Unfulfilled Promises.

The past month has been a little overwhelming, to say the least.

My early 24th birthday celebrations, the production and print of Rainbow, having interviews scheduled with the media, and having the most surreal and crazy whirlwind encounter with someone over the span of a few days, and realising I have less than 3 weeks to my final examinations to graduate… has just very much left me in awe and wonder and speechlessness.

Tis a crazy thing called Life indeed.

Within the next few days, all of us final year students will be choosing our hospitals for application and the specific departments that we wish to work for. The choices are limited, but they are choices to make nonetheless. Once, things were straightforward. There was this glorious thing called General Surgery which I would have applied for without batting an eyelid, because I thought I’d be by myself all my life, and that would match the 14-hour work days and 36-hour on call shifts 6 times a month which I’d have to do.

Now things have changed, and I’m on my knees again. I am certain about becoming a doctor, but what kind, in which department and where, I am less certain. I’ve asked to take a writing break from someone (we used to write daily) because of the need to focus on my studies at this point. I also think we both need time by ourselves to think about and through a lot of things, hard and practical questions beyond the heady feelings. Yet, I doubt if things will get better after my exams end.

Thereafter, will begin the 80-to-100-hour work weeks, me ending work at hospital at night feeling completely drained and spending forever on public transport to get home because I can’t drive, feeling resentful for missing dinnertime again, and the cranky evenings because one is sleep-deprived and exhausted from the day’s battles fought between life and death, and between one impatient senior and another angry patient.

Is this the life I chose? I always joke with my friends how unfortunate I think are the partners of housemen (1st year medical graduates) because of how little they may see of them. The thing is, I really am not joking. It is a true test of the endurance of a relationship, a baptism of fire of sorts for both the houseman and the couple, because housemen can be, when finally knocked off from work, tired, grumpy and cranky. There are stories of partners of housemen waiting patiently at hospital lobbies for them to knock off- there is yet another emergency to attend to upstairs.

After the houseman year, things do not necessarily get better.

Last night, as we ended yet another lecture at 8.15pm at night ( I was in school by 8am, ha), I was joking with a friend that perhaps, the only fair way to exercise kindness would really be not to get married at all, to spare the innocent other half of this undeserved solitude and injustice. I knew, a large part of me wasn’t joking. Many months ago, I made a promise to myself, that if “nobody found me and I found no one within housemanship”, I would go ahead and marry GS (General Surgery), my first love anyway, and be one of the few female surgeons who dared to tread this unforgiving path.

It’s so unfair, to both parties.

I was telling a friend about the craziness of the things which have happened of late, to which he, now a doctor further into training said to me, “Are you sure he knows what life for you will be like in the next few years? Does he really understand? Maybe he’ll change his mind after he sees reality.”

Maybe he will.

More than 80 to a 100 hour work weeks. My on-off evening crankiness. This crazy, crazy life. Even if I don’t pursue surgery, this will be my life over the next few years. And contrary to popular belief, we don’t get paid very much, nor get very much privileges.

But people get through, somehow. People get through housemanship, get married, have some semblance of a life.

Somehow, I just have to believe, that God, and not me, is in charge of sorting this all out. If He has sorted out my life thus far, He will continue sorting it out. Sometimes, things we least expect, happen in ways we least thought possible.

Last night, as I leafed through the first copy of A Taste of Rainbow in my hands, I started to cry as I thought about the many obstacles and the many previous moments of discouragement and almost-lost hope. The publishing of rainbow had been an unfulfilled promise for 3 years. I thought it would never be published, but there it was: a thousand copies sitting fresh in my room, and another three thousand copies to be distributed to public bookstores, and all the national libraries.

He keeps saying he will come. Perhaps he should re-think. Because for the next many years, I will have little control of my time. And there will certainly be moments (hopefully not too many) of crankiness, moodiness and difficulty. My dad has seen and heard it all. That is why he laughs out loud, in great candour, when people tell him “what a wonderful daughter you have”.

The future is uncertain, but as we hold on to the promises in our hearts, let’s always remember, that He who promised is faithful.

As much as we feel overwhelmed and as much as we don’t believe so, things will sort themselves out.

But for now, let’s pass the exams first.