Redemption and reconciliation

Warning: reader discretion advised. Mature topics discussed.

I am cognizant of the fact that it has been a while. Since I was last running this business many formative events have transpired. Most poignantly, the loss of my father last February. A year prior to his passing, he was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer. Firstly, he underwent brain surgery, after which I had to teach him how to read and write again. Secondly, he received various treatments, including a form of chemotherapy. For a year, he fought tirelessly.

My father was my role model. His bandwidth was astounding. I will always remember him as a polyglot, a writer, a reader, a scientist, a lover of learning, and an artist of medicine. He was exceptionally selfless and kind. My father lived a very full life, and he cared very deeply about his family, friends, and patients. Losing him in the middle of my sophomore year of college was painful to a degree that eludes expression.

Since then, I have spent an overwhelming amount of time in nature and doing various forms of art to try to make peace with the fact that he is gone. After his passing, I fell deep into drinking and taking substances to numb myself from everything and everyone in my life. The pain was simply too overbearing to feel while sober. I strayed far, far off the path of where I wanted my life to go.

The thing about grief is that it never quite ends. It is very cyclical and some days are much easier than others. The other thing about grief is that it plagues you at night, when the day can no longer distract you. You are left alone to reminisce, attempting to mourn the time that has been so undeservedly stolen.

Presently, I am still pursuing medicine, as my father did. College has not always been kind to me, and there are many decisions I made that I profoundly regret; however, there is no changing the past. Thus, I am returning to being the architect of my future, shedding the thick, mottled and bruised skin that once protected me from the deep wounds life inflicted. Without the weight of that skin I yearn to climb, run, and dance through the obstacles I know I will need to overcome.

There was a time not too long ago where I did not appreciate living, and I wanted, so desperately, not to be alive. And yet, through a consuming agony, I have reached a place where I want, so desperately, to live, and to live fully.

Open your wings. You deserve to fly.