I’m just gonna jump into it because I drove up to New Jersey about a month ago to visit my bestfriend and it was…amazing. OMG I had so much fun doing absolutely nothing but being with her. I came back to life like the Grinch, my heart grew three sizes that day. Ahh this is terrifying. Why can’t life be like The Vampire Diaries where I can dissociate and turn my emotions off (I mean…it can be, but I don’t want to exist that way.)

Fun aside from that visit actually–she introduced me to some of her friends from the area, which is always amusing because they don’t know about her gymnastics background, and a bunch of the men were doing a dumbbell workout (totally “showing off” in just such an amusing array of attempted masculinity). They showed her what to do and then were SHOCKED when she just broke out the whole workout, hitting every skill, mastering technique, and doing so with the same dumbbells they were using. I was sitting on these bar stools at the time, amused as hell, loving the emasculation. When I first meet people, especially a group I’m being introduced to, I’m usually fairly quiet, I like to observe, people watch, mentally become aware of behaviors and energy and learn about them. The men migrated near me and started playing basketball on a small hoop like the ones men hang up in corporate offices or your high school teachers posted above the garbage cans, at one point.

I can’t recall the exact context, but one of them looked at me sitting and watching them and went “I’m sure the amount of testosterone in the room is intimidating” and I said, very calmly, “I think we have different baselines for what “too much testosterone” is”.

Hahahahaha. I have never seen men take a step back and be so amused, not offended, and concede immediate respect in one moment.

Back to my lil intro, I just wanna give all of my friends and the people currently in my life a huge shout out lately. Whether it’s my internet pals, like Nikki and Stephen (@wittyidiot), my chosen family, my actual sister, and my incredibly diverse and insanely interesting array of humans I get to call my support network. I’ve felt so much love lately, and I think I was actually able to finally accept love because I learned how to actually see it, because they taught me how to trust it. How to trust myself. And they believed in me. They were and are patient with me. They recognize the way I light up their souls, the room, the planet.

I wanted to switch into entertainment because I realized the thing I value most about myself–with all of my ridiculous skills, from sewing (which translated great from the seat cushions we learned how to make in Girl Scouts to closing up Mohs surgery scars with the precision of a plastic surgeon), to animals (sometimes it’s easier to learn how to ask for love after you see a dog do it), to disease and health (a holistic, educated approach that takes into account the boundaries of western medicine), to childcare (and YEARS of experience as a babysitter across multiple familial dynamics, continents, and parenting styles)–was that I wanted to be helpful in any situation. I wanted to have the answers–or at least know where to look for them.

When I consider the idea of “setting up a life for myself”, my answer always comes back to wanting to be the person who could help my friends in any way possible. Apparently this is a testament to being an ~Aquarius~ (to all you nonbelievers). This was my draw to medicine as well–I wanted to be helpful, and it was the most tangible and direct way for me to do so. But how many people can’t ask for help? Like I couldn’t/can’t/still struggle with? How many people can’t afford healthcare? How many people can barely afford life?

I wanted a way to be there for people that transcends the boundaries of direct...