Sadness to Fondness

As salaam alaikum,

Today was the first day I'd walked on campus in a while.

I don't think I'd been on Michigan's campus since 2008, probably on St. Patrick's day, so whenever in March that was. Then, less than a year back, I walked the diag as a student.

Now it's been three years, and as I passed by places I'd been with friends, I was overwhelmed with...sadness.

Thinking back to my undergrad years right now just makes me sad. And it's not only about the man, though it kind of is. I wish I had an experience in college that wasn't so colored by him, at first by liking and longing for him, and then for wanting someone like him in my life.

I wish I could look back to college and not feel regrets. Because that's what I feel now...regret. Regret that I wasted so much time hoping and praying for him, that I didn't make some of the connections I perhaps could have, that I spent most of college confused about my identity, entering medical school more fragmented than I was solid...

And I mean, that's had a big impact on who I've become, my goals in life, what I work for...the way that I felt I had to give up my former identity entirely to be here, at Harvard Medical School, in the end for what?

Nothing makes sense of that whole thing. I wish it did. This is the first thing that has happened in my life that I can't make sense out of, and it drives me crazy.

I walked past the Chemistry building on campus, and looked toward it wistfully. Here was a reality I left behind soon after I packed my belongings and headed to Boston for medical school, and here it was, in my face again.

It sucks when the other person gets on with their life before you do. Like, married...and he'll probably have his first child before there's even a prospect on the horizon for me, and I'm sorry if it's nonsensical, but it makes me feel like a loser.

As I walked on the campus of the University of Michigan, though I graduated with distinction and went on to Harvard, I still feel like a failure. A failure at life.

I never wanted to go to Harvard. And this is not me crapping on my blessings. I'm very thankful for all I have. And when I acknowledge that I am in a group of the most privileged women in the world because of my unique position to be able to choose my life's path...my husband, my livelihood, all of that, that still remains.

But college for me reminds me of a time that...I faltered, stumbled through a part of my life and fell flat on my face. I'm over the man but I am not over the failure that the whole period was for me, in terms of my life.

I have no prospects, at all. And really, I don't need and I don't want the plural. I just wish I had the faith that it will happen for me, but I don't. I think it's just my nature to kind of be a disbeliever in this way, I don't know.

I feel like I just don't make enough sense in this world for anyone to actually fit with me...I don't know.

But, at the end of the day, what can you do? Nothing. You can pray, but it's that same prayer you've been praying for the last 13 years, in variations, and you feel no closer to the answer. So that's done, and it doesn't matter, so it seems. Life goes on in a big way. Life goes on, you'll wake up tomorrow, and you won't meet anyone, not the man of your dreams, not even anyone interesting. And you'll wake up tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and it will be the same story. Weeks, months, years will pass, and the same story. Nothing. This has been my reality, I know.

You can do nothing about it. I just pray...I guess I need to start praying that it doesn't hurt so badly, and that one day I'll actually be able to look back at my college years as not so much of a failure at life, and I'll be able to look back at everything, not just the summer of 2004, with fondness, not sadness.

Because that...that I actually may have control over...