Yourself?

Aging.

I want to put this into words, because that is the only way I can remind myself of things nowadays.

Perhaps I've always been arrogant. I mean, I've never failed in accomplishing what I set out to do. Life to me is more than school, more than a syllabus or a path that I have to tread. I always saw myself as the captain of my own boat, the man at the helm of my own life, and no matter which schools I choose to go to, or which programmes chose me, I always make the final decisions.

I'm now questioning my own wisdom. Why did I think that everything would always be easy and possible? Or have I always been looking for the exception to the rule, and now that I've found the exception, I'm at a loss at what to do.

I hate talent. I hate talent because it makes people arrogant and unsympathetic. I think I have some talents, talents that I've not earned through my own hard labour, but through the random segregation and recombination of alleles, and I hate that. I hate situations that are unfair, that did not arise through my own hard labour. I hate myself for being me, because I am not the reason for who I am.

But looking at my latest gamble, I think it is either arrogance or folly. I've done medicine for two years now. That's 75% of the way to a basic degree, 50% to a masters. I could have started on a subject that I've prior experience with, like the people who did medicamp before me, I could have done something like computing or engineering, where I have at least a 3 year headstart on my fellow colleagues. I could have written and read, things which come naturally to me, things which were once my passion, until I found them elitist, and ultimately unsatisfying, because I could never share the world with people who weren't like me. The words and their meanings can only be shared with people with the same knowledge and definitions.

So here I am now, with nothing, the lowest of the low in my field. No talent whatsoever, no prior training, no prior experience. And now it's all fair. And then I now know how hard it is, and how other people must have felt when they saw me speeding ahead, and how tired I feel now, trying, always trying to keep up. I am mortal now, I am Clarke Kent, and not Superman. I don't have wings no more, but feel the leaden weight of stress, fatigue and doubt on my back. Will I make it? The doubt is like a stone weighing me down. The uncertainty of my uncertain memory.

I have no talents to fall back on now. All I have is hard work, and an uncertain future, working towards an uncertain result I may or may not want.

Never felt more hopeless. Part of the experience.

posted by Downhere. @ 10:43 pm