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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Dear Mr. Blue,
I've been married for 11 years to a man who can't make love and who drinks himself into oblivion when I am working. He is in counseling now and I have begged him to try Viagra. But he meanders dopily along quietly content in this farce of a marriage. I am utterly and inconsolably miserable. He acts more like my little brother than my husband. Now I am just exhausted. I can barely stand to hear his voice; I dream of the day I can take the dogs and leave. He has had sex with me once in the last 18 months and even then I had to get him half drunk. After 11 years of being ignored I can't dredge up any interest. So do I stay and try to swallow these feelings of anger and disgust; is it possible to create passion in a marriage where there was never any to begin with?
Blue Moon
Dear Blue,
If you don't see any hope, neither do I. You and the dogs should pack your bags. Tote up the assets, divide by two, say au revoir and back the car out of the driveway. You might pause at the end of the driveway and think a merciful thought or two for this man. A woman's anger is a terrible debilitating force in a man's life. It really tears us up. A man doesn't know how to deal with it, this poison with his breakfast, and he loses his bearings. Pause for a moment and think that thought and forgive him, and then drive into your new life.
Dear Mr. Blue,
I'm a woman, 21, a senior at Harvard, applying to medical school. Since I was a child, my parents have wanted me to become a physician, but I have been hoping for the epiphany of my True Calling, which I suspect is in the arts. Whenever I take too many science courses, I feel like I am going mad and I sink into a deep depression and apathy. Poetry and literature and art history courses make me come alive; when reading Keats or Yeats or Faulkner, or when studying the paintings of Degas or Manet or Rothko or Jasper Johns, I feel an excitement and comfort and feel my soul is actually involved in the work, rather than memorizing systems of organs and cells and showing off my excellent capacity for cramming shitloads of information and regurgitating them on exams.
However, I never did as well in literature or art history as I did in the sciences, and I convinced myself that the best contribution I could make to the world was through science. Also, as a feminist, I pushed myself to prove that as a woman, I could excel in science just as well as the men. On the other hand, because of my Asian ethnicity, I dreaded becoming the stereotypical Asian science and math premed automaton.
I went through a very difficult time last semester and felt like my life was spinning out of control; my parents orchestrated the filling out of applications and scheduling for interviews. I have always felt tremendously indebted to them and didn't want to shun the time and effort that they put into "helping" me. I went through the interviews and convinced myself that medical school was what I wanted to do, although I felt somewhat false about the enthusiasm that I had to display. Although my GPA and MCAT's, according to past data of accepted and rejected Harvard students, should have secured me interviews at all the top schools, several declined to interview me. And now the waiting list and rejection responses are starting to roll in.
I feel a mild relief at the thought that perhaps medical school is not right for me after all. It's difficult to let go of it, because I seem to be perfectly suited to the profession, with my natural ability in science and physiology, and my empathetic nature that makes me the attentive listener/counselor to whom all my friends turn. And I'd probably do a hell of a lot more good for other people as a physician than as a second-rate artist or writer or whatever the hell else I could come up with on my own. But I honestly have no idea what I want. I've been so passive about my life so far, that I don't know what makes me happy. And I suspect that perhaps following the rigidly structured path to becoming a physician was an escape from the difficulty and awkward stumbling toward discovering what I really want out of life.
Should I just give up on the medical school thing for a while, move away from my parents and their medical school obsession, and stumble around and discover myself and what I really want my life to be? Should I just take whatever medical school decides to accept me, even if it's not very good, and try out that path for a while? Should I somehow pursue art and writing, which truly make me feel alive and fulfilled?
Stuck at a Crossroads
Dear Stuck,
Your problem isn't medical school vs. the arts so much as it is emancipation. You need to cut loose of your parents so you can see the future without them standing in front of you waving and gesturing. I hope you get into medical school. Preferably one far away from Mom and Dad. The profession needs more people of your sensibility. The intense studies that have tried your endurance are only to give you a vocabulary, a foundation; the actual practice, the care of people, is art and music and literature all rolled into one. You'll hear stories more fascinating than any you could invent; you'll see beauty and suffering, profound and true; and you'll see into mysteries that put art in the shadows.
You are getting rejection letters, not because you're unqualified but because your ambivalence comes across in the interviews, and medical schools know that the ambivalent are poor risks and likely to drop out. If you get into medical school, do what you need to do to keep some space for yourself to write and draw and love what you love and to save yourself from that perfectionism that is withering to the soul. Good luck. And if you should go into geriatrics, maybe we'll run into each other.
