The Plan

I took my own advice the other day. I had time to kill during a gig, so I sat and thought about what I wanted from my life. What I wanted from my career. What I wanted in love.

I wrote down two goals for five years from now. I thought about them, let them linger inside me for a while.

And then my Mom got sick. And I visited her every day I could while she was in the hospital.

As I walked through the same doors multiple times, and saw the same people each day, it became clear what I wanted. I don't want to be an EMT. I want to be a doctor.

In a strange twist of fate, during a conversation with one of my mother's other visitors, the woman talked about the son of a friend. He was just turning thirty. He had just finished medical school and was about to start his work in a hospital. As I sat there, listening to this woman chat with my mother, I thought, That could've been me. I could've been a doctor by now.

As I walked through the halls of that hospital, every time I saw someone in a white lab coat, especially in groups, I kept thinking, They could've been my colleagues.

So I made the decision. I'm going for it. I'm going to become a doctor.

I suppose the decision may be both the easiest and hardest part of this process. Now that I've made the decision, named it, said it, breathed life to it, I have to take the first steps, start the journey, the long hard slog to my goal.

Just in doing some basic searching on the interwebs, I know it will be at minimum two years before I can even apply to med school. I have 32 credits of sciences I need to take, not to mention I need double check my English credits still count. I'll need to study for and take the MCATs too. There is just so much to do. It's all very overwhelming.

My life is going to fundamentally change come Fall of this year. I plan to enroll in the local community college for my credits, two lab sciences a semester for the next two years. I would've gone back to my old university, but the cost would've been more than double the price of the community college. Not even a question of what decision I was going to make.

I am scared shitless. Scared I'll not be good enough. Scared that it is too late for me to try. Scared that it will all be for naught. But I have to try. I have to know if I had the goods, if I was meant to be a doctor.

There was one good thing that came out of my conversation with my father yesterday. He casually mentioned that before my sister died she was pursuing a career in medicine. Part of the reason why I didn't go down that road was because of pressure from my mother, whether she realized it or not, to not walk in my father's footsteps, to not pursue medicine because of some odd notion of my place and her place in his life.

I reject my mother's example of humility to others for the sake of I don't know what.

I am smart. Super smart. I am brave, courageous, much more daring than she has ever been. And I am better than a doormat.

I'm going for this, come hell or high water. I'm going to become a doctor, or crash and burn while trying.