this summer

I write this on a peaceful evening in LA at the beginning of August, on a relatively rare day off. The summer has been a busy one. It began very stressfully with studying for a massive exam (the dreaded USMLE Step 1). After studying for that, I only had a couple of days before I returned to California to begin third year of medical school. I spent most of the month of July churning out 12 to 14 hour days at the hospital on my ob-gyn rotation. And yet as I sit here reflecting, I am sure of this; I would take this summer over last summer any day of the week.

There is a song by the six-sister pop outfit Cimorelli called “Last Summer”, which perfectly captures the uncertainty of the first summer break spent in a new town where you have yet to truly get to know anyone:

This time of night, it feels like last summer

What are you doing now? Have you got things figured out? I wonder

Do you think of me as significant or just another?

Messing with each other’s heads, making and losing friends, chasing happiness, I was such a mess

Last summer

I’d had groups of friends to hang out throughout the first year of medical school, but come summer, everyone dispersed to do their different things. Because of a research opportunity, I stayed in Los Angeles instead of going home to Chicago or anywhere else. I was horribly tired from the past year, and I remember spending many, many nights on my bed watching Netflix because I was physically too tired to get up. At first, I was just fine with that, but as time went on, loneliness crept in and began to hang over me like a cloud.

I was shocked to see loneliness again. She’d been my constant companion in middle school, when people for various reasons kept me at arm’s length, but by the first couple of days in college, where I was surrounded by peers 24/7, I left her in the dust and didn’t see her again for a while. I thought she’d never come back, but she did come back to see me that summer, along with another old “friend”: fear of rejection. My experiences in middle school (and to an extent, high school) made me absolutely terrified of reaching out to people. Despite being several years from those painful days, I still thought of myself as the weird, awkward girl who no one wanted to hang out with. With school, it was easy; everyone was in class, so there was always people to talk to. But now that there was no school to bring people to me, I panicked. I was convinced that no one would want to take time out of their day to hang out with me. So to save myself from rejection, I just didn’t ask.

I didn’t have to spend time fretting over Instagram the way I fretted whenever I texted a friend…and they didn’t respond right away.

To distract myself from the gnawing feeling of aloneness, I turned more and more to social media (and to an extent, Netflix). Social media allowed me to forget my problems for a while by instead immersing myself into other people’s worlds, the worlds of people I didn’t know. It didn’t quite cure the loneliness, but it had one thing that real relationships didn’t; it was always there, ready for me at the drop of a hat. I didn’t have to spend hours fretting over Instagram the way I fretted whenever I texted a friend to ask for a lunch date and they didn’t respond right away. So over time, I found myself turning to Instagram for most of my “social life”. Sometimes I would come out of my cocoon and reach out to people, but most of the time I stayed in. In reality, I longed for adventure and for friends, but fear kept me inside the cage.

That, in essence, was last summer. And to be honest, it was also the majority of last year. I knew that I had problems, but I hid from people, fearing that if they heard my opinions or problems or even about my interests that they would think less of me. I slowly sunk into a well of isolation. I became my only real friend. And in time, it got me into trouble.

Fast forward to May of this year. I finished second year of medical school and came home to study for Step 1. But I was spending about as much time on YouTube and Instagram as I was in the books. My heart wasn’t in it. When my parents found out, to my shock, they didn’t really yell at me or call me any names. But they were firm; they told me that I had to cut it out. I remember sitting on the bed and for the first time, really talking to my mom about how I’d been spending my time and why I’d been spending so much of my time on social media. She gave me a small but revolutionary piece of advice: how about you drop the social media for three months, and instead spend that time studying and actually talking to people?

The same fear of rejection racked my bones as I sent out my first round of texts…but I basically sent fellow students texts with the following words: “How’s Studying going?”

The same fear of rejection racked my bones as I sent out my first round of texts. I wasn’t exactly in the place where I could socialize, but I basically sent fellow medical students texts with the following words: “How’s studying going?” To my shock, I got responses from everyone I texted within two days. Buoyed by this response, I texted more people I liked, and got similarly good responses. I asked various people to pray for me, and I prayed for people who told me they were struggling. One of my friends, it turned out, was taking the test on the same day as me, and we took turns sending each other countdown texts as test day drew near (“four days until freedom!”). I was shocked and then relieved to find out that most of my friends were struggling just as much as I was with Step 1. These interactions, small though they were, filled a hole in my heart that social media could only cover over. Before, I had been watching other people live in community; now I realized that I could find a community of my own to live in and enjoy. All it took was some effort. Before long, I was actually excited to come back to California and begin third year. All my friends are waiting for me, I thought. I can’t just stop now!

Step 1 came and went (thank God). After a whirlwind solo trip to the Netherlands and Belgium (blogpost TBD), I came back to California, saw all of my friends, and started rotations. With no social media to distract me, I planned various outings with and without friends. When I didn’t want to go out, I turned to the interests that I had developed in middle school as an unpopular kid: reading about anything and everything, writing, learning languages, and traveling. I went to Bel Air and Malibu on July 4; I went to the Getty Museum a week later. I saw Spider-Man: Far From Home with a friend. I went to lunch and I went to church community group and I did all the things that I had only dreamed could happen to me last summer. And to put the cherry on top, I had a big birthday party—a BIG birthday party, with friends that I invited over. All because I was forced to face my fear and conquer it.

If I’m making it sound like changing was easy, be assured that it was hard. This summer began in pain, humiliation, and a whole lot of anxiety, but it was pain with a purpose; it drove me to realize what I really wanted and needed, and to drive fear of rejection and loneliness out of my life once and for all. And that’s why this summer has been one of the best summers of my entire life.