If I Kept a Diary in Medical School: I’m So Selfish
by Brooke Buckingham
Content warning: the topic of suicide is mentioned in this piece
My best friend is laughing so aggressively
She tumbles on our kitchen floor
Wiping the tears from her eyes
Now I’m laughing at her laughing
And now we’re both crying
If I could stay in this moment forever
I would forget last night sitting in my car
I’m so selfish
For letting the words passively suicidal
Enter our vocabulary
The space between us
Darkened with truth and honesty
Sudden solemn awareness
Of the freedom stripped from us
She doesn’t react with shock
Just nods her head in understanding
Because I read her mind
And I choke back tears
Even the happiest person I know
Can only withstand so much
You can’t ask for time off
When you aren’t being paid anyways
I’m so selfish
For asking my medical school
To integrate more vacation days
How else will I prepare for the real world?
I’m so selfish
When I cancel all my plans
Don’t come home to see my parents
Take several days to send a text
Turn and walk the other way
When I see my friends in public
I’m so selfish
Feeling no remorse
For leaving the exam room
Before my patient is finished
Mourning his partner
I’m so selfish
Because I would consider
Maybe there’s only one way to find peace
To experience true rest
And now that I have seen death
I know the true agony is with the family
While the deceased person is blessed
With everlasting silence and harmony
I’m so selfish
For choosing to be an internist
To understand his organs
As simple artifacts of a machine
Men as fuel-powered engines
Which can become beyond repair
Abandoned in a junkyard
To live out the rest of their life
It wasn’t my fault, I’ll say
If you had changed its oil on time
Brought it to the mechanic regularly
Maybe it would’ve lasted longer
You were never human to me anyways
I’m so selfish
Because when I take on the emotions of others
And place them meticulously
In some isolated depth within me
Until I can’t get enough sleep
And I have no time to process
Reality becomes indiscernible
From an eternity of pain
Life an unrelenting ignorance
Of emotional and physical boundaries
Passively suicidal
Another resident is on the news
For ending her own life
And I can’t help but think
Maybe it’s not that she wanted to die
She was forced to give away pieces of herself
To everyone around her
Until she no longer existed anyways
Brooke Buckingham is a fourth-year medical student at the UTCOMLS.
