3am on drugs.

I have zero friends. Literally. The only relationships I've been able to build have either been online with like minded people, where we both had time and grew close to each other and then drifted apart when life caught up to us. The other relationships I've had have been with work colleagues. Writing this out makes it scary. My work wife in surgery was my everything. I was sharing every breath with them. There wasn't anything going on in my life that they weren't privy to. I depended on them for everything and anything. Thus passed four crucial years. The person I am today is largely shaped by her and I owe her more than I can ever repay. The inevitable happened. Even if it hadn't, after we weren't working together I'm assuming we would've drifted apart eventually.

Life after marriage is morphing into a strange blend of content, misery, despair, happiness, longing, hatred, distance, yearning and patience. Three years down the line, I'm struggling to find all that I've been used to, even though initially I hadn't felt a difference, partly because so much was changing and partly because maybe I chose to ignore it, partly because I didn't have any other options, partly because I had to grow up overnight to figure out being an adult, which my residency had been delaying until I was 28. At 28 I came out of this stupor and had to start thinking about how to make a certain amount of money every month to even make ends meet. My residency had only groomed me enough to take out difficult teeth. That I could work with. I knew how to fix broken jaws and deal with pathology and even complicated things like raising a coronal or doing a LeFort or a saggital split of the ramus but these were largely academic skills until I had a degree and a license and a place to practice them. At 28, I had to return to dentistry and start learning the basics from the ground up. Luckily, I ended up at a good place with all the right tools and all the right people. At 30 years and 8 months, I'm finally confident in daily dentistry. The things I still don't know how to do, I've signed up to start learning and I'm making progress. I can earn enough from dentistry to survive. Just keep my nose above water. I did all this during a pandemic, during first-time parenthood, during migration woes. 

At 30.8 I have now set aside dentistry again to get my license. To deepen my ignorance in a field to a level acceptable deemed my peers to practice alongside them. At 30.8, I have no assurances, no assets, no reserves to fall back on. I look in the mirror and see disappointment in my own eyes. I avoid the eyes of others who had their hopes pinned to me. I find myself alone in even understanding the depth of my despair. I feel sorry for myself for feeling sorry for myself. I know what I have to do, I don't need a pep-talk. I'm just facing facts and stating realities. I know I can pull myself out of this. I know my potential and I'm not afraid to work for it. I succumb to pressure from time to time but I know it's an uphill climb. I just didn't know that it was a life long one and that it only starts when you begin climbing. I'd just been running around aimlessly before. 

I know what I have to do. I know what I mustn't do. I trust myself to walk the line. My mind is a bard parker and my heart is on the table. It's time for an intervention and I'm both the patient and the surgeon. I have no friends. I am resolute. One step at a time.

I now only need to find a cliff.