For several years, I lost the ability to cry. It started sometime early in residency, I think. Right around the time I should have been realizing that I wasn't happy with my life and that I was on the wrong track. Rather than realize those uncomfortable truths, I shoved everything down, pretending that I was only unhappy because of the work hours, which would exhaust anyone, and with the fact that I was living in a city I heartily disliked. In fact, the last good cry I had was when I was matched to this city for my residency. I liked the program itself, so much so that it would have been my #1 choice had it been located elsewhere, but the thought of living in this locale, so foreign to the landscape I grew up in and to which I was hoping to return after 4 years on the opposite coast for medical school, left me in tears. Maybe I was even crying because I realized on some level that residency itself was the wrong path for me... who knows... I sobbed out all those tears, not realizing that that was it for awhile.
Oh sure, I was able to cry here and there. Like when I was getting on the plane to go back to the residency grind after a vacation with loved ones. Like when something particularly upsetting happened. Like when we had to put my parents' old cat to sleep. But it was never a good cry. I was never able to let go and sob, even when I wanted to and needed to. I would feel it coming on - a few tears would escape - and then it would dry up. I think that somewhere deep down, I was afraid that if I really let go and sobbed, that that emotional release would open up all the other floodgates and let out all the truths I had penned up behind them.
And so I plowed ahead with my education. There were enough parts that I truly did love (delivering babies!) that I could convince myself it was just residency... things would be better later on. And predictably, by the end of residency I had become the worst version of myself. To anyone who knew me then, especially to anyone who knew me only then, I wholeheartedly apologize. I was so miserable, and so unwilling to admit to myself that I was on the wrong path, that I was strictly in survival mode.
I was lonely, and yet I sabotaged relationships so that I could remain unhappy. After all, that was what I deserved, I told myself. Unhappy in work, unhappy in love. When I moved to my present city after residency, I was so happy to be back in the locale of my dreams that I manifested that happiness into meeting my life partner. And once I was happy in my personal life, I finally had the courage to look at my professional life and realize how deeply wrong I had gone. The tears started edging back as I slowly came to the decision to leave the practice of medicine. Of course, this took time. I still had to have some truly awful moments before I could wake myself up to the fact that I was meant to do something else with my incredible (and incredibly expensive!) education. And even after I left, it took over a year for the tears to truly flow again.
I read an interview in Time magazine and tore out the corner of the page because one passage spoke to me... unfortunately, I left behind the part of the page with the name of the person quoted, so I am unable to give appropriate credit, but here is the statement:
You come into the world screaming. You cry when you're born because your lungs expand. You breathe. I think that's really kind of significant. You come into the world crying, and it's a sign that you're alive.
I am finally able to cry again, as I begin my life over again. And I wonder: why, when we see someone in tears, do we inevitably say, "don't cry?" Is it because we don't want someone we care about to be sad, or is it because we are uncomfortable witnessing those tears - that outpouring of undeniable emotion? That life force? That fresh start? Maybe it's time we said, "cry!" And treat that person to a showing of Les Mis...
