Well, that did not take long.

Maybe I did miss the deadline, but I’m posting anyway.

So far Project New Blake is off to a rocky start.

I was quite prepared for lab today, having read the syllabus, gone to lecture, read the Grant’s dissector, studied Netter, and watched about half of the amazing Dr. Zhang’s video of the dissection. When I got in the lab, it’s as if I had complete amnesia. Very disappointing. Although the highlight of the year thus far had to be finding three giant gallstones in our cadaver and seeing another tank’s 20+ stones that looked totally different. They were beautiful. The abdomen excites me.

I just feel like I’m not doing any of this justice. Where am I going wrong? I should be doing at least one thing well: school, momming, getting enough sleep. Something to show for my efforts and time spent! Instead I’m exhausted, barely seeing Zoe, and failing at every turn academically. Literally failing. I’m “that girl” - the one I didn’t want to be - who seems so consistently incorrect that she’s almost reliable. Almost.

It would be funny if it weren’t my life. TV sitcom writers, take note. We need another medically-themed show out there, another one for me to TiVo and not have time to watch. Quirky, non-traditional med student with a comically foggy memory disappoints family and peers with her incompetence. Hilarity ensues. Title is in the works. Some ideas: Paging Dr. Moron, or Quack.

My SIGN/P meeting today included a child psychiatrist speaker whose presentation was about Borderline Personality Disorder, in which I have become very interested in the past year. I enjoyed that and the endocrinologist who spoke earlier this week at my AIMS meeting. I want those jobs.

I’m here, and I’ve come a long way. The theory is that if I got here, I can get there. But I’m breaking down. I’m still passionate. I still want it. I just don’t know how to get the rest of the way there, and that depresses me.

I have moments. Good moments, when I know I can do it. When I believe that I’m good enough, smart enough, and that people like me. But they’re only moments.

This is the conundrum.

One of the problems with depression is that occasionally it lets up. You start to feel better, perhaps suddenly, and maybe that lasts awhile. A few days or even weeks. You become aware of your happiness, or feeling of normalcy, or absence of despair. Not long after that realization, almost immediately, you are wary. How long will it last? You fear the return of a very dark cloud, that heavy weight that makes everyday life seem impossible.

You want to hold on to the goodness and hope that, this time, maybe it will stay, knowing it’s like trying to store sand in a whiffle ball.