lunar.soliloquy

I try not to think about it too much, but occassionally it comes up and throws me into mental disarray. Anyone reading this who went to my school back in Rotorua would know what I'm talking about. If I could change one thing about the past, I honestly don't know what it would be. Would it be my surroundings, like the school I went to, the people I met along the way, or would it be myself, my attitudes towards people and the way I handled situations? Everyone I've talked to about this seems to think that my anti-social tendencies somehow protected me from entering a world that I knew I did not want to enter, acquiring attitudes that would conflict with everything I had been brought up with and set me on a course of life much different to the one I am on now. No offense to any Rotorua friends reading this, but I do somehow feel that if I had integrated myself more into the social networks at my school I would be in a very different place in life from where I am now. Of course, it's not like I couldn't have still gotten to where I am without being a social hermit, but being the frail-minded weak spirited person I am it wouldn't have taken much to set me off course.

When I look back to those days I'm not sure what it was that caused me to isolate me from everyone during my high school days. Whether it was me just me being stuck up or arrogant seems a bit harsh on myself, since I don't like to take myself upon those traits, but who am I to say. Shyness? Sure, but for 7 years? I don't think so. What about psychiatric disorders? Asperger's Syndrome? No, I ruled that one out last semester for my humanities assignment (although the prospect of flagging this all as a disease process seemed devillishly appealing at the time). I honestly don't know what it was. Maybe some shyness. Maybe some arrogance, just for having slightly above average IQ and being able to do well in tests with minimal study. Perhaps relating to people with such vast differences in upbringing, lifestyle and values proved too difficult to stimulate my interest in others. Maybe I just accepted the fact that I was different from everyone else and lived in my own little world. Part of me wants to believe that it's hard to relate to people who don't understand what it means to have Asian parents but now that I look back they weren't really that strict in the scope of what I've been hearing in Auckland. I don't know what was, I guess back then I simply wasn't interested in people. I wish I knew why.

Even when I look back to my first years of university where the people I've met have generally had similar interests and values to me somehow it seemed like there was still a problem. I guess lack of social networking experience left any attempts of making social connections to people utter failures, and navigation through many strong, existing social networks has proved difficult. The workload of university also presented itself as a problem for someone not used to studying to achieve good grades, combined with the lack of any real ambition or motivation. Why the hell I decided to study medicine is still beyond me. Parents didn't push (despite being asian) and I haven't really been inspired by any doctors even though my dad happens to be one. As a result of having a doctor in the family I never had the opportunity of experiencing a GP consultation so never knew what doctors actually did. I just kinda knew it was a stable-ish job and I got merits in science. So off I went to biomed thinking that I'd just transfer over to med in 2nd year and all would be s'well. Not so. Went into a full mental meltdown in the weeks prior to the med interview and had to do a ton of research and think a lot of crap over. I'll save that story for another time.

So anyway, here I am in 3rd year med not knowing quite how I got here or where I'll end up after (if) I graduate. Still feel a bit out of place among my peers for not being ambitious enough or wanting to get A+ in all my papers but I stopped caring about that long ago. I don't care what kind of person everyone expects me to be for being a med student but I know that if I change who I am now, it would mean that all those years spent in isolation during high school would have been meaningless. I just want to be me. I'll do things my way, my style. Even if I have to walk alone. Fortunately for me, I don't have to. There are people who do accept me for who I am, and I'm very grateful to those people for being in my life. I think you know who you are.

Geez, I've given this entry far too much of my time this evening. It's so easy for me to get carried away in my train of thought sometimes, it's hard to stop the thoughts coming once things get going. Better turn in for the 8am start tomorrow morning, gotta get back to reality. If you've made it this far, you deserve a cookie for tanking through all this text.

/stream of consciousness (or whatever else you wanna call it)