Unpleasant Realities

One of my readings for today talks about the fact that sooner or later we will all face unpleasant realities and the only positive way to deal with them is acceptance. Right now I am in the midst of applying to medical school and am terrified about not getting in. I applied last year and after a lot of time and money was turned down. Although my undergraduate degree provides me with a lot of options, the program was rigorous, and my GPA is not as competitive as it could have been if I had chosen standard biology or liberal arts. I have a lot of career paths open to me and yet this is the only one I have wanted for as long as I can remember. I feel selfish sometimes that I have so much and still want this.

I have studied the stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – and although most of the time I feel like I have accepted my situation enough to keep working toward the goal; other times I glide smoothly from anger to bargaining or anger to depression. I can get very resentful that my ADHD wasn’t diagnosed before I went to college and then start bargaining about how much better my grades would have been if that had happened. I think about all the nights I couldn’t sit still long enough to finish an assignment and then giving up to get my usual C homework grade. I always did well on tests because that was the kind of high pressure environment I thrive in.

Only recently has it occurred to me that I may never become a doctor and I cringe. I suppose that is my denial breaking down. There are always options open to improve my GPA, but at what point would I need to accept that it’s just not going to happen? It feels like a huge gaping hole in my life that so much unrealized potential could haunt me for the rest of my life. I’ll be just another sad story of someone who never got to live their dream. I know logically that life is about dealing with disappointment but the feeling of loss is so much more painful than the uneasiness of knowing that it will happen some day. A feeling is so much more real than a thought.

I remind myself to be grateful for all the positive things in my life like my job, my friends, and the sobriety of my family members. I am still an intelligent young man who has most of my life ahead of me – even if I now have to figure out what I’m going to do with all this time. I am grateful for all the blessings in life and although having to give up my dream my distract me from them, it doesn’t detract from the joy they can bring me.