Doctor Trisha De Gracia
05/06/2008 07:04 p.m.

It's really, truly here now.
"I'd like to be a doctor"
"I'm a pre-medical student"
"I'm trying to get into med school"
"I'm trying desperately to twist circumstance around my finger in order to prove to myself and my family that a middle-class Harewood girl can jump the hoops necessary in order to become a human being in charge of the heartbeats and inhalations of other human beings."

I pick up the pencil. Pick up a book. It starts, always, with words on a page. Years and years, and still more years to come. Scrawled notes, recited like the lines of a play, recorded faithfully alongside other sweating hopefuls in testing rooms across the country. A collective upswelling, a surging forth of dreams and hopes and perseverance, discipline and desperation, all towards the golden doors that lead to middle of the night wake up calls by not a faithful lover, arms outstretched, but a fickle mistress, a pager on the nightstand, a call to arms. Suit up in green cotton armor, pick up your scalpel, march in like a force all the while you're chest is whining and thudding, a corralled stallion or an angry bee up against the glass of a jar. Clear the mind, slide the blade (never push), go placid and semi-robotic. Life, the teetering culprit, stirring and pulsing beneath every stroke.

Me?
I am currently Calm