Someone told me when I started med school that it would be hard to watch life continue on normally for everyone else while you're stuck in the library. Originally, I thought, "Duh. I mean, what else to you expect to happen?" However, I don't really think that it hit me until this year. When you are miles away from people that you almost (or literally) lived with, you realize how important they are and what they provided. What's even harder is the fact that they go on to experience different things and don't tell you about it. You realize that you no longer are privy to their day to day experience. Along with that, things may change rather quickly.
Even calling for a momentary reality check can be somewhat disturbing. You realize that someone moved or started someone new, and you had no idea. While sometimes these things seem small, it really makes you think about how stuck you are. Working towards something is somewhat rewarding, but it is mainly frustrating - everything is put on hold in pursuit of one thing. This means that the normal things in life fade into the background. You forget what it's like to hold a conversation that doesn't include discussions about diseases, weird skin rashes, or diarrhea, which is frustrating for people outside of class. You forget birthdays, days of the week, and months of the year. More frustratingly, you can't attend weddings of close friends, hang out at a tailgate, or celebrate holidays with family.
Essentially, life moves on without you. You simply can't do everything or be there for everyone. Then, you call up those people to vent about your life, which is unfair to them - the friendship becomes somewhat one-sided. I guess all friendships are one-sided at some point, but this doesn't help the feeling of helplessness that encompasses you when you remember that your reality is not even reality at all. While school may be life, that's not all there is to life. There's so much more, even if you are stuck for the moment in the warped reality that is med school....
