Stasis
II.I.I
STASIS
I’ve always been somewhat of a living paradox. I’m not saying that in the quasi-pretentious way – you know, like those attention-seekers who insist on highlighting their uniqueness and individuality only because they’ve got nothing better to do. Or maybe I am – I am the main character of this story after all.
For the better part of my life I was stuck, and I’m not talking ‘stepped on chewing gum’ kinda stuck. I mean the ‘trapped in a coma for the better part of your life’ kinda stuck. For a long, long time it felt as if the entire world was moving and I was just lying there, immobile. Then finally I found something that grounded me – medicine – and for the first time ever I was setting some roots. Everything else became secondary.
I remember being asked about my plan B. You know, in case medicine didn’t pan out. Well, there was no plan B. Being a doctor was the only acceptable future for me. Nothing more, nothing less. Screw the charming inn by the forest, screw the charming inn by the forest, screw my one big family and screw the deer and the hummingbirds. All I could picture were blood and guts and brains. That’s it.
“But what if you can’t practise medicine?” friends would ask. Simple. Medicine was the reason I lived. No medicine, no life. I know it sounds like something only an immature brat would say, but that’s genuinely how it felt back then. If something happened and I couldn’t become a doctor, there’d be nothing left for me. In retrospect it seems naïve, childish even, but feeling that strongly about something was completely new to me.
It might sound like a load of BS, but in Plato’s The Republic, Socrates himself goes on and on about the same thing, referring to a carpenter who “…has a job to do, and if he does not do it, life is not worthwhile.” So yeah, that’s exactly how I felt. And I don’t blame myself for it. Because back then, I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know I’d eventually find other things that would give my life purpose.
Back then I had a completely monomaniacal obsession with medicine. It was my comfort zone, and my life revolved around it. Nothing else mattered. The other aspects of my life were shoved aside.
I was smoking like a chimney (nicotine temporarily boosts concentration so it made for the perfect excuse), eating all kinds of crap (who’s got time to cook healthy food anyways?) and drinking like there was no tomorrow (come on, it was the weekend and I was still young!). Miserable though I might have been, it seemed to work. I was doing something I loved, and I was doing it well. And besides, I’d always been the melancholic type – or, as Meredith would put it, dark and twisty.
The bright, shiny persona I presented was just a façade. Not because I was pretending to be happy, but because it was a reflex. I’d smile, joke and laugh. But back home, in my room, in my little pocket of solitude? I was miserable. And I loved it. There’s something almost romantic about misery. Rainy days, sad songs, cigarette smoke and solitude. How very Lana Del Rey, right?
I mean, look at all the great artists. Do you think bliss inspires them? They thrive on misery, grief, pain. Pain is art, pain is beauty, pain is bliss. So I thrived on that same misery. Given the choice between misery and bliss, I’d choose misery. Every single time. Letting in the solitude, the nostalgia, the grief, the loss, the tragedy of everyday life. That misery was my bliss. That same misery was my comfort zone. I thrived on it – that was me at one hundred percent.
For the longest time, I believed that was my baseline, and no matter who I became or what I did, I’d eventually gravitate back to it. I justified my misery by saying that happiness is for the mediocre and all I wanted was to be extraordinary. Who the hell needs happiness anyway? Anyone can be happy. And so I forcefully kept myself from changing. Because change might disrupt my productive yet miserable routine. Why change if you’re comfortable?
That’s why I say I’m a living paradox. What I just described is the complete antithesis of everything I believe in. Change is a biological imperative. Hell, change is the only constant in science. Without change, there’s only one thing: stasis. And there I was, barricading its way…