“It’s a shame, it’s a shame, it’s a perfect shame, creep under my door and do it again,”
So here I am, up at my usual time. In the past, I used to be up at 2-3am simply because it was the most peaceful time in a household full of people and I could finally hear myself think about the day and reflect with more detail. My mind’s a horribly disorganized place and I often like to think of blogging as my version of a ‘pensive’ for those days when it gets a bit messy up in there. Call me a Harry Potter Pothead, what-evs!
Like that new word I used, ‘what-evs’? Apparently people have gotten lazy using the term ‘whatever’. Oddly enough, whatever was always used when people were lazy or too tired to go into detail about things. Having a shorter form of the word really does say something about people these days, huh?
These days, being up at 2-3am doesn’t only serve as quiet Ash-time but also time to work and to connect. By connect, I mean with friends/family all over the world but most importantly, with my granddad. 2-3am was his time. He’d be up after his long night-time ‘nap’ because he could never sleep for long, having been a long-term sufferer of congestive heart failure with severe pulmonary edema and associated paroxysmal nocturnal dyspnoea. But that’d be his ‘me-time’ too and together, we both enjoyed those long quiet nights of reflection, catching up with people (or the news in his case) and checking up on loved ones. He would constantly ring my uncle at work to check if he was having another late night and if he’d gotten home safe. This was even when my uncle hit his 40s and had a family of his own to fuss over.
2-3am is his time. And it’s my way of being with him in times like these.
These days, heartfelt blogging gets pretty hard. 1. It’s the time factor and 2. each time I get down to it, it’s always about my granddad and emotions tend to roll in more than they should. Some folks say it’s good to have a cry and let it all out. But not if it hasn’t stopped in 6 months. Getting a bit tired of it really!
So here’s a post today, minus the grandpa-related emotions and the heartache of last year. Onward ho, Ash!
Today I had a lovely conversation with my one of my oldest/best friends. If people met the two of us, they’d wonder what makes connect. We’re of different wavelengths, we enjoy different things, we even have very different perceptions about the world in general.
But what binds us both together would be the fact that we’re loyal friends, we support each other no matter what, we know each other really well and there’s something to be said about longstanding childhood friendships – when people have seen you grow, they tolerate you better!
My darling friend told me about relationships in general and how she feels she doesn’t have a social life. She’s a junior doctor who qualified last year and now works 6am-12am shifts daily. Which leaves her an unhealthy 5 hours to sleep and jump right back on the bandwagon again at 6am again, like clockwork!
Her presenting complaint was…
“Ash. I want a boyfriend,”
Well. Wouldn’t you? With a daily schedule like that, with no social time whatsoever and hectic job pressure getting to you for every damned day of your life?
So maybe she could mix around with the hospital staff, other junior doctors, consultants, registrars, why not? After all they’re people too, they’re in your profession, they’d probably understand your schedule a lot better than most would.
Her response…
“Ash, they’re all married…”
When your friends, colleagues all around you are attached, engaged or getting married, it’s hard to not feel lonely or deprived. What more if you’re devoid of a social life! I highlight her case in particular because I think it’s a very plausible situation and that lots of people are in this situation as well.
These people need to meet each other! Problem solved (maybe).
Relationships are hard as it is, what more with all these added complicating factors. Even maintaining relationships require a huge degree of maturity and understanding from both sides. And who’s to say that if you find someone, it automatically ensures everlasting happiness and all that happily-ever-after smushy crap?
A patient I had spoken to on my previous rotation had been through a tremendous amount of pain in relationships. She had married the same man twice and had recently separated from her partner of 12 years. She was also currently suffering from a brain tumor which led to both mixed anxiety and depressive disorder. Her previous partner had broken up with her because, as she put it, he was a decade younger than her and incapable of supporting her throughout her illness. She gave him the option of leaving and going where the grass was greener and the sucker did just that.
Sometimes, you wonder if life is as simple as finding your one true love and getting married and living happily ever after. Well, it usually isn’t. There are some nice stories of first relationships working out. There are some horrendous stories of several relationships NOT working out. And then there are happy and wholesome families whilst others are broken and dysfunctional.
Can we spot patterns and prevent these things from happening to us? Can we learn from our mistakes in previous relationships and others to make sure we don’t suffer similar fates?
Like with everything else in life, I don’t bloody well think so. There are general exposures to consider and lots of unwanted or wanted outcomes. But till this day, no effective pattern of working out the success rate of relationships. Conclusions? Dating, marriages and relationships are all a huge big gamble. The only certainty in anything working out, is that the chances of your success in them can all be attributed to just one thing.
Sheer, dumb, luck.
Good luck everyone.
