Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Rebounding?

I had someone tell me recently that "it's not fair" that I was single for only a short time before finding S. Well, life isn't fair. Sorry. I got up, and moved on, and started dating again. And I went out on a bunch of first dates (and one weird group event), and then met S, and so far, things are happily ever after. So yeah, life sucks for people who are still single and I'm not. But you're right, it's not even been 7 months since J6 and I broke up, and I'm planning my future with someone else. I'm lucky.

I had someone else ask me if S was just a rebound guy. The answer is not at all. I think that J6 was actually my rebound guy. J5 broke my heart, and it took me a few months before I was ready to start dating again (in all honesty, I probably should have waited a little while longer, but I was ready to not be alone anymore). So I met J6, and he seemed nice, and he was willing to offer me companionship. And I settled for a lot of things that I shouldn't have settled for, in retrospect. Well hindsight is 20/20 -- and all my friends and family members apparently could see what I couldn't all along -- but he wasn't very nice or respectful to me all the time. He also didn't appreciate my career, or my family, or my political or religious views. He wanted me to choose to live where and how he wanted to live. He wanted me to put up with his crazy mom (who hated me, and thought I was the worst kind of spoiled JAP -- which I'm really not). And a lot of other things. And I put up with all of this for over 2 years. The actual decision to break-up was his, officially, b/c I had picked a deadline for a commitment that he wasn't ready to make. But within a couple days, I was fully accepting of the break-up and ready to move on. And when he showed up, begging for me to take him back, I was flabbergasted -- and the tables were turned. While standing in my apartment, asking for me back, he started telling me all the things that I should do better and differently. THAT'S how you win someone back?! I asked him what he expected, and he said he was expecting me to welcome him back with open arms. Funny, since while he was realizing how incredible I was and how stupid he was to leave, I had been realizing how incredible I was and how stupid I was to have stayed with him all that time. So I told him off, and that I didn't even want to stay friends. THAT was my rebound guy, I just wish I hadn't rebounded for 2+ years.

I couldn't have been in a healthier place when I met S. Not just for a relationship, I don't think, although it certainly helps to be fully healed from all prior relationships. I had finished my residency -- and while the board-studying was hard, it was nowhere near what residency hours were like. And I had chosen a fellowship that should, hopefully, be pointing me in the direction of a career path that I'm going to love -- and so far, I love most of what I'm doing in the fellowship itself. In addition, in the few months since J6, I had also expanded my horizons and made a lot of new friends in my community. I finally had a social life, I was going out and doing things with people other than the 6 friends I knew when I moved to NYC and the people I spent 80 hours a week with in the hospital. (People kept asking if I had just moved to the UWS, and I sometimes would answer "yes," since I basically didn't exist in this community for the 3 previous years I had lived here.) I had moved to a fabulous new apartment, and it makes a difference to come home to a place where you can turn around without bumping into yourself, and see the sky and the skyline and the trees. And I physically felt good -- headaches that I didn't know had been bothering me for some time until they went away, had gone away, and I had lost some weight that I'd gained during residency and just felt good about myself.

So S isn't, by any means, a rebound guy. He's just the right guy. :-D

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Back to Real Life

The good news is that my boards are over. The bad news is that the test totally sucked, and instead of covering the material I knew really well, seemed to cover a LOT of the material I didn't know as well (endocrine, renal, electrolytes) and really stupid stuff (reducing medical errors, cultural differences, whether or not a 4 year old should be allowed to leave out PJ's for his imaginary friend!). And now I have to wait a few months for the results. But at least I don't have to study any more, and with any luck I'll never have to study for it again!!

Which means I can come back to my real life -- and back to blogging, which I've missed. Eh, real life -- I have a biostats midterm (a make-up, since the test was the same day as the boards), and a bioethics paper, both due this Monday -- and I'm call for the UES practice I cover once a month all weekend -- so I haven't really had time to recover yet. But you know what I mean. And my DVR is still hanging out around 95% full, plus I've deleted all the shows that are on-demand, which means I keep having to remind myself that I need to go watch those shows too. Sigh.

But about the boy....things are pretty amazing. Even with all the stress from my studying. It's been 2 1/2 months and I don't really know how things could be any better. He came pretty close to using the "L" word a couple weeks ago but got embarrassed, so didn't -- although when I asked him if he thought he was falling in love with me a few days later, he said "yes." He booked a flight to come home with me for Thanksgiving (and he's flying on my connecting flights instead of the direct flights he'd prefer, for the "fun and experience" of traveling with me). He got to meet some very important people in my life a few weeks ago when a close family friend got engaged and we went out to Brooklyn for the engagement party, and they loved him. And tonight he's meeting the first family members -- my aunt and uncle are in town and taking us out for dinner. This is after all my friends have judged him favorably, of course. And in 3 weeks, my Mom will be in town! This weekend I'll be meeting some of his family, also -- a family BBQ, and he's been putting his friends off until after my Boards, so that should also be around the corner.

We talk about everything. I know all his "secrets," including some not so great and wonderful things about his past that he isn't proud of, but he's working through in an honorable way. He knows all mine, including something that I never told J6 in 2+ years (it's not a bad thing, just something I never told him) -- and something else that when I told J6, he hated. S, meanwhile, couldn't have cared less about that -- he said it happened so long ago, when I was young and stupid, so who cared? We talk about our future (in a hypothetical sense), as in where we would want to live and raise children -- and how to raise children (like what kinds of schools -- public vs private -- etc), what kind of house we would want, our careers, etc. And while I was stressed and studying all the time, he was just there -- happy to order in or cook me dinner, also okay if I told him I couldn't see him b/c I needed to be alone and study, or that he could come over but I was going to sit on my couch and watch TV that night. Incredibly supportive and amazing.

So here's my question now -- when do I tell him about this blog? He's heard all the stories on it already, so that's not an issue, but he doesn't know that I've been talking about him all this time. Any thoughts??