Solus

Solus (L.) - Solo

Real life isn't like the movies. So when life's tragedy cuts you, the pain is very much real. And, being human, you bleed.

But you will heal, eventually, somehow. They say time is the greatest physician.

So in the meantime...grow up, soldier on.

All is not lost. There is still much to do.

Current Music: Don't Worry, Be Happy - Guy Sebastian
 

Intermission #52

On break.

But something else within me is already broken - my hopes, my motivation.

I frankly don't know what to think anymore, because almost all that I have believed in comes back to bite me.

Is it any wonder that I've developed some sort of phobia to have even a small fragment of hope, somewhere in my future?

Pardon me, God, for my forlorness.

Current Music: If You Could See Me Now - The Script

All in Due Time

And so I completed my last shift as a lowly HO last night. Wasn't exactly a shift to be proud of - my health has not been tip-top lately to be honest - but at least it's over.

So rightfully I'll be an MO in less than a week's time. Excited? Sort of. Anxious, jittery? Definitely.

Not to mention that the department where I'll be floating in has been showing its ugly side lately. Is it my fault that I'm somewhat eager to just leave and start afresh in new territories (wherever it may be, but hopefully closer to home?).

So now all I can do is wait. Wait and pray for the best.

There's a saying I found online: Waiting patiently is easier than regretting tremendously.

Applies to most of life's situations, don't you think? Because jumping headlong into ugly situations, no thanks to one's emotions, is likely to cause more damage...which may end up becoming irreversible.

So as the Quran reminds all of us - be patient, ask Allah for His Forgiveness, and pray hard.

Current Music: Heart Attack - Demi Lovato

Intermission #51

A couple of self-reminders:

"No calamity befalls the earth or your own selves, but it is (pre-destined) in a Book before We bring it into being. Indeed it is easy for Allah.

"So that you may neither grieve on what has escaped you, nor over-exult on what He has given to you. And Allah does not love any self-admirer, over-proud" (Al-Hadid, 22-23)

Forgive me, dear God, for I am but human, who errs only too easily.

Intermission #47

1. It's like everything is telling me to leave this damned hospital.

Never mind that I might not be adequately equipped in terms of knowledge, skills or clinical judgment. Never mind that I'm leaving friends behind. Never mind that I'm stepping into unfamiliar grounds.

I just feel in my heart - with great conviction! - that this is not a place for me. I can't, for the life of me, see myself developing properly if I remain in this backwater place.

It's like all departments are hostile towards each other. There is no respect, no trust.

Let's not even get me started on how ancient the infrastructure, the facilities are.

And the mindset. Oh, God, let's not even go there!

Dear God, save me, for I am powerless to save myself.

2. Now that the elections are over, can we just move on?

So BN retains the government seat. Did they really cheat? Only God Knows. But they can't afford to be complacent anymore.

All I know is, I'm sick of racial politics, regardless of which side incited it. I'm sick of opening my FB newsfeed and seeing hate and accusations, back to back.

Everybody needs "UBAH". And I mean it as change for the better, no matter what your political ideologies or worldview.

...I don't know what to believe in anymore. It's easier to give up than to constantly seek for the truth, in today's graying world, where authenticity is difficult to ascertain, despite the many sources of information available at our disposal. Such irony!

How do you seek the truth when there is slander all around, when people deal in lies, and people act more emotionally than rationally?

Is ignorance bliss? I'm starting to think so.

So please, let's just put all this conflict aside. Stop acting childish. Man up and stop being such a sore loser. Remember that the helm of governance is actually an amanah, and God will question you in the Afterlife.

...And for God's sake, clean up all the flags and banners. They're an eyesore already!

Current Music: Taking Over Me - Lawson

Intermission #44

I'm honestly getting too old for all this. Everything.

Too impatient with the wait. Too temperamental to tolerate the many quirks of people at work. Too lazy to just do it.

And way too attached to risk the loss.

Current Music: 50 Ways to Say Goodbye - Train

Compilations #19

1. Turnabout

On one fine night I was asked (read: ordered) to cover the haemato/onco ward for a day - a decision I made when I was barely awake, as I was already in my deep slumber. The next morning, with some sense of trepidation, I forced my way to the dilapidated ward instead of my usual route to my usual ward (High Dependency Ward).

Despite the reduced work load, I found myself missing HDW. And no amount of words could ever describe the relief I felt when I returned to HDW the following day.

I suppose some things just grow on you, despite your initial hatred - or indifference - towards them at first.

And some other things, after some twists of fate here and there, unexpected as they may be, can instantaneously trigger a complete change of reaction too.

I guess that's how life is meant to be, even after all these years of living. It is inevitable to judge and to be judged, but one must also be open to changes and be prepared to be challenged, be it physically or mentally and - mostly - spiritually.

We can't win them all. There will be some downsides...but at the end of the day all we can do is to estimate whether the positive aspects outweigh the negative, and if the former will all be worth the troubles of putting up with the latter.

2. Distance

Dear God, I can't take this anymore. But being too close for comfort has its own share of problems too.

Am I the only one who's hurting here?

Intermission #41

I shouldn't let my work define my entire life. There's more to life than just work, after all.

I shouldn't let people get to me. People will be people anyway.

I shouldn't let my emotions get the best out of me, even when I probably have too much of them to begin with. Too much for this frail frame to handle.

I shouldn't get too involved in uncertain issues.

I should adhere to all the above mantra, because life is tough and what other option do we have other than to be tougher?

I still haven't grown up after all these years, have I?

Current Music: Safe and Sound - Taylor Swift featuring The Civil Wars

Halfway There, Halfway Gone

"We often like to believe what we want to believe, often because the real facts challenge us too much. It is far easier to wallow in our prejudices than to seek out the truth in anything" ~ Marina Mahathir, The Star 30/08/2012.

1. Dear God, I can't believe that I'm already in Year Two of working.

I think of it as a mid-working life crisis. You know that you're long enough into the job that certain things are already second nature to you. You know enough people and are familiar with the procedures to get things done. You've worked long enough that you're already a familiar face to certain staffs.

And yet there are still things that still get to me.

How my stamina doesn't seem to have improved over the past year. How less tolerant I am to people - patients and relatives alike - who are bloody irritating. How pissed off I could get when my work is delayed no thanks to bureaucracy and the higher ups' ego and mood swings.

I like Medical because of the approach. But what I dislike about it is that it strikes me as a behavioural thing and thus, because of human fallacy and habits are just so hard to break, the process is endless.

Admissions are aplenty. Patients smell of cigarette smoke. Patients with psychiatric problems contributing to the chaos in the ward. And damn stupid elastoplasts that don't secure branulas properly should just rot in hell along with all the stupid, temperamental ECG machines.

This hospital is getting more and more idiotic.

2. The human factor in medicine is, as always, a great contributor to this love-hate (mostly hate, to be honest) I share with Medicine as a whole.

That is one reason why I shouldn't be allowed to practise clinical work.

But doing Pathology would mean abandoning the ward procedures, which previously actually took me some time to acquire.

Other specialties that I have considered include Anaesthesiology, Orthopaedics, Surgical and even ENT (I quote an MO of mine: "Easy no tension!").

Some people say I should worry about these options later. I say that I need something to look forward to, to work hard for.

All I know is, I need to get out of this damned hospital.

3. I feel old these few days. Maybe because a great number of fellow HOs in my current department are first posters, therefore are substantially younger (~2 years) than I am. Sometimes people mistook me for an MO - compounded by the fact that I prefer to roam around the ward without my white coat (I blame the global warming!).

A few people I already know are already MOs. I'm feeling some sort of delayed development here on my part.

4. Dang, esok keje lagi...

Current Music: Payphone - Maroon Five featuring Wiz Khalifa

Temperamental

...I blame the hormones. And myself too, I guess. Because we have always been taught not to blame others, and nobody likes to be blamed for others' problems.

I know I'd feel that way. And I also know for a fact - here I sort of blame my ego, but whatever - that I absolutely hate it when people contradict me.

Maybe it's because I spend an insane amount of time cogitating, weighing options, coming up with conclusions, rewinding scenarios in my already messed up brain. And so when it struck me that people tend to jump to conclusions only after analysing a small slice of my life, my behaviours, I get irritated...and I snap.

The rebel within me awoke today...though not exactly in front of the right people.

Maybe I've been far too lenient all my life. In which I allowed people to make decisions despite the fact that I'm the one who will be suffering the consequences. I allowed people push me around. I allowed them to nag me even when all I want is for them to just drop the effing issue. I stayed around to get an earful of their lectures even when I know very well that they are just working on assumptions.

Perhaps my Surgical posting has made me extra impatient, in that I can tune out whatever I refuse to hear up until a certain point before I actually burst, instead of letting it go.

I don't even want to have opinions anymore. What good is there, when what I say, what I do, who I am don't matter in the least?

Current Music: Fix You - Coldplay

Breaking Point

I can feel it. Something breaking in me - whether it is the last bit of my patience, my humanity, or my sanity, I have no idea.

Dear God, I'm surrounded by laziness and incompetence and inefficiency and utter nonsense. Not to say that I'm the best and the most capable person in the ward (or the department, but whatever), but at least I take my job seriously and think of people!

I can't function like this.

So much hate. So much despair...so much regret.

The only thing heavier than my footsteps to work, is the despair burdening my bosom.

Fortunately enough, rare though as they may be, there are those occasions that I could share some laughter, a jovial chat and the promise of some gastronomic indulgence. Though I do wish, every so often, for this distance from home to just disappear, because there are times that one just need the friendly reassurance that it's not just one person - you - against this mad, mad world.

Not forgetting, a certain smile that could light up my dark and grievous world, an infectious laughter, and a bundle of memories that could bring this...pleasant sense of gastritis (that possibly no proton pump inhibitor could ever resolve).

And this prayer that I extend to Him the Almighty.

They are the small beacon of hope - possible the only factors that still enables me to go on...but how further and how long more?

Current Music: Domino - Jessie J.

P/s: Karniza, dude, you are right...It seems like lately all I am capable of putting down into words is depressing. Shall I refer myself to a psychiatrist?

Departure

I hate this distance.

My grandfather passed away yesterday, and I received the news when they were already twenty minutes into giving him CPR. No matter how I sped, I knew it was impossible to reach there for any last words.

There was a sense of hollowness in me during the entire day...even until now.

I pray that God will place him among His Blessed. Amiin.

Fill in the Blanks

1. There is a popular saying on Tumblr: "Follow your heart, but take your brain with you".
So what do you do when reason says no, but both your heart and your instincts (at least, the less rational part of it) say go?
No matter what people may say, at the end of the day, it's only going to be me going down when everything falls apart.
Uncertain where else to look for the answer, I look heavenward and whisper a prayer.
Deep down - despite all my vehement denials - I know what I want. I wonder if it was ever in His Plans.

2. The other day I was accused of putting too much inhibition on myself.
My argument? Because I know it would not be me if it were otherwise.
Maybe it's because of this thing people call 'ego'. Or maybe because I just prefer to maintain my insouciant air, despite the contrary.
Or maybe I've just been hurt too often, too badly in the past, that I'd rather keep to myself than leave myself vulnerable.

3. I swear, some people have this inherent ability to just piss me off without even trying.
Even so I try hard to be calm and not judge too harshly, because we are but humans. Because I know that I'm far from perfect...
...but at least I'm trying, am I not?

4. Yes, I realise that my timing is, more often than not, off. Which is why I rarely initiate things, and just let things come as they may.
But please, trust me a little bit more when I say it's still too early to say anything for sure.

5. Dang, tomorrow I'm in charge of resus again. Shoot la weyy...

Current Music: Breathing - Jason Derulo

Intermission #36

1. Kudos, Sir, for making me all jittery when all I want to do is be still.

I applaud you, Sir, for single-handedly inspiring my muses one moment and then killing the poetry that they wove in the next.

Lastly, I congratulate you for giving me a light of hope, however small it may be, and more reasons to smile and, ironically, torture myself - all at once.

2. Please, Dear God, let me finish Paediatrics soon.

3. Maybe I should just go back this weekend. On Friday, right after work, even just for one night.

Current Music: Always Be There - Maher Zain

Kotoba

Words are powerful.

Could this little fact, perhaps, be the reason why I immerse myself in linguistics and writing?

They say rumour spreads faster than a bushfire (...or something to that effect?). But what, pray tell, are words when they may not even represent the situation?

Maybe people see what I fail - or deny myself - to see.

Maybe people just jump too easily to conclusions.

Or maybe the simple fact remains: people just love to talk about people, whatever the topic may be.

Current Music: Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You) - Kelly Clarkson

Compilations #15

1. Time, a great agent of Change.

But certain things are difficult to get rid of. My penchant for dramatisation, for instance - perhaps it's just how my humour is, how I roll.

Never listen to me after my night shift but before my morning cup of coffee; Whatever I babble on will either send you into fits of laughter or give you the urge to knock your head (not mine, I hope?) against the nearest wall.

2. I haven't been updating my writing blog much.

Perhaps it's because my focus has been shifted - towards work, and towards certain possibilities that I have long deemed as mere fiction, and yet still cannot help but to feel drawn to.

It's scary, isn't it, how small things can affect things in big, unimaginable ways?

I salute you, but at the same time I lament for my own weakness for being human.

3. Somehow I always manage to get myself stuck in weird and awkward situations. It's like I'm a natural magnet for this sort of thing.

The uncertainty thrills me for a short while, then it comes and knocks me down to my knees, and kills whatever light of hope I once had.

...I wonder how long will I be able to take this rigmarole before it completely exhausts me.

Current Music: Moves Like Jagger - Maroon 5 featuring Christina Aguilera

In Which There are Too Many Maybe's

1. I haven't been well lately.

It has been one week of strenuous coughing & feverish episodes, I'm suspecting that I might be having pertussis. Last night I probably spent close to three hours coughing - dry, irritating cough - that I lost sleep. Today I was more on autopilot mode, and yet still managed to do my morning rounds. Luckily my MO was nice that she said she'd just read my notes rather than let me do the talking…

Still unwilling to take any cough syrup. Never been a fan of them since the start, to be honest. Already on the antibiotic azithromycin, only because the pharmacy is out of Augmentin and one MO said the bugs in my current paeds ward can only be killed by either Augmentin or azithromycin…

Maybe it's the stress. Maybe it's all the germs that the patients brought with them to the ward. Or maybe it's something more…

2. I'm probably destined to be an outsider.

Maybe I'm not a good friend after all. I can't seem to make the sacrifices to actually hang out with them, mainly because of my busy schedule and hectic life and, most of all, the distance.

Maybe my introspectiveness and weak stamina should be blamed as well. Or maybe I'm just not caring or selfless enough…

3. It's tiring for me to follow others' paces all the time. But it's even more hurtful when my timing is off and I get a forced response.

Sometimes I think it's just not fair.

4. I miss having people to chat with.

So yeah, I am missing my university days. At least we were there, in one place, free to hang out and laugh together and share ice creams and watch movies and stuff. Sometimes we would celebrate birthdays and, just for the heck of it, drive around town even though there was nothing worth seeing.

I miss the philosophical talks. Despite my preference for writing, I find it easier and more fulfilling to converse face to face with people. I get to analyse the tone of the voice, the body language, the speed of response...the kind of things that you don't get just from texting or phone calls or even online chats.

Maybe I'm just not good with people. My colleagues at the ward are just that - colleagues. Our shift ends, we go off in our separate ways, and we won't talk or text much unless it's directly work-related.

So maybe I do enjoy going to work - to some extent.

…So what is it that is holding me back, keeping me away?

5. Am I the only one suffering here?

Would the knowledge change anything between us? What would it take for you to summon the courage and take the plunge?

Am I forever destined to be chasing that which is not meant for me? As well as running away from those that I deem as hazards?

Intoxicated

Could this be a bipolar disorder in the making?

How does one maintain one's faith, one's optimism in something that is so incredible, so incomprehensible, so subjective to human knowledge? Is it enough to have intuition alone in the mere act of realizing it as what it is? In the face of adversity, how does one remain steadfast in one's aim?

All this is so new to me, and yet the pain - the pain is something that I'm familiar to, no thanks to my past 'experiences'. Take note, in this context familiar does not mean 'being accustomed to'...

It's difficult to keep my feet firmly rooted to the ground, lest I lose touch with reality, when I get swept off my feet with every little thing.

I hate this feeling. But if I were to be honest to myself, it's a thrill that I find myself craving for more. Is this why drug addicts find it difficult to give up their source of pleasure?

Dear God, I sound like a raging lunatic on a high, I'm starting to scare myself.

They say that one will fall as one learns to walk. But here I am, taken high up in the sky (not entirely without my consent, I must confess), but I'm too scared that I will fall, if it comes to that.

It might break me in more ways than one.

Current Music: Wonderland - Natalia Kills

Compilations #13

1. After a certain point, even the most patient of person might fall prey to the his or her own anger.
After a certain point, anything can turn 180 degrees.

2. What do you do when you want something so badly, but you're unsure if you're actually worthy of it? Or, heck, if it's supposed to be yours after all?

3. It's okay, isn't it, to not go for a dinner which I paid RM30 for? Let the money burn just like that...because I just don't feel like meeting people. Just because.
It's just money, after all.

4. I'm always going to be stuck in a roller coaster of emotions, aren't I? It's always one brief moment of happiness, followed by despair...
Is that how life is, generally speaking? Or am I thinking too much into it, allowing my emotions get the best out of me?

Current Music: Written in the Stars - Tinie Tempah featuring Eric Turner

Intermission #34

What do you do when you see a glimmer of hope? Do you reach out to grab it in your hands, to proudly call it your own...or do you wait, with your hands tied behind your back, for the glimmer to brighten, embracing your entire self?

I don't know if this is what people may call as desperate, but I do know - that I want it, bad.

What have I learnt from the past? My pessimistic self would rebuke me for assuming, while my optimistic self would reprimand me for being too pessimistic in the first place.

In conclusion? Perhaps it's time to try and change the course of things actively...without pushing it too far, with my prayers to Him, and...pray for the very best.

Still, forgive me for this expression but...damnit, self.

Current Music: Stereo Hearts - Gym Class Heroes featuring Adam Levine