Losing Touch
I.III.IV
LOSING TOUCH
I’m not the most spiritual person out there, but if there’s one thing I’ve always appreciated about myself, it’s that I’m almost always in touch with my inner self.
When I feel like I’m losing touch with myself, there’s a ritual I usually do. I turn off all the lights, light some candles and incense, put on some limerent music, and sit by myself in the dark and journal. I try to connect with myself, to just be. Only at one point in time, I couldn’t do that anymore. I felt so detached from myself and so far removed from everything that made me me that could barely recognise myself. And as I sat there, trying to force something that was clearly not gonna come, I could hardly pinpoint the cause of this.
Medicine wasn’t taking over my entire life just like it did back when I had started. I was working out, going out with friends, and had even started dating around. Yet somehow, I was feeling nothing. I was numb. No misery, no bliss. No good, no bad – just a void.
I knew I had to get out of that rut, and I needed to do it badly. Maybe deciding to take on the first exam of the Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons wasn’t the smartest move, but at least it kept my mind busy for a while. Still, even when distracted, there was this nagging feeling at the back of my head – that I was missing something, that I’d fallen out of balance, that I was living in a kind of quiet disequilibrium.
Turns out the catalyst for change didn’t come in the form of an exam. Enter Alessia – an Italian nurse I was lucky enough to meet during my general medicine rotation. We got off well right from the start – her telling me about her blossoming relationship with Clive, the neurologist I’d worked with just weeks earlier, and me telling her about a Spanish hunk I was dating. Being one of the most gorgeous girls I’d ever met, I can’t quite say I didn’t have a crush on her at first, despite both of us being involved.
Little by little, we became friends. She’d tell me about her dates with Clive, and I’d tell her about Boris. It was a new thing – nothing but a fling. I’d met him at the gym. He was eyeing me while I worked out, and I just made the first move. Sparks flew immediately. It was also the first time I’d started something with someone I hadn’t met on a dating app. After about two weeks, we had ‘the talk’. We were such a good match that seeing other people felt pointless, so we made it official.
Then his father had a stroke, and he had to return to Spain to take care of him. During the month he was away, we spoke less and less – him busy with his dad, me buried in work. Turns out, he never really came back.
Alessia was there for me from the very start. I know it was only a couple of weeks, but I’d fallen hard. I can’t say I wasn’t at least a little devastated when he told me he wouldn’t be returning. But I gained a friend in the process – and lemme tell ya, it was well worth the trade-off. In a matter of weeks, Alessia became one of my best friends. We’d talk about anything and everything – family trauma, abusive relationships, fitness goals, unlikely dreams. We’d hang out most days, party like maniacs on weekends, and somewhere along the way I even perfected my Italian, which had grown rusty after years of neglect.
Spending time with Alessia made me feel alive again. The way we talked made me reconsider things I hadn’t allowed myself to think about since I started working. And by getting to know her, somehow, some way, I was slowly finding my way back to myself.