the number 27 is romanticized and idolized to such a degree
it immediately makes me think of Lana del Rey song lyrics
all the hooplah about dying young
Cobain Joplin Hendrix Morrison Winehouse
the cynical part of me thinks
if drugs and alcohol weren't in the supporting role
how much more art we would have seen in this world
i turned 27 in Japan without much fanfare
- nobody at the hospital knew it was my birthday
- i erased the date from facebook
the Person bought me a nice trenchcoat i'd been coveting, and we ate tsukemen for dinner
i didn't think much about that number
27
until i drove home earlier today from work
it's funny how productive i get when my time becomes limited
(i suppose there's an analogy to life somewhere in there)
i've been writing with a fever again
and i've been thinking about Charlotte and her connection to me
subconsciously, i think i always knew this
but the revelation hit me like a train
Charlotte is gifted with prodigal musical talent
but cursed with crippling stage fright
what happens to your sense of identity?
when the one thing that drives you
your purpose
your meaning
is invisible to the world around you
i'm 27 years old
how many of the people around me know that i write
or rather, know that i write well
know that i spend nearly all my free time
thinking about it, obsessing about it
i hide it, you see
it's "pretentious" to say you're a writer
i don't show people my work
i want it to be perfect before they see it
but it never is
my own fucked up version of stage fright
the 27 club made their mark by this age
they died young
but before that
they lived
when is it your turn, Sophelia?
August 30, 2018
August 24, 2018
Hemorrhage
Last night, I pronounced someone dead for the first time.
I've been around death before. It is unavoidably intertwined with this profession. From the early medical school days in anatomy lab when you draw the scalpel across the cadaver's unblemished skin, to that moment as a medical student when you happen to wonder whatever happened to Mr. X you chatted with about chess before he was upgraded to the ICU, and the notification pops up informing you that the patient whose chart you are trying to access is deceased.
Processing each of these moments is like peeling back another petal, another step closer to the pistil, the seed, the essential core at the heart of some greater meaning that your human mind cannot grasp. That unsettling feeling, that this person existed like you or I, with these same trivial concerns and menial thoughts, is now a thing. A corpse.
This patient that I had to pronounce dead, just two weeks ago he was sitting upright in bed after being recently extubated. My senior had been surprised. "Who put glasses on him?" He'd asked for them after he stirred from the remnants of sedation. He was less than a decade older than me. I remember thinking to myself one day as I drove home, thinking of all those countless young men who passed through the MICU having ravaged their bodies with the consequences of alcohol addiction, how little we cherish the one and only body we are given, until it is too late.
"Here are the basics for the death exam," my senior said to me as we put on gloves. The grieving family members had just been escorted from the room for this procedure. The image of his sister, carrying away a large brown bag of his possessions, was branded into my skull. "Feel the skin for warmth, pulses. Check for response to verbal, tactile, noxious stimuli. Listen for absence of heart and lung sounds. Then test the cranial nerves--pupils, corneal, doll's eye."
Have you ever felt the temperature of a body whose life has just begun to fade? It is cold, yet just perceptibly warm enough for the unnerving thought to strike you that at one point in time, this heat was an embrace at a party, a handshake at a job interview, a jacket cast off after a wintry night out, a solid presence in the dark rising and falling with each breath under the covers of the night.
I called out his first name. I shook his shoulder. I inflicted pain.
His heart no longer beat, but the machine was still breathing for him. As the nurses moved to turn off the ventilator, I looked at his face. Dark red crusting in the nares, the mouth, and blood stains all over the sheets. He had bled everywhere at the end. I brought the light to his eyes, still open, with unmoving pupils like gaping holes.
My senior handed me a makeshift instrument to test the corneal reflex. I couldn't look away from those unseeing eyes. I brought the tip of the instrument gently down onto an open eye. Not a single twitch or movement. Just the same eerie, empty untrained gaze. I repeated it again to convince myself it had happened.
By the time we finished the doll's eye maneuver, the ventilator had been turned off. As I moved my stethoscope from point to point, I heard nothing inside that unnaturally still chest.
Time of death. 5:28 am.
I've been around death before. It is unavoidably intertwined with this profession. From the early medical school days in anatomy lab when you draw the scalpel across the cadaver's unblemished skin, to that moment as a medical student when you happen to wonder whatever happened to Mr. X you chatted with about chess before he was upgraded to the ICU, and the notification pops up informing you that the patient whose chart you are trying to access is deceased.
Processing each of these moments is like peeling back another petal, another step closer to the pistil, the seed, the essential core at the heart of some greater meaning that your human mind cannot grasp. That unsettling feeling, that this person existed like you or I, with these same trivial concerns and menial thoughts, is now a thing. A corpse.
This patient that I had to pronounce dead, just two weeks ago he was sitting upright in bed after being recently extubated. My senior had been surprised. "Who put glasses on him?" He'd asked for them after he stirred from the remnants of sedation. He was less than a decade older than me. I remember thinking to myself one day as I drove home, thinking of all those countless young men who passed through the MICU having ravaged their bodies with the consequences of alcohol addiction, how little we cherish the one and only body we are given, until it is too late.
"Here are the basics for the death exam," my senior said to me as we put on gloves. The grieving family members had just been escorted from the room for this procedure. The image of his sister, carrying away a large brown bag of his possessions, was branded into my skull. "Feel the skin for warmth, pulses. Check for response to verbal, tactile, noxious stimuli. Listen for absence of heart and lung sounds. Then test the cranial nerves--pupils, corneal, doll's eye."
Have you ever felt the temperature of a body whose life has just begun to fade? It is cold, yet just perceptibly warm enough for the unnerving thought to strike you that at one point in time, this heat was an embrace at a party, a handshake at a job interview, a jacket cast off after a wintry night out, a solid presence in the dark rising and falling with each breath under the covers of the night.
I called out his first name. I shook his shoulder. I inflicted pain.
His heart no longer beat, but the machine was still breathing for him. As the nurses moved to turn off the ventilator, I looked at his face. Dark red crusting in the nares, the mouth, and blood stains all over the sheets. He had bled everywhere at the end. I brought the light to his eyes, still open, with unmoving pupils like gaping holes.
My senior handed me a makeshift instrument to test the corneal reflex. I couldn't look away from those unseeing eyes. I brought the tip of the instrument gently down onto an open eye. Not a single twitch or movement. Just the same eerie, empty untrained gaze. I repeated it again to convince myself it had happened.
By the time we finished the doll's eye maneuver, the ventilator had been turned off. As I moved my stethoscope from point to point, I heard nothing inside that unnaturally still chest.
Time of death. 5:28 am.
March 2, 2018
Raze to the Ground
I haven't looked at my project in a week.
Objectively, I know that one measly rejection is nothing. NOTHING. But psychically, it did something to me. Doubt was already creeping on me, but for the first time in my life, I seriously thought that maybe it was never going to happen. That maybe this idea that had sucked up so much of my brain space for over a decade was completely worthless.
Out of self-preservation, I retreated. I avoided the publishing blogs I once read daily. I ignored my journal. I played Breath of the Wild for hours on end, numbing my brain so that I wouldn't get sucked in too deeply into my thoughts.
A couple good things happened, though.
1) Someone at one of my residency interviews had said something about writing being a lonely thing. This came back to me recently, as I felt like no one around me knew what I was going through. In a moment of weakness, I told the Person about how I was feeling, even though he said he hadn't noticed any change in my mood at all. He couldn't understand why I was feeling so bad about one rejection, especially when we've gone through so many in our medical careers. But all the same, he was there to listen. And it helped.
2) For some reason or other, I ended up revisiting the BIG BANG blog I used to follow back in college. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Taeyang, aka mister "I need a girl", had gotten married recently. Looking for a fix of nostalgia, I started listening to the lesser-known "old" songs that had been playlist staples for my college years. Always, Foolish Love, Oh Ah Oh, Cafe.
The darkest time in my life was 2009-2010. My first year of college. My confidence tanked after receiving abysmal grades. I didn't know if my GPA was salvageable, or if I could ever make it to medical school.
Coincidentally, this was around the same time I was introduced to BIG BANG. And I am one hundred percent serious when I say that they helped drag me out of the hole I had sunken into. I've written before about what T.O.P meant to me during that period of time, but the long and short of it is, the story of how he made it lit a fire for me. That the surest way of ensuring something doesn't happen is if you give up. Even if it involves losing 40 lbs in 40 days in order to be deemed "slim" enough to join a Kpop group.
I need this break. It doesn't mean I'm turning my back on it all. But I need time to recalibrate. And when it's all done, I need to be ready to raze my darlings to the ground and build something stronger from the ashes.
Objectively, I know that one measly rejection is nothing. NOTHING. But psychically, it did something to me. Doubt was already creeping on me, but for the first time in my life, I seriously thought that maybe it was never going to happen. That maybe this idea that had sucked up so much of my brain space for over a decade was completely worthless.
Out of self-preservation, I retreated. I avoided the publishing blogs I once read daily. I ignored my journal. I played Breath of the Wild for hours on end, numbing my brain so that I wouldn't get sucked in too deeply into my thoughts.
A couple good things happened, though.
1) Someone at one of my residency interviews had said something about writing being a lonely thing. This came back to me recently, as I felt like no one around me knew what I was going through. In a moment of weakness, I told the Person about how I was feeling, even though he said he hadn't noticed any change in my mood at all. He couldn't understand why I was feeling so bad about one rejection, especially when we've gone through so many in our medical careers. But all the same, he was there to listen. And it helped.
2) For some reason or other, I ended up revisiting the BIG BANG blog I used to follow back in college. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Taeyang, aka mister "I need a girl", had gotten married recently. Looking for a fix of nostalgia, I started listening to the lesser-known "old" songs that had been playlist staples for my college years. Always, Foolish Love, Oh Ah Oh, Cafe.
The darkest time in my life was 2009-2010. My first year of college. My confidence tanked after receiving abysmal grades. I didn't know if my GPA was salvageable, or if I could ever make it to medical school.
Coincidentally, this was around the same time I was introduced to BIG BANG. And I am one hundred percent serious when I say that they helped drag me out of the hole I had sunken into. I've written before about what T.O.P meant to me during that period of time, but the long and short of it is, the story of how he made it lit a fire for me. That the surest way of ensuring something doesn't happen is if you give up. Even if it involves losing 40 lbs in 40 days in order to be deemed "slim" enough to join a Kpop group.
I need this break. It doesn't mean I'm turning my back on it all. But I need time to recalibrate. And when it's all done, I need to be ready to raze my darlings to the ground and build something stronger from the ashes.
February 24, 2018
Bulls on Parade
A lot weighing on my mind these days.
1) I was a hot mess this last Wednesday. Rank lists for residency were due that night. The realization that my future career has now been determined by the match algorithm mowed me over like a train. Instead of going out to our class's rank list submission party, I felt physically ill at the thought of having to chat with my classmates about the match and instead stayed home and played the new Zelda game until my eyes were gonna melt in their sockets. A friend of mine texted me to ask why I skipped the party, and I simply left the response at: "I am mentally indisposed."
2) I received my first query rejection last night while I was at a friend's chocolate fondue party. In hindsight, I was not ready to query, and I was half-expecting a rejection at that point. It was a sort of curiosity-provoked act of impulse while I was waiting for residency interviews, because the agent in question was closing for queries around that time and I was all, 'Oh no, what if they never come back?' Still, not gonna lie -- it stung. I am already feeling very much in doubt about everything, and the letter was like another swing at my kneecaps.
3) Serious question I have been pondering... has my temper been shortening with age? Or is it the cumulative stresses of this political climate/medical life that is short-circuiting my ability to clamp down on my ire? I embarrassingly lost my cool at the Person when we were at Krewe of Muses over something really stupid. I snapped at a friend when he kept talking in pseudo-African accent after watching Black Panther.
4) Along a more serious line though, a friend of mine (Skillet) and I were talking last night about how our medical schools need to do more in teaching us how to handle situations when patients say things that are offensive or inappropriate. The one time I almost really lost it with a patient was right around when Charlottesville happened. As a caveat, this patient may have had some sort of hypomania, as he had very pressurized speech. I saw him in clinic with the intent of asking him to enroll in my research study, and so I listened politely as he talked on and on. That is, until he went on to say that "Some people are asking to be run over" in reference to the girl who was killed when a car rammed into the counter-protestors. I was absolutely livid, and after telling him I didn't agree with him, I said I didn't think he was suitable for my study and left the room.
Skillet, who's very openly gay, told me that he had a patient--an older woman who was very sweet and conversational until she found out that he was from Miami. "Miami... all those immigrants... and Cubans," she said with disgust. When the attending came in, she requested that my friend not see her anymore.
These are only some of the more atrocious incidents I have encountered since living in Louisiana. Last night, I shared the story again of how I had a residency interviewer tell me, "I don't speak Chinese, hope English is okay!" While my friends responded in aghast, a classmate's husband interjected, "Oh, I'm sure she was just being friendly."
"Yeah, I'm sure she was trying to be nice, but that doesn't mean it's okay to say that."
"Well you know, our society is so reactionary these days..."
We changed the subject before he could elaborate further. Which was for the best, because let me tell you, I was not in the mood to drop a truth bomb on his head.
This dude does not understand how insulting it is to be told, "Wow you speak really good English," when you have a fucking English major from Duke. This dude has never had to politely field questions about Chinese food from curious patients, until they tell you, "Oh you have to understand, we just don't get a lot of foreigners around these parts." In short, he does not understand what it's like to be constantly seen as a foreigner in the country you were born in.
And all of that's just from my own experiences. My friend, who is of Korean descent, was asked about her opinion of Kim Jong Un at an interview. When we were on our surgery rotation together, an anesthesiologist asked her if she has eaten dog before.
Yes, I am well aware that in all these instances, these were well-meaning people who genuinely were trying to be friendly. And maybe you can call me "reactionary," or whatever that term is supposed to signify. And yes, I know this dude does not understand what it's like for an Asian-American in this country. Maybe I would have done all of us a favor by gently educating him last night.
But is that my responsibility? This is what Skillet and I were talking about last night, before the rest of our classmates arrived. If we stayed in Louisiana to train and practice medicine, perhaps we'd make a difference in helping educate these communities or break their stereotyped ideas of what it means to be a gay man or an Asian-American woman. But for the two of us, at a certain point we just don't want to bear this burden.
1) I was a hot mess this last Wednesday. Rank lists for residency were due that night. The realization that my future career has now been determined by the match algorithm mowed me over like a train. Instead of going out to our class's rank list submission party, I felt physically ill at the thought of having to chat with my classmates about the match and instead stayed home and played the new Zelda game until my eyes were gonna melt in their sockets. A friend of mine texted me to ask why I skipped the party, and I simply left the response at: "I am mentally indisposed."
2) I received my first query rejection last night while I was at a friend's chocolate fondue party. In hindsight, I was not ready to query, and I was half-expecting a rejection at that point. It was a sort of curiosity-provoked act of impulse while I was waiting for residency interviews, because the agent in question was closing for queries around that time and I was all, 'Oh no, what if they never come back?' Still, not gonna lie -- it stung. I am already feeling very much in doubt about everything, and the letter was like another swing at my kneecaps.
3) Serious question I have been pondering... has my temper been shortening with age? Or is it the cumulative stresses of this political climate/medical life that is short-circuiting my ability to clamp down on my ire? I embarrassingly lost my cool at the Person when we were at Krewe of Muses over something really stupid. I snapped at a friend when he kept talking in pseudo-African accent after watching Black Panther.
4) Along a more serious line though, a friend of mine (Skillet) and I were talking last night about how our medical schools need to do more in teaching us how to handle situations when patients say things that are offensive or inappropriate. The one time I almost really lost it with a patient was right around when Charlottesville happened. As a caveat, this patient may have had some sort of hypomania, as he had very pressurized speech. I saw him in clinic with the intent of asking him to enroll in my research study, and so I listened politely as he talked on and on. That is, until he went on to say that "Some people are asking to be run over" in reference to the girl who was killed when a car rammed into the counter-protestors. I was absolutely livid, and after telling him I didn't agree with him, I said I didn't think he was suitable for my study and left the room.
Skillet, who's very openly gay, told me that he had a patient--an older woman who was very sweet and conversational until she found out that he was from Miami. "Miami... all those immigrants... and Cubans," she said with disgust. When the attending came in, she requested that my friend not see her anymore.
These are only some of the more atrocious incidents I have encountered since living in Louisiana. Last night, I shared the story again of how I had a residency interviewer tell me, "I don't speak Chinese, hope English is okay!" While my friends responded in aghast, a classmate's husband interjected, "Oh, I'm sure she was just being friendly."
"Yeah, I'm sure she was trying to be nice, but that doesn't mean it's okay to say that."
"Well you know, our society is so reactionary these days..."
We changed the subject before he could elaborate further. Which was for the best, because let me tell you, I was not in the mood to drop a truth bomb on his head.
This dude does not understand how insulting it is to be told, "Wow you speak really good English," when you have a fucking English major from Duke. This dude has never had to politely field questions about Chinese food from curious patients, until they tell you, "Oh you have to understand, we just don't get a lot of foreigners around these parts." In short, he does not understand what it's like to be constantly seen as a foreigner in the country you were born in.
And all of that's just from my own experiences. My friend, who is of Korean descent, was asked about her opinion of Kim Jong Un at an interview. When we were on our surgery rotation together, an anesthesiologist asked her if she has eaten dog before.
Yes, I am well aware that in all these instances, these were well-meaning people who genuinely were trying to be friendly. And maybe you can call me "reactionary," or whatever that term is supposed to signify. And yes, I know this dude does not understand what it's like for an Asian-American in this country. Maybe I would have done all of us a favor by gently educating him last night.
But is that my responsibility? This is what Skillet and I were talking about last night, before the rest of our classmates arrived. If we stayed in Louisiana to train and practice medicine, perhaps we'd make a difference in helping educate these communities or break their stereotyped ideas of what it means to be a gay man or an Asian-American woman. But for the two of us, at a certain point we just don't want to bear this burden.
February 11, 2018
Visions of Gideon
"I have loved you for the last time
Is it a video? Is it a video?"
Is it a video? Is it a video?"
-- Visions of Gideon by Sufjan Stevens
2018 is off to an auspicious start. Thanks to my Person's gift to me this past Christmas, I am now in possession of a Moviepass. Which means that for the rest of this year, I can watch one free movie per day in theaters. Which means my obsessive readership of film blogs can now blossom into full-blown cinephilia, without being stymied by my miserly penny-pinching tendencies. Already, I've watched The Last Jedi and The Shape of Water for the second time, in addition to The Greatest Showman, Phantom Thread, and most recently, Call Me By Your Name.
I have plenty of thoughts on the above movies and would looooove to discuss any of them. But for today, let's talk about the movie I watched last night, Call Me By Your Name. I've known about CMBYN for months. It's been raved about since Sundance. I had other movies on my radar though, like The Shape of Water, which I thought was more up my alley. What ended up becoming the swift kick in the rear to go watch CMBYN was Astrid's raving recommendation. Specifically her comment that she thought I might appreciate the melancholic longing and the ambiguity of mounting attraction.
Okay, sold. One ticket please.
I don't intend to go into detail about this movie, but I will say this: I CANNOT STOP THINKING ABOUT THIS MOVIE.
I have been playing "Visions of Gideon" throughout the day, and the melody immediately transports me back to that aching feeling of heartbreak when you watch Timothee Chalamet's face move through a carousel of emotions without break for four minutes during the ending credits.
It's this song that truly seemed to break something that had been muzzled and discarded deep within me. Rewarming a sliver of a memory that had grown cold over the years.
Do you still remember how intense it feels when you are sixteen? The way every thought of it consumes you like madness. The way you feel literally sick, diseased, as if the raging storm of emotions within you cannot be contained by this earthen body that you haven't yet grown comfortable with, contorted in this liminal space between childhood and adulthood.
I never want to feel that way again. I probably never will. But that pain helped me find my voice.
"In your place, if there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don’t snuff it out, don’t be brutal with it."
January 29, 2018
sensitivity
A funny realization came to me the other day.
In high school, I was known for being good at writing. I say this very matter-of-factly, but let's put it this way: My essays were saved as samples by my AP English teacher. I received our school's English Department award during my senior year. I was a frequently published staff writer for the school newspaper and eventually climbed the ranks to Editor in Chief.
One other thing -- back in the day, Xanga was a big deal. In my social circles, you weren't in the loop unless you also owned one of those clunkily laid-out blogs where the music starts loading automatically. Everyone had one --- even if the posts were relegated to purposefully misspelled laments about how much life sucked.
My point is, it was known. Any of my friends or classmates could pick up a copy of the school newspaper or scroll through my Xanga (or even if this blog, if they were privileged enough to know about it) to get a sample of my writing.
It only occurred to me recently that my college and medical school friends don't really know this facet of me. Not in the same way my high school acquaintances did. Outside of the classmates work-shopping my essays and stories in English classes, people weren't reading my stuff. I wasn't showing my work to my friends. They probably knew it was my hobby, but that's just it -- a hobby. They don't see how obsessive my mind has been about it, underneath all my pre-med and medical busywork.
Which is why when one of my college friends recently asked me about my ten-year goals, she was completely shocked to learn I'd been working on a novel for years. Which is ironic to me, because this project has consumed so much of brain-space for the past decade. Like, do you even know me?
But that's not fair to her. Because I don't really talk about it. I don't know why.
I've been thinking about why I've inadvertently been keeping all this a secret. Maybe it's because I'm too sensitive. I remember once, a friend asked me what my story was about. I was awful at pitching, and approximately one sentence into describing it to her, I could already sense her brain glazing over. And that feeling of inadequacy sucked.
There are two people who will ask me about my writing when I see them in person. One is Graydyl. The other is Astrid. I can't even begin to explain how it feels to know that somebody out there is rooting for me. Because this path is littered with frustrations.
Anyhoo, this post has been brought to you by: Sophelia is stuck in a rut and debating whether or not she needs to find a critique partner (or even a beta reader), even though she's tried it three times with no luck. Womp womp.
In high school, I was known for being good at writing. I say this very matter-of-factly, but let's put it this way: My essays were saved as samples by my AP English teacher. I received our school's English Department award during my senior year. I was a frequently published staff writer for the school newspaper and eventually climbed the ranks to Editor in Chief.
One other thing -- back in the day, Xanga was a big deal. In my social circles, you weren't in the loop unless you also owned one of those clunkily laid-out blogs where the music starts loading automatically. Everyone had one --- even if the posts were relegated to purposefully misspelled laments about how much life sucked.
My point is, it was known. Any of my friends or classmates could pick up a copy of the school newspaper or scroll through my Xanga (or even if this blog, if they were privileged enough to know about it) to get a sample of my writing.
It only occurred to me recently that my college and medical school friends don't really know this facet of me. Not in the same way my high school acquaintances did. Outside of the classmates work-shopping my essays and stories in English classes, people weren't reading my stuff. I wasn't showing my work to my friends. They probably knew it was my hobby, but that's just it -- a hobby. They don't see how obsessive my mind has been about it, underneath all my pre-med and medical busywork.
Which is why when one of my college friends recently asked me about my ten-year goals, she was completely shocked to learn I'd been working on a novel for years. Which is ironic to me, because this project has consumed so much of brain-space for the past decade. Like, do you even know me?
But that's not fair to her. Because I don't really talk about it. I don't know why.
I've been thinking about why I've inadvertently been keeping all this a secret. Maybe it's because I'm too sensitive. I remember once, a friend asked me what my story was about. I was awful at pitching, and approximately one sentence into describing it to her, I could already sense her brain glazing over. And that feeling of inadequacy sucked.
There are two people who will ask me about my writing when I see them in person. One is Graydyl. The other is Astrid. I can't even begin to explain how it feels to know that somebody out there is rooting for me. Because this path is littered with frustrations.
Anyhoo, this post has been brought to you by: Sophelia is stuck in a rut and debating whether or not she needs to find a critique partner (or even a beta reader), even though she's tried it three times with no luck. Womp womp.
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