Workaholic

I went into medicine partly due to heartbreak

The exhaustive training of medical school and residency was a welcome albeit ineffective distraction from my sorrow and loneliness

24-hour shifts are a convenient justification for not keeping in touch with loved ones

Even though the real excuse is my social anxiety and sense of inadequacy

Living within hospital walls, I suspect that I am not the only physician who became a medical doctor to try to forget unrequited love, to escape the world of human relationships

My older colleagues work far more than they need to to make ends meet, far more than any reasonable person would work in a week

Who needs friends or feelings when you have patients and science?

Our skin grows pale under fluorescent lights

Our vision becomes shortsighted as the screens stare unblinkingly

Our hearts forget how to feel carefree

Our muscles atrophy as our brains hypertrophy

Our minds become boxed in with facts, our mental filing cabinets overflow

I am a recovering workaholic working alongside workaholics who do not appear to be in recovery

Perhaps they suspect the same of me

Heads down in the trenches, none of us can know another’s heart

We can only know our own heart, if we listen

We carefully administer medications, surgeries and therapies

We measure progress in numerical metrics of lab values, calculated scores and vital signs

We arrive early and stay late

We work day and night without a break

We always have too much on our plates

We deprive ourselves of sleep, fresh air and food

We know why we have irritable moods

Practicing medicine is an unhealthy, imbalanced lifestyle and we know it

We can only ever heal ourselves

I’m ready to show it

I am finally healing my broken heart

I found that I had to begin at the start

Childhood wounds tangle and bloom

Trauma begets trauma until we change our thoughts, words and actions

Breaking old patterns even as we hold traction

I am love itself, I am the source of what I sought

My cup overflows, it was not all for naught

Weapons Trade

If cortisol was currency
I’d have already paid enough you see
Cut open my veins
Behold my riches
See that I’m debt-free

For any wrong you think I’ve committed
I’ve paid far more in physiology;
My over-achieving stress response that over-taxes me

My innermost body is ragged
From being invisibly ravaged
I try to hide from the naked eye
How much I am falling apart inside
Although I feel like I am unraveling in plain sight

I’ve never spoken my mind freely, not once in my whole life
Can you imagine what that does to a body?
Maybe you don’t have to imagine
Maybe you know

My teeth are ground down to the nubs
My tongue is a caged panther imprisoned by my jaw
Aching with atrophy and unrealized potential
I try to open my rusted jaw but it clamps down bitterly on my tongue
I have to remind myself to breathe at least once every few minutes
I consciously try to rearrange the puzzle pieces of my face
To form an expression other than my overly nervous smile

When I am not in service to others
I struggle to hold myself together
I am only comfortable in the giving role
Perhaps because everything was taken from me before I received it

Child abuse robs the child of their whole life
I am fighting to reclaim myself
My weapons are inner peace, hope and understanding