Perspective

It’s been a while since I’ve put a pen to paper (metaphorically). But in the middle of looking through my valvular disease notes, I decided to just put everything away and start writing.

I’m going to go ahead and be honest and say these past few weeks post spring break have been rough. Things that I assumed were going to make my year, and the small things too, nose-dived, and the decline was extremely rapid. Do you ever have those moments where you can see the future brightly and clearly and all the sudden the vision just explodes into a bunch of fragments? Excuse my dramatics, but that’s what I’ve felt like in the past few weeks.

There were moments where time seemed to stand still, and I would just be sitting in my living room, staring at the ceiling. A feeling of nonsensical anger and sadness and confusion would just sit in my stomach, and I didn’t know whether I should cry or shout. Right when it seems like things were looking up, somehow, they ended up plummeting again.

I’m usually a very optimistic person. I’m the girl with the smile in the morning and an energizer bunny throughout the day no matter how many hours of sleep I have the night before. But lately, I’ve kind of viewed the world through some negative lens. I’ve come to realize how awful and poisonous negativity can be. It seeps into your nerves and muscles and saturates your thoughts. It’s venomous – distorting how you choose to live each day and view other people.

So in the car after hearing another piece of bad news, my roommate and I looked at each other and realized how focused we have been on the wrongs, and how it’s affecting our day to day living and expressions.

The day was slightly breezy with lazy sunshine. A coolness had seeped into the weather’s arms, banishing the heat that had been saturating the air in the past week. The air was crisp and the leaves were beginning to blossom with green. My roommate and I took a sigh and changed our perspective. Yes things seemed to suck now, but look at what we have. A loving family, the greatest best friends, the most amazing group of supportive friends scattered across the states, a wonderful med school family, and an education.

Perspective. The word has come to take on quite a significant meaning for many of us quite recently.

So I choose to focus on the Little Things. The list of things gathered from my sporadic lists as a child and online lists and my own sweet memories. Here are some I can apply to my life recently:

-Letting your hair down after it’s been tied up all day
-Changing into sweatpants
-The moment you realize your hiccups are gone
-Achieving the perfect milk to cereal ratio
-When close friends visit you
-Skype/facetime between friends
-Finally trying a restaurant from Yelp you’ve been wanting to try

Because while I don’t exactly see the light at the end of the tunnel yet, I just have to believe there is one. And these little things will keep me going.

-M