of letting go

It’s amazing to me how far I’ve come. I rode the wave of medical school; I was crushed under its weight and dragged across the bumpy sea floor. I rose from the sand after the water receded and was not only still whole but was stripped of old vestiges and ideas and misconceptions. I was stronger, and I was no longer afraid.

Much of the tumult of this journey was feeling like a laughable outsider. The language and rules and norms of this new culture were foreign to me; I was a stranger in a strange land. I was a foreigner in what could be a quite brutal milieu. I was self-conscious and vulnerable, scared that my ignorance and my sensitivities and disenchantment and disappointment meant that something was indeed wrong with me– as if this ailing system of inequities and capitalistic fantasies confirmed my greatest fear of not belonging, of being some kind of mistake, of needing to leave the healing profession altogether. What a relief it was to realize that my sense of self– both my professional identity and personal identity– could be completely separate from my “belonging” or acceptance inside a disdainful medical culture and a healthcare system (i.e., insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and other for-profit institutions) run by dusty dodos and fossilized pterodactyls. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of me within a rotten environment. I am free to be myself, and that’s all that matters. I am not perfect, and that is perfect. I am worthy of love simply because I exist– not because any one of my supervisors or employers or whoever else thinks I’m valuable.

I let go of my need to impress anyone or be validated. I am free to make mistakes and to learn and grow without my shortcomings– or my perceived belief that I have shortcomings– threatening me or my identity. My self-worth is not dependent on how much I know or what I am “good” at or what anyone else says I am.

Peace is available to me, but it is not something anyone else can construct for me or give to me. It is from inside of me. I’m grateful that I learned all of this in medical school. It was a profound piece of hidden curriculum.