Guilt

When someone in the family dies, it always makes you think about your life and sometimes we tend to zoom back to certain parts that we can never seem to really put behind us. Every time a family member dies, I think back to my mother, and for some reason, I always think about all the things I did that disappointed her or hurt her feelings. I always carry this guilt with me, and I can never seem to ever really let it go. Why is that? What is the evolutionary reason for this kind of haunting guilt?

One thing I don't know if I can ever let go was how my sisters and I were going off on a nature retreat, and my mother called me back as I was about to get into the car, and after her urgent calling, I went back and said, WHAT? in a very exacerbated way, and she handed me an umbrella, which I snatched out of her hands. The look on her face after that action made me feel instantly guilty for my actions, and that one thing I had done I had never ever let go. It was her loving consideration that I had thrown back in her face, and the look of utter shock and disappointment in my behavior on her face that I will never forget. If I could go back in time, that would be on the top of the list of things I would do over.

There are plenty more where that came from, but while that may seem to be the most innocuous thing I have done, it is the one that comes back to me, and quite often. Why is that? Why is that, even with all the worse things I have done (the screaming fights, the passive aggressive not coming home from college even when I had time, etc, etc), this one thing bothers me the most?

Dietary Restrictions

I am not talking about the kind where someone has a peanut allergy, I'm talking about the kind where someone refuses to eat something because it'll make them fat, or it'll make the animals sad. I'm not going to say that all dietary restrictions are ridiculous. I am going to leave religious dietary restrictions alone. If your God told you not to eat pig, who am I do say your God is wrong? I mean, I follow a strict diet twice a month as a Buddhist myself. What I do not get are people who start dropping various things from their diet because it's not kind to animals, or it's a little too fatty, or it causes you to gain weight. Oh, and just to put it out there - I think people who are vegans are ridiculous.

Let's just get to the core of this. Once again I am annoyed by my friend who is a boy whom we will call my boyfriend. When I met him he was vegetarian, for some sort of Buddhist reasons. I was OK with that, and I adjusted by making dinners Buddhist vegetarian. It's better to eat more vegetables anyway. Eventually, he caved in and added seafood to the diet. After watching some show about how most chickens in America are raised, he started to buy cage free eggs, and contemplating only eating cage free eggs. That was until I told him about how cage free did not necessarily mean humane, and that cage free has its own sins.

After watching Food Inc., my boyfriend has been trying to buy more and more organic products. I can almost justify people who buy only from farmer's markets and organic foods, except that many of these people are living beyond their means to get such food. I cannot stand people who tell me they don't have enough money to pay for their rent and electricity and heating, but have the money to buy gourmet organic foods. So I am sorry, since my boyfriend is living off the negative money of educational loans, I cannot condone him buying highly priced organics.

Of course, I think what has ticked me off enough to make me write this, is my boyfriend's new dietary restriction - carbohydrates. He has insisted on 'laying off the carbs' which is now frustrating me to no end. I am freakin Chinese American - which means I'm cheap, I eat pork, and I eat rice and noodles. So while I humor him with the occasional organic apple from the farmer's market, I'm really starting to feel pained at eating mostly pricey seafood. Anyone who eats pork and chicken knows those are the cheapest ways to get your protein in, not seafood, beans or tofu (oddly, you'd think tofu would be cheaper, but it's not!). So now that he has asked me to cut down on the carbs part of the meals I make, I am at a loss of what to do.

People should just be glad to have their meal and thank the land that gave it to them. Stop being so picky!!!

Gotta Have Faith

So we voted in Obama, and now it is March, but the country is still not "fixed." I think what we really need is to have faith in our government system. Note how I said government system, and not government. I'm a small government kind of person who is always wary of big brother. While I am glad that our president is working hard to repair relationships with other nations and cut taxes for the poor while bringing us new programs, I suppose I'm selfish, because in the end I want to know where this leaves me. During his candidacy he talked a lot about how families making under 250K will not be taxed much, while those making over 250 will be taxed more. I thought to myself, that's awesome because I make no money and will not be making money for quite some time, but that will suck for me if I marry another doctor. I did some calculating: as is, if I make over 150K, I more or less instantaneously lose half to federal and state taxes. I don't think I like that idea. Now when I think about if I were married and we filed our taxes together, we would lose even more of our hard earned money to taxes. I know that everyone has to pay their fair share, but how is that fair? I'm not saying we should go to a flat tax (although I do think a more flat tax would be fair - a percentage is a percentage, right?), but I hardly think that losing half or more than half of your hard earned wages is fair.

However, as I was saying, we need to have faith in our system of governing. There are two parties for a reason. While Obama's plans for taxes include cuts for the needy, it also unncessarily punishes anyone who makes any sort of comfortable living. He proposes to reduce tax credits for charitable donations, tax deductions for having children, etc. I hardly find that fair, considering a millionaire with no children lives quite differently from a millionaire with three children. Luckily, Republicans along with a few Democrats have blocked the whole reduction of tax credits for charitable donations.

I have always been pretty staunchly a fiscal Republican, but now that I am spending so much time with a flagrantly liberal Democrat (he lies and says he is Independant -- HAH!), I am starting to understand things a bit better. The ideal Republican believes that in taxing less, the people will have more money to spend on philanthropic interest. Meanwhile the ideal Democrat believes that by taxing the rich, there will be money for great programs. However, the truth is, people are too damn greedy to give enough of their money to charity, and most programs are abused and broken. Which brings me to my original point: the balance between both will bring the best of both worlds. Perhaps I am becoming the Independant my boyfriend thinks he is...

Now on the subject of non-economic politics, I really can't say! In terms of health care reforms, there are quite a few issues that I feel strongly about, but that is a whole other episodic rant right there. I feel that Republicans have truly lost their way outside of finances -- What ever happened to seperation between Church and State?! I do not even want to touch all the other aspects plaguing our country today.

http://xkcd.com/ basically speaks to the inner (actually i suppose that is inner AND outer) nerd. This one made me laugh out loud. I am also guilty of harboring such strange music on my computer (can we say pokemon anyone?).

In other news, I think I have that med student hypochondriacs syndrome. I have wondered if I had TB or chronic bronchitis (I have, afterall traveled to endemic areaas and lived in a major city all my life, NOT to mention the whole health care profession thing). I remember during the whole genetics pathology part wondering why anyone would want a baby, knowing all the crazy deformities that occur, and also feeling that it must be some miracle that I don't have some strange congenital malformation or some sort. Now I am starting to worry about what will happen to me when I hit my 50s, or what Dana likes to call, the every thing gets *bleep*ed up years. So many diseases, if not emergent in your childhood, or during your early 20s, will just pop up when you're middle aged. Like one day, you are totally normal and the next day it's like the Great War has started in your body. I don't want to get to the point in my career where I can finally enjoy the fruits of my labors and then suddenly have a crippling disease. That actually frightens me.

Okay, so I lied, there is no way I can NOT talk about medical school or medicine. I tried.

Life is shorter than you think

When I was a teenager, I used to think of that perfect man I would meet in the future, who would let me do whatever I wanted, and would marry me right before I turned thirty. Then, in college, I realized that having alone time with said perfect man after marriage would be best, and so I should marry at 27, having plenty of time before 30 to grow our married relationship before having children. Now that I am 26 (Good god, it really hurts me that I am over 25 - I am having some kind of over a quarter-half-a-century crisis, and it hurts), I am realizing that it will not happen. Why can't things go as I planned? In college, I had a rule -- if you were still wondering if I was that "one" for you after two years of dating passed, then you should just leave. Now I am wondering if I should break that rule.

Did you ever wonder why women don't leave their man, despite there being something wrong with the relationship - be it as sever as abuse, or just plain unhappiness? I realize that after being with a man that you have grown to love, it is hard to just pack your bags and leave. There is fear of being alone, fear of the pain that you'll feel, and also fear of the pain that you will bring to him. I saw this clip of He's Just Not That Into You where Jennifer Aniston says, "Stop being nice to me, if you're not going to marry me."

I used to wonder why it would be so hard to communicate with someone you love. I should have known it would be hard. There were times I didn't know I could just turn to my mother, and that is someone from whom I could never lose love. So why was I so naive to believe that I would be able to share all my thoughts with someone I haven't even known for half my life?

All these life goals that I had years ago that I thought were so far from now have caught up with me so fast. Time moves so much faster than we think it will. I feel so unhappy.

As if medical school weren't busy enough as is...

Despite my needs to study, I find myself looking for new distractions. Hopefully this will not only keep me from becoming English-language-retarded, but will keep me distracted in a way that will not hinder my studies (the way internet games seem to suck me in for hours, causing my breaks to study be my study breaks, rather than the other way around!). Enjoy this, if you can... I can't promise that medical nerdiness will not find its way here and there.