Love at first sight was a lie until I met him.
We met during the pandemic at a small gathering hosted by a mutual friend. A month later we took an impromptu trip to DC to see the cherry blossoms in full bloom. It was unforgettable, and so was dinner that night when he made a peace sign with his right hand and told me two things.
“One, I am falling in love with you.”
“Two, I want you to be my girlfriend.”
Tears came first, then a long pause, finally yes and I love you too. I cried so much I was sure the table across from us thought he was proposing. It was a big deal to me. I had never bestowed the “boyfriend” title upon any man I dated. I avoided the word love as if we were playing Taboo, and I always won. But I didn’t win. All I ever did was hide in my oyster shell and refuse to give my heart out, no matter how dark and lonely the shell got. I curated the persona of a free spirit; I put up a confident front; I perfected everything I did. All so I could announce to the world I was untouchable. Untouchable — that’s what I wanted to be.
Because if I was untouchable, no one could have ever hurt me or my body.
Then he came into my life and with his sensitivity and attentiveness melted my icy shell. I fell in love. He made me feel safe enough to love. Well, as safe as it could be — falling in love is always scary. But some people are worth conquering fears for.
Between first and second year of medical school, we moved in together and began building a life together. We painted our living room walls tiffany blue. Our cats met, fought, and finally decided to tolerate each other. He spent afternoons putting together the Wayfair furniture I impulsively bought. We cuddled on the couch and watched Netflix on the new TV that took us forever to mount. I got the chandelier I had dreamed of since I was a little girl — the chandelier, my own castle, and the prince.
I had never felt so happy, lucky, and free in my entire adult life.
Happy, lucky, free, and guilty.
I felt guilty. I felt guilty on weekdays when I ended my studies early to get froyo and walk with him around the city. I felt guilty on Saturday mornings when we had sex and cuddled in bed till 11. I felt guilty about doing less extracurriculars and research than my classmates because I wanted to give him the limited free time I have.
I felt guilty because I was a medical student and I was in love. These two things shouldn’t be incompatible yet I often felt the role conflict viscerally. At our last Mod 1 Doctoring session, we went around the room and shared about our summer plans. Everyone was doing research–neuroscience, health policy, breast cancer treatment… Everyone except me. In fact, I was to spend the entire summer doing nothing medicine related. When it was my turn, I told the class I was going to Hawaii with my partner, renovating our house, and “eating, praying, loving”. I got some laughs, but I also felt even more guilty and feared being different.
A friend once told me that time was the scariest currency on this planet and therefore the strongest language of love. What and who we devote our time to communicates love better than any material gifts or flowery words. As a medical student, time is especially precious. There are simply not enough hours in the day to learn all the material thrown at us. It’s way too easy to fall “behind”. Sometimes life feels like a constant cycle of falling behind, catching up, and falling behind again. I feared falling behind. I feared that not doing rigorous research would hurt me in my residency applications. I feared being different. I feared that listening to my heart meant unwise and irrational. But I loved spending time with him, and some people are worth conquering fears for.
Culture is the pervasive, insidious, and often invisible force that shapes our ideas, values, identities, and desires. The culture of medicine, as I have experienced it, teaches me to chase accomplishments, productivity, and perfection at the expense of personal life. Overworking is a given. Human emotions and personal needs are to be set aside. A good physician, as I have come to believe, becomes his or her work and ceases to be a person. Average human beings have emotions, struggles, limitations. Culture has planted in my brain that physicians are not average human beings. We are the ones who see our patients’ tears, listen to their struggles, and hold space for their pain and fears. We do not tear, struggle, hurt, or fear. We are invulnerable. Once upon a time, I wanted to be invulnerable.
Then I met him.
I am aware that I possess many of the beliefs and qualities I just mentioned. After all, it is my perfectionism, drive, and overworking that got me into one of the best medical schools in the country. Now that I am here, however, I find myself asking questions like who I want to be versus who others want me to be. I have talked to classmates who see medicine as a job that offers financial security. I have also met classmates who treat medicine as identity and the purpose of life. What do I want my relationship with medicine to be? I am not sure. What I am sure, however, is that my answers will keep on changing at different points of my career. And that is okay.
I struggled with feelings of guilt over my summer plans for a while. Then I landed on the thought that it is okay to do things differently. Our journeys to medical schools differ, and so will our paths as medical students, interns, residents, and attendings. I asked myself, when I am 90 and on my deathbed, will I wish I had done research that one summer or spent more time with my partner?
I want to be a physician. I also want to be a person — a real, imperfect, vulnerable, and sometimes messy person. What if being a person makes me more of a physician instead of less? What if we encouraged our physicians and medical students to do more things they enjoy and be their own people outside of medicine? Perhaps we could relate to our patients better. Perhaps the white coat will finally cease to be a status symbol that separates physicians and patients. Perhaps then we would get more job satisfaction and less physician depression — even less suicides.
I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but I look forward to learning what it means to be a physician — the physician I want to be.
Yuchen Chen is an MS2 at the Perelman School of Medicine.
Image also by Yuchen Chen.
