It occurs to me that each of the previous board exams I took have been taken under somewhat adverse conditions.
Just before USMLE Step 1, the girl I was really into hooked up with someone else.
Because of extraordinarily poor planning, I had to drive 150 miles to take USMLE Step 2 on New Year’s Eve.
While I was taking USMLE Step 3, my dad was sitting in the CCU, waiting to get cath’ed.
I almost wonder if some kind of severe stress is necessary for me to pass these things.
a phantom lifestyle imagined by my fevered mind where there would be someone at home who would wish me luck and send me out with a hug and a kiss, and there would be someone to look forward to seeing once
it’s all over
some other lifetime, or some other branch
universe, splitting off from some moment
before I erred and made the wrong choices
before the stars went astray and awry
before the decisions were taken from
my hands
to believe that this was how it was all
meant to turn out—the thought makes my heart ache
my breaths painful to draw—that this was some
unavoidable, inescapable
doom
that God would be so cruel to condemn not
just me, but any soul to so hopeless
so desolate a fate, leaves me tired
aching and weary, my faith tattered and
torn
perhaps my only consolation is
that somewhere in this multiverse there is
a version of me who knows what it is
to be happy