threesixtyfive

10-minute wake up

I had my midlife crisis at 25. And I’m fine with that. My life is so good. Whether or not it’s what I thought it would be, I can’t think of any significant way that it could be better. Still, sometimes I freak out over the big picture. I laugh to myself every time someone says they think I’m low-key. They have no idea that most nights I wake up somewhere between 10 and 30 minutes after I fall asleep, panicked about all the mistakes I’ve made, and all the things that aren’t going right in my life. Before I started med school, I would wake up with the crushing realization that if I was the kind of person I wanted to be, I would have already done all the things I kept saying I would do. I was absolutely convinced during those few half-awake minutes that I was never going to be a doctor. Usually I could reason myself out of this after a bit with the simple reminder that I’ve never felt more confident about my ability to do something well than I do about medicine. Other times I’d have to wake Culann up just to hear his voice for a few seconds. I guess it’s a measure of how much easier life is these days that my 10-minute wake up now usually has to do with the color of my bridesmaids’ dresses, or whether I’ve forgotten some tiny detail of a lecture. Now when Culann asks me what’s wrong, I can usually just smile and fall back asleep.

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