All Of These

You want to know what it feels like to be a doctor?

I want to know what it feels like not to be.

There has never been a time that I wasn't a doctor.  There are things that one strives towards and things that reside in ones bosom before the act of becoming has yet occurred.  This has been my birthright.  I could no more have chosen a profession than I could my gender, my parents.

That is not to say that my future was carved in stone.  I suffered as did my brethren through self imposed asceticism, my head buried in text, my eyes watering, my intellect at times crying for mercy.  I did this not out of want or love, but more of unconscious habit.  Buried in the perverse coding of my DNA was a migration pattern, a way forward.

Graduating medical school, finishing residency was less about reaching the tip or peak of the mountain and more growing comfortably into the shoes that I had worn since childhood.  I had matured.

And being a doctor, being a doctor is neither a hobby nor a profession.  It is who I am.  It is complicated.    On occasion filled with terror and regret, fatigue and fear.  Triumphant at times, and downright disappointing others.  Like so much of life, emotions mix and homogenize.  Rough edges become smooth.

A blessing and a curse.

A privilege.

All of these.