30 years old.
Block 3 of my third year of residency.
According to Numerology, the number 3 has ” a powerful need to express feelings, ideas, and visions of the imagination”. And isn’t it beautiful that I felt the need to start blogging again? When the number 3 is repeating itself so much in my life right now.
I’m laying in my bed, and all I can think about is how much I was afraid to turn 30. Afraid to be a senior resident. Afraid to not live up to my own ideal of what I was supposed to be when I turned this milestone.
As a child, I had a clear vision. By 30, I would be a successful doctor, married to the love of my life, and mother to two cute but sassy children. I would be an attending, saving lives and taking names at work but starting to think of academia or administration. I would have a loving husband who also had a good job and had the same values as me. We would have one night a week carved out for “date night” in which we would go out to dinner or cuddle up on the couch and watch movies. I would have a house that had a big kitchen with an island in the middle. Seasonal flowers would constantly be on that island that over looked bowls of cereal. Happy memories to go with those two children who bounced off to preschool and elementary school. I would be the mom that had it together, remembering when the bake sale was and who had practice at what time. I would be an adult. A real adult. An “adultier adult”.
Instead, I’m a single woman who lives in a one bedroom apartment who is trying to find time between ER shifts to make sure my laundry is done. I have a cat who I’m still surprised to find her cat bowl empty sometimes. I swear I refill that thing at least three times a day! How can it be empty? I’m smelling scrubs before I put them on again to work. I’m the one eating cereal over the sink – not those two children.
Because of that beautiful daydream that has stuck in my head, and so closely tied to my 30th birthday – my summer was rough. Full of transitions. I transitioned from a junior resident who could always think “well there’s going to be someone more senior-y than me” to the senior resident. I transitioned from a young adult who could always think “well there’s going to be someone more adult-y than me” to the adult. And constantly seeing how different my real life was from my daydream.
Theodore Roosevelt said that “Comparison is the thief of joy”. And let me tell you, I lived in that comparison all summer. I bathed in the sadness that came with seeing how much I lacked in my life compared to that daydream. I sat rooted to the spot and watched the seconds count down to my birthday, each second like a timer on a bomb. Tick, tick, tick. With each second, I could feel myself become older. With each second, I could feel myself become sadder. With each second, I could feel myself become farther and farther from that daydream. So I sat some more. And let more seconds pass. And let more distance come between my current state and my daydream.
And then it happened. My birthday happened. Luckily, I was at work on trauma and had patients facing life and death to distract me. But I looked at the clock and it was already 1am. I had been 30 for a whole hour and nothing bad had happened. The bomb didn’t go off, the skies didn’t tear apart, no fire came raining down from heaven. I was still breathing, walking, and talking just like I had been an hour before. I hadn’t suddenly aged to a wrinkly, old woman who was unable to remember her name or what year it was. I hadn’t suddenly become less of a woman or a doctor. I hadn’t suddenly become anything. I was still me.
My celebration was quiet and uneventful; I went home and had a piece of the cake the ER nurses had been so kind to get me. My cat came up and cuddled up to me. And I went to sleep watching a murder documentary on Netflix. Like any other day.
So how had this “monumental” occasion, which had been the obsession of my mind, come and gone with not so much of a whisper?
How had I become an adult, a real adult, with no big consequential change?
Because I was still me. Turning 30 hadn’t really meant anything, really. True, it meant that I had been on this Earth for another year. But it didn’t change who I was or what was expected of me. The comparison between my real life and that daydream – the one I was sure everyone else could see and judge – had robbed me of celebrating. Of celebrating the joy of being another year older, wiser, and being the senior resident. My mother and father didn’t care that I didn’t have those children yet. In fact, their daydream of what my life was to be like by the time I was 30 was vastly different than the daydream I had. My attendings didn’t care that I was suddenly a senior resident. They just wanted to continue to see my grow and learn. My friends didn’t care that I didn’t have a husband who doted on me. They just wanted to see me happy. No one cared that I was an “adultier adult”. They just wanted to know that someone else was eating cereal over their sink too.
So I woke up the next day, I put on those scrubs (with the habitual sniff test), tied my shoes, and walked out the door. The sun was still shining, the heat was still unbearable, the hospital still smelled like antiseptic. Everything was the same.
My daydream is still what I want to have – I’m very much looking forward to wiping milk off of faces who are smiling at those seasonal flowers on that big kitchen island. But it doesn’t have to have a deadline. That daydream doesn’t become any less special or beautiful because it happened when I was a little older. Those children aren’t going to look at their mom and think “if only she had this when she was 30”. That husband isn’t going to be less because I found him later in life.
So maybe I did change when I turned 30. Maybe I did become an “adultier adult”. Or maybe I just learned that life doesn’t listen to deadlines. And my joy is too important to be stolen.
The Basic Batch 