Falling Short
FALLING SHORT
I have to admit that the first few months of 2025 had me beat. I’m not gonna go so far as to say that everything had become too much or that I couldn’t take it anymore, but I found myself feeling utterly exhausted – like I was running on empty.
Only a few weeks earlier, I had returned from Serbia feeling as though I could do anything. Then, almost all at once, my body, my love life and my career decided to remind me that I most definitely could not.
All Left
One nasty fall from my bicycle on a steep slope sent me flying through the air in a full 360-degree flip. Having torn a ligament and sustained a tiny fracture in my right hand, I was suddenly unable to apply any pressure through my palm and had to abandon my goal of learning arm balances and handstands.
But hey, you grow up and forget – or at least that’s how the Maltese saying goes. Well, rather than growing up, what I really needed was rest and recovery. Unfortunately, neither was something I could quite allow myself – which prolonged the healing process far more than necessary. As though that wasn’t enough, I also developed subacromial impingement in my right shoulder from weightlifting and iliotibial band syndrome in my right leg from running.
Basically, my left side was doing all the work while my right side had clocked out completely. Simply perfect. Would’ve loved to give Mary her fifth ‘no’, not gonna lie.
A Revolving Door of Disappointment
Then, once again, there was my love life – or lack thereof. I had spent the better part of the previous three years single, without dating anyone for more than a couple of month at one go.
Since returning from my gap year, however, I had finally found some much-needed stability and contentment in my daily life. That was when I began feeling the need to date again and perhaps build something meaningful with someone. A string of failures, one after another, was disheartening, to say the least. There I was, for the first time in years, finally in a position where I could let someone else in – only for that someone to keep being the wrong person.
Klaus had made me happy, if only for a short while, before he too had to leave. Then came Ian, with whom I desperately wanted to form a connection but ultimately couldn’t. After him came Nick, for whom I had completely fallen, only for him to end things and leave me heartbroken. Then there was Darco, a Macedonian hottie who was incredibly fun to hang out with, but that was all there was to it.
And now there was Rafael, a Brazilian CrossFit hunk whom I had only just started dating. It was still early, and although I had learnt that love didn’t usually arrive at first sight, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it might never arrive at all with him. So yeah, things weren’t going particularly well in the love department either.
One Mark Short
Then came the cannonball – the setback I had half expected, but which hit me hard all the same. For the previous few months, I had been hardly studying for the MRCEM SBA. For once, I wanted to half-arse an exam and see whether I could pass without putting the rest of my life on hold. At worst, I’d fail and I’d sit it again later. At best, I’d prove to myself that I could beat the odds without sacrificing months of my life to revision.
The result was almost worse than a clear failure. I had missed the pass mark by a single mark. A single mark! Cue the flashback to Grey’s Anatomy’s George O’Malley having to repeat his intern year after failing his exam by one point. “The Almost Guy,” he called himself. Guess he wasn’t the only one, huh?
Of course, this brought me back to when I failed the MRCS Part B by two marks. Back then, I thought I’d had my entire future mapped out. Before taking my gap year, I had planned to complete the MRCS Part B so that everything would be ready upon my return and I’d be ahead of the game. Luckily, I no longer needed it after changing career paths, but two near misses were beginning to feel like some sort of sick joke.
While I had barely studied for either exam, these fails only served to remind me that I’m not some medical savant and that I’d have to give it my all if I really wanted to progress. Would’ve been nice if I were a genius, but hey, I’m not complaining.
Plans Derailed
And so, it wasn’t too difficult to understand why I wasn’t feeling particularly fly. Every plan and goal I had set for myself seemed to have been derailed, one after another, until I no longer felt as though I was moving forwards at all.
My physical training had been interrupted by one injury after another, leaving me unable to do many of the things that usually kept me grounded. My attempts at finding a relationship had turned into a long chain of disappointment, each one beginning with a flicker of hope before ending in the same familiar emptiness. Then, just to complete the trifecta, my career progression had been delayed by a single bloody mark.
None of these setbacks would’ve been catastrophic on their own. Injuries heal. Relationships end. Exams can be repeated. I knew all of that. Still, when everything happened within such a short space of time, it became difficult not to feel as though my luck had turned. Of course, my ‘plans’ had never been anything if not flexible and adaptable. I had changed careers, travelled across the world, rebuilt my routines and reinvented myself more times than I could count. I knew that one failed exam, one broken heart or one injured limb wasn’t gonna destroy me. But knowing that didn’t make any of it feel less disappointing.
It sucks when things don’t go your way. It sucks even more when everything seems to go wrong at once. And sometimes, no matter how resilient or adaptable you might be, you simply have to admit that you’re tired of constantly having to pick yourself back up.