I’m not sure what triggers it. Perhaps it’s the coming of summer, when social media explodes with vivid accounts of my friend’s adventures, while I still feel trapped in the realm of medical school. FOMO, to adhere to popular terminology. Or maybe it’s that people see me as personable, happy, and maybe even popular, descriptions which I attribute to being adaptable, like a social chameleon. I mold these traits into a mask, terrified to show the cracks, displaying my vulnerability. But every once in a while, I feel an acute, heavy sense of loneliness and isolation. My friends, family and significant other suddenly seem strangely distant, and the meaning of it all becomes dim and irrelevant. Yet I persist, and refuse to show “weakness”. This recent bout has been particularly overwhelming, as I came to believe that by conforming and fitting in everywhere, I had doomed myself to genuinely fit in nowhere. These episodes come and go unpredictably, but are always debilitating.
As a serendipitous occurrence, I recently rediscovered an old paper folder, filled with small folded notes, some decorated, some black and white. Papers from fellow interns in Africa, where I had spent a fond summer during undergrad, compiled for an overtly cheesy farewell present where participants write a note and place it in the respective subject’s folder. They are a dozen pieces of paper that I cherish; some make me smile, some make me tear up, some simply make me remember. For months, I have been feeling stranded, but this was a poignant reminder that I had, and always will be, loved.