Written 1/27/11
Ex.haus.ted. And now I shall share why.
See, after staying up unreasonably late the night before, I barely managed to hear my alarm at 6:30.
And yet, despite my sleepiness, I was apparently conscious enough to shut the damn thing off several times until I opened my dry, bleary eyes to find that I was going to be epically late.
After getting dressed in the span of 7 minutes (a possible record), I ran out the door, hit the road…and subsequently hit traffic. As if that wasn’t enough, I faintly realized that I forgot to bring an umbrella for the rain and apparently my exit was closed off.
Now, the latter may not seem like a big deal…until I reminded you that I have the directional sense of a bar of soap.
No, really. I am god-awful at trying to figure out addresses. So horrible, in fact, that I always always always rely on Googlemaps to help me figure out where the hell I’m going.
Soo…when the only exit to the only set of directions I happen to know gets shut down, well…Have you ever tried rearranging the furniture in a toddler’s room?
It’s like having a seizure in the middle of a conniption: just not fun if you’re the one affected by the change.
I got lost for about another 15 minutes, managing to roll in to my third day of orientation quite late, but not late enough to miss anything remotely important. We talked a lot about personal responsibility and cocky doctors and blah blah blah. I stopped paying attention fairly quickly before we went around our units, around which I began to marvel at how such a small hospital could be packed with so.much.stuff. Like, literally, so much stuff that I have to use valley-speak, like, I had no idea so many departments and places and functions could be packed into one little place. It was all good, but still kind of overwhelming since the place is set up like a labyrinth.
In any case, after orientation, I had to stay afterwards for a few hours, which was made even more tiresome by me having to sit still and do online modules about things that were so boring that I can’t even find the remote enthusiasm to rehash them. By the time I got out and got on the road to talk to Nicky, who was likewise just heading home after staying at her office (gosh we’re working girls) I was so exhausted and so tired that I pretty much ended up on the completely wrong road…which ultimately didn’t matter since living at the end of the world pretty much means traveling in the one direction away from civilization.
Along the way, I called a girlfriend of mine, Benny*.
Back in college, Benny and I made a really great connection and we spent pretty much all of sophomore year studying and partying together (including a night when I accidentally backed my kuya’s car into a parked one. Whoops). Over time, I really came to trust and value her as a companion and confidant, even moreso because it was hard if not impossible to maintain our friendship once we started pursuing our respective majors. I mean, we took shits together; that counts for something right? Haha.
Pretty much, I think of her as someone who is very important in my life and I’ve made an effort to maintain that kind of relationship despite the distance between us. It’s hard for me to let go of people I genuinely love, people who’ve done so much for me by simply being there when I needed them. So, when I called her for our scheduled phone date and had to leave the conversation for a moment, I was disheartened when she didn’t follow-up on her insistence that she’d call me back.
I realize that I sound a lot like a clingy child (my Sister likes to goad me about how I like to hold on to people like a puppy needing attention), but I’ve always figured that if something’s important to you, you need to make the effort to hold on to it.
And, much like my current situation with Lin, I don’t really feel the same sentiment being returned. I reach out and I don’t really get anything back in return. Maybe I’m just over-thinking things? Or maybe it’s just me who placed an disproportionate amount of trust and investment in a friendship that the reciprocating party just doesn’t want to…reciprocate?
At this point, I recall the following from my January 1st entry:
“4) Cut loose dead weight. People, places, things, habits that otherwise get me down and really don’t have any positive and/or lasting influence in my life then don’t really need to be in my life…”
I mean, I know what I promised myself, but I’m a bit of a brat so, I don’t know…
I don’t think relationships should be so easily discarded if they’re so important to begin with so, maybe I’ll keep it up just a little longer.
Or, maybe I am an attention-seeking puppy…
*I seriously need to come up with more stealthy codes…
