He looks at me through thick glasses. The social worker. His hair is disheveled, his shirt is tight over his stomach. It is checkered. The pattern stretches \u2013 tightens as he leans back in his chair and looks at me. \u201dIt\u2019s a social deroute. What you\u2019re doing.\u201d He says the same thing the family is thinking. \u201d4 \u00bd years of medical school and then she stops!\u201d While the words land between us, I remember the day I got up from the green velour seat in the auditorium and walked. Walked to never come back. It was as if the path swayed beneath me. Just as nausea came and went. Finally I had listened. Listened to my body\u2019s reluctance when I opened the books, memorized, studied until tears stood in the corners of my eyes. But especially listened to the incompleteness and coldness that crept into every crevice when I sat in the lab coat. Busy. Without seeing the person in front of me.<\/p>\n
\u201dSell your skill \u2013 invite the chaos of openness instead.\u201d Rumi\u2019s words. Freely quoted from memory.<\/p>\n
I had, until then, done the opposite. Sold the feeling of me. My body. My humanity and my values. I had done it to live up to other people's expectations. To live up to my own. I was in love with the white coat and the role of the knowledgeable one with the stethoscope in my pocket. I had locked all bodily information from the neck down, so that eventually breathing could not be felt. I could not be felt.<\/p>\n
I looked up. It was as if a fog lifted. The path could be felt beneath my feet. For the first time in many years, I looked up at the sky and opened myself to not knowing. Not knowing the route.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n