The Doctor

Hello sir! What
Troubles you today?
Says the doctor
It's often this way

A smile at the
Surface, but beneath
Clear as ice:
One simple mistake and
The patient pays the price.

---

This is what scares me the most about medicine. Knowing that the lives of others will be in my hands. I don't want to do accidental wrong. Heck, I don't want to do wrong, period.

But I'm only human. And humans make mistakes.

Perhaps I should pray to delay the onset of such humanity.

Tomorrow

I fear
what tomorrow
brings
every day.

I wonder
if it'll justify
me behaving
This way.

Side note: I've decided to feed my fixation with poetry by setting up a twitter account - who knew a community of poets existed here? You can find me at @peoplepuzzleme

I'll be posting some of my twitter creations here also (like this).

Slipping

I can feel myself
beggining to fall back.

Conscious of it.
Wary of what it is.

My willpower wallows;
My motivation
Is gradually ebbing away,
Like flyaway grains of sand in an egg timer.

I want to stop myself; break the glass.
Before it's too late.
Before fearsome thoughts
Become unretractable actions.

Before I permanently imprint the errors of my lacking resolve on my life.

Dear God, help me prevail.

Fear

You've done all you can
Worked hard
Cried hard
Sweat hard.

Emailed people until they respond
Stressed endlessly
Learnt every detail needlessly
It made you grow stronger. Work harder.

Yet you can't help but bite your nails -
Knowing that you're in the unknown.

When all you've wanted is being held away from you at arm's length, all you can pray is that hard work pays off.

Because if it doesn't, then what does?

So close to reaching the final hurdle, it'd truly suck to get knocked down now.

Hello My Old Heart

I'm crumbling before my own eyes;
My resolve torn between surviving and succumbing
To the darkness that waits patiently inside my soul.

That oh-so-familiar blackness,
Sitting smugly
Rearing its ugly head when
I least expect it,
When I least require it.

In my hour of weakness;
Time of reflection,
It'll whisper words into my mind -
Words that rapidly become fears.

Fear is an anchor.

My spirit plummets further than preconceived plausible.
I look around; I have been here before.
Taunted, reminded of mistakes buried in the past.
Haunted; what stops the past from repeating itself?

My fingers cross;
A cry to the patron saint of my fortune; my fate.
Inhale and exhale,
Breathing in dusty air.

I can't help but chuckle
at the action.
Dusty air bathes lungs
That have for long already gathered dust.
No words spoken; they were not necessary. My inner will has faded.
All I have left now is this blackness.

This blackness robs people of their spirits. Ironic, isn't it?

The only thing I have left will leave me with nothing.

oh change, you make me sigh

This was something I'd written back in May, but I think it generally conveys the nature of change, in all of its weird fearsomeness.

---

It's a strange thing - change. I'm sure I've heard that statement a dozen a dime times (mentally at least). Nevertheless - it's a component within life we have to adapt to. Change terrifies me; it makes my heart race with anxiety. Change, and the future, seems to loom overhead like an omnipresent guillotine. And by God, I'm scared. I don't want to commit to a career, to a university, nor to a choice. I want to live in the sunshine of youth (albeit the brightness is indefinitely variable). I guess that makes me a coward.

Time is slipping between my fingers. I wish I could capture the flyaway grains of sand and place them back into the leaking hourglass. Sometimes I ponder over terminal diseases; I briefly entertain the thought that I have one. In the sickest sense, it gives me relief. I won't live up to achieving my fears, my failures. To cut to the truth, I don't want to fail. Damn it, I don't want to come within an inch of failure. Hence, the prospect of death seems frighteningly relieving.

But then I come to my senses.

Putting death into perspective - I couldn't part with life - forever living in the minds of people as someone who quit. The girl who couldn't take it, the girl with the shiny flask. Forever anxious, always quiet. The prospective failure of a meek geek. Forgotten within a week. No. I need to try. I must strive. The question that constantly reaches my mind is; what for? What am I striving towards?

And bingo! There is the problem. What do I want?

...
...
...


What do I want?

Several things come up. Whilst some are trivial, others are more or less impossible. Dauntingly so. I read about an exercise to achieve almost a mental purge - to figure out what you want. So, I'm going to type what comes firstly into my head. One minute. Perhaps two.

What do I, Peta, in all of my pseudonymous truth, want?

I want to be happy. I want a relationship, with someone who loves me, for who I am. With a man that I can be myself with, someone who doesn't care about my imperfections. Someone who is satisfied by my broken mind and my fragmented esteem; someone who disregards vanity and appearances. Someone I wouldn't stutter or stammer at, somebody I can be at ease with.

Oh, sigh.

Sometimes I wonder whether the issue is with me, rather than with the world; with people who are picky.
- - -


MAY

It's strange how you long for something even more when it's being threatened to be wrenched away from you, forever. I never realised how much I truly want to become a doctor. After time, I have come to realise that economics is not my passion. In fact, economics - my former academic flame - has actually become somewhat monotonous, to my surprise. It is biology that has captured my interest, with the various components and biological processes and details and intricacies. It's actually fantastic.


What weirds me out next is the following. How something you adored goes to something you tolerate; how something you tolerated goes to something you adore. It's odd how we change with time.


May is both a month of beauty and horror, I think for obvious reasons. The proximity of exams is a constant nightmare to my frantic mind. There is not a second that I do not curse myself for being so damn tardy. But on the positive side, God has given me the strength to persevere - I believe that's what counts ultimately. Thus, I thank God, for giving me hope, and I thank God for giving me family. Despite their...exuberance, they're not that bad after all. I just pray that I'll get through the next month without any stupid mistakes, and by working to the max. I don't want to be the one shattering my own dreams. Being a doctor seems so real now. I just have to work for  it.  And I pray, and I promise that I will not give up. I will keep on. There is nothing else I can do. I cannot afford to get B's - I must achieve a minimum of three A's, or else I've failed  by my own standards. Economics, if I work, should fulfill this - as should biology and maths, if I work and get everything done in due course. But chemistry is a constant worry. I guess.

Learn to love right? That's how I rolled at GCSE - learning to love.


d --> a*  hmm. I'd say learning to love wouldn't be so bad after all.


So, how do I feel? I'm not quite sure. Every year I wonder whether I'll exceed my expectations. I always do, but that doesn't negate the subsisting and prevalent fear that clings to my chest. It's a physical feeling this fear - like nausea. Pumping through my veins, circulating through my body.


- - -

MAY

It's hard.

On the surface, things can be easily dealt with. But underneath, it's difficult. Sometimes I feel my anger soar above; indignantly.

- - -