transfer me some money to buy food. I eat three meals a day like a normal human being and it feels so, so good. I applied for a scholarship so I could earn a Master’s degree in biomedicine abroad (it’s not art school, which is where I actually want to go to, but it’s not med school either so I’ll take it), I passed the first stage and now I’m just trying to do my best to pass the next two stages so I could get a full-ride. 

Things are okay. Things are good.

Things haven’t always been good, of course. People tell me that I was “so close to reaching my dreams!”, that my parents “must be so shattered to hear that you wanted to quit!”, that I am just “wasting away my potential.” My grandparents called me a disappointment a few weeks ago while telling me that I should just give up on my scholarship application and go back to med school. My dad told me that he wished I could “go back to the way I was and be happy again.” My mom cried multiple times. It hasn’t been easy on my mental health, but honestly? Fuck it. Fuck every single guilt-trip that my parents have had to put me through. Fuck everyone at uni who’s been spreading false rumors about how I quit med school because “I got cancer” or “I got knocked up.”

I absolutely hated how the doctors did anything back in the hospital. The rich patients got immediate treatment, and the poor got dismissed. The mentally ill were mocked behind closed doors, and med students were treated like trash. Rooted seniority where the senior doctors hazed junior doctors were still a thing (in Indonesia, at least). Literally everyone in the hospital had a superiority complex and I fucking hated it. Neither my parents nor my grandparents will have to be the ones to experience this on a daily basis for years though, so fuck outta here with your negative comments about my decision.

I quit med school because I did it for me, and only me.

This is by no means supposed to scare you away from med school just so you could jump into my bandwagon, heck no. I’m telling you this because nobody told me that this could be a possibility. Everybody I knew kept telling me that the only thing you’ll need to succeed med school is firm determination and hard work, and while that may be true for some people, I required a lot more than that, like a stable mental health, a good support system, etc. I failed to meet these requirements, and so everything turned into a shipwreck for me. My other friends, however, who were well-prepared with all of these, are managing to continue med school just fine.

That being said, this answer is definitely supposed to make you think about your decision more thoroughly. One of the most often things that people tell me post-med school is that “you should’ve quit earlier if you hadn’t liked it; it would’ve saved you a lot of time.” I hate the fact that I agree with this. If I had quit years ago, I would’ve still had time to search for a school that was more relevant to my interests and start over from a blank slate. If I had quit years ago, I would’ve been able to graduate from a new school and earn an actual proper job by now so I could help my parents out with our finance. Of course, my parents would’ve been way more harsh on me if I had told them that I wanted to quit so early on, but if you own the privilege of having parents that would genuinely and willingly listen to you, please talk about it with them. I had a friend who quit med school around a few months before 1st year ended; he’s in business school now and from what I’ve heard, he’s pretty happy with where he is right now.

Whew, that was long. I swear I didn’t mean for it to be this long!! Let me know if any of that helped or if you just want to talk off anon with me in general! I know firsthand how this kind of dilemma can eat you up whole, and it’s not a fun experience, so just hmu if you want to chat

Have a nice day!!