Atypical Happiness

My resolve to keep away from blogging has finally crumbled. I have decided to again allow the histrionic in me some chance of emotional diarrhea. The almost 2 months of quiet is unnerving, like I'm a dormant volcano about to erupt, spewing out all pent-up heat and frustration and despair.

But surprisingly, I won't be writing about despair. I will be writing about its exact opposite - hope. I've been ill lately. And I call this illness "Atypical Happiness, Etiology Irrelevant". The doctor in me insists on probing any atypical symptom, or any abnormal reaction to stimuli. I feel abnormal now. Happiness, I realize, is a better cathartic than pain. Because this time, I'm writing again.

This happiness I have now is atypical. Anyone in my position will be lonely, tired or frustrated. I'm barely two months into my fellowship. Sometimes during duty days, at 2AM, I climb the stairs to the 6th floor CVS office from the furnace of the PGH emergency room where I inevitably end up smelling like a diabetic foot, with sweat and murky debris all over my face. And then the duty phone rings again and there's a patient arresting at the Cancer Institute and I have to run all the way there. Everytime the phone rings, my heart goes into atrial fibrillation. Every 3AM during duty days, my legs get cramps, sometime my entire body shivers from sheer exhaustion. And in the morning, life goes on, even if you want to stay in your room, sleeping soundly on your bed. Life goes on and there are hearts to save. You save other people's hearts so you forget your own.

But happiness is never defined by circumstances. I examine my life for aything to be happy about. I'm working like a dog, my brain is squeezed out of all information it has desperately clung to for the past years. I have no salary. I'm broke. I'm stressed out. I am reminded about how little I know and how much there is yet to know. Everyday I realize how futile everything is. Death is there awaiting everyone. Sometimes it even sneaks in unexpectedly and grabs us by the throat.

Atypical Happines. This is one disease I'd rather die of. On post-duty mornings, I stand outside the door of the CVS office and I gaze at the dying city lights. The early morning sky is always breath taking - the red and the orange and the purple and the black. The promise of a new day, another chance to explore the world, to do something, to love something. And I say, "Well, well, well, something is always right in the world, huh?"

Some diseases need no cure.