On Emily and Vulnerability

You called me Emily, but I don't mind because I am in love with the fact that Dickinson said "Hope is the thing with feathers--that perches in the soul--"

I don't mind because Emily was a center-part, plain-Jane, granola kind of girl and when I am allowed to be those things I am the happiest.  Emily was a queen of vocabulary and a lover of --.  She was full of juxtapositions; a rule follower and a rule breaker.  She was quiet and simple, at least on most accounts.  But I believe that she changed the world.  I like to think that when you called me Emily you might have seen something quiet and stirring in me that matters to the world, too.

What I really need right now is reassurance.  The interesting thing about being a medical student is that you feel confident and completely incapable all at once.  And when somebody asks you how school is going you have to find a way to respond that doesn't make you sound pretentious or timid.  You have to give detail without giving too much detail--too much and you are a know-it-all; too little and you are standoffish. 

My knowledge is increasing exponentially but so is the proverbial distance between me and you.  I am digging in intellectual and emotional trenches every day.  I wish I could tell you about that.  I wish I could tell you about the joy of having the dirt of learning smudged under my eyes.  I wish you could feel it too, and rub the dark matter away from my face at the end of the day.  You have no idea how much I need support like that now.  But when the sun sets I know that I have no choice but to hold myself through the chill of night. 

I want to tell you about my battle with fear.  About how last week, I dreamt the waters around the dock turned black and rose up around me in gargantuan waves.  You were there and you hit your head on the bow of that great boat, descending from the sky.  You bled into the black and I could not save you.  The sea tossed me mercilessly in my bed but I could not wake up. 

The more I interviews I complete the more I am intrigued by the responses.  Why is it that when you ask people about love they tell you about heartbreak?  And when you ask them about belonging they tell you about the most devastatingly lonely pieces of their lives?  The more interviews I complete the more I know the need of the human soul to be vulnerable.

I remember how, at 19, I didn't know what Ginsberg meant when he wrote "lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely."  Now I know of those darkened homes all too well.  But I will choose to forget what I know if given the chance.  I will leave the restraints of my orbit and meet you, and not be afraid of you seeing, me.

-E