My Girl

Taken on that Thursday night, drunkenly. Linked to full-size

On Thursday I called my good friend up to see if I could cook her dinner, as I hadn’t seen her in a long time.  We met about 5 years ago when we were both volunteering for the university in our first week, and have been good friends ever since.

During the intervening 5 years, Dea – a name meaning goddess – spent most of her time either in a relationship or pining after one of our friends, Zac.  There were, however, a few drunken occasions where she would slip up and kiss me, or say something like “I’m going to marry you one day,” in a slurry Afrikaans accent.
Just putting it down to being drunk (as inevitably she was at these times), and being gay enough to not want to provoke more of the same situations, I never really acknowledged her.

Until I came out, that is.  We spoke about how we feel about each other, and when we were honest, we decided that there was something strange between us, only in the sense that it’s a connection outside of our individual norms.  Of course, this is (paradoxically, or perhaps ironically) completely normal, but still strange to experience.

I joke that she’s a gay man trapped in a woman’s body, which she finds mildly annoying, but in all honesty it’s a simple explanation for how I could actually love her the way I do (and why I’ve kissed her more than all the men put together!).  Sure, it’s not the kind of love that is required for a romantic relationship, but it’s a hell of a lot closer than I could ever have imagined with a woman.
We can even see ourselves with kids, and have tentative plans for the future, depending on our circumstances at the time.
This is all compounded by the fact that my family loves her, and her family adores me.

It’s all a situation that I feel I should want to shake off, but I don’t.  I kind of like it, this quirk in the system.

Montage

“Adrian Vince Castelli thinks we need a montage,” was my facebook update at the end of last week.  For those of you with awesome taste in movies, you’ll recognise it from Team America World Police.  Basically, it was all about how you can cover some long and boring shit if you chop out the process and keep the progress.  And throw in some music. 

The reason I thought we needed a montage is because study week – this week – was coming up, and I just didn’t feel up to the task.  However, today I managed to turn off the non-believer part of my brain and came up with a study session that was essentially like a montage – short, painless, gainful, and with a soundtrack (iPod.).

I’m not so disillusioned that I think this puts me ahead.  I know I only made up for the last two days which I essentially wasted. 

At the same time I’m so jealous of the dentistry students.  They get like, five years to study the mouth.  I get three minutes to cover all of neuro.  Bah. 

So my point is, well, we need a montage.  I’d love another one tomorrow.  I mean, come on – even Rocky had a montage.

Esoterica

 

Exams loom yet again.  The stress-bliss cycle begins to swing in favour of the former, and I’m so tired.  I feel strung out and overextended and all the other descriptives that lead the mind to see that I feel like too-little peanut butter spread thinly over the toast.  And isn’t that a trip – the mind…

Neuro exams.  In all their forms – neuro exams.  The physical examinations and the Exam (capitalised and all) that combines neurology and musculoskeletal medicine will be here in a mere fortnight or so.  I know I’ve survived exams before and that same knowledge should prepare me for more of the same, but this time is a little different.  It’s neuro.  The esoterica of medicine.  The foreign language within an already foreign language.  It’s a dialect that isn’t hard to master; the language of neurology just has a lot of words to it.

So I’ll forget the world you all live in and lock myself in a box.  And in that box I will look at Lhermitte’s sign, and debunk that old myth that the basal ganglia is conceptually and spatially simple, and learn the dermotomes and myotomes and plexuses before I turn my attention to the anatomy of the bones, and every bump of every bone and every fibre of every muscle and tendon and ligament and fascia whilst attempting to remain sane and gain the brain to pass the last and most agonising stretch of uni left. 

And maybe then I’ll come out on the other side of pre-clinical student-hood as a socially questionable but academically able clinical student. 

We’ll see how it all plays out.  For now, bed.  Tomorrow, I stick my fingers inside hearts.  Not human, and not alive, but hearts nonetheless.