On Call.

So it's the fourth again. Our neighborhood is empty, everyone having departed for a sweaty evening on the Esplanade, or vanished to cooler breezes on the Cape. There is the Pops, and fireworks later. None of which really holds any interest for me. Ok, I would like to see the fireworks, but it's not a real pressing need.

And yet, here I am, ready to complain. And if I want to be absolutely honest, I will write that my discontent has nothing whatever to do with the fact that I am missing the afore-mentioned New England 4th of July traditions.

It has everything to do with being alone, yet again, overnight, while the Hub does his call thing. No. That's not really true either.

What I resent is that while he is truly getting his ass kicked at his job, the true work he is doing he loves. And he's good at it. Really good.

When we met, neither of us had any clue this would happen. That Med School would happen. But somewhere along the way, he realized this was what he wanted to do with his life. He could be 40 and working at a white collar employment agency, or 40 and a doctor.

So I became a Med School Widow. It wasn't all that bad, really. Hah. You believed me?
For me, it meant having orange scented bath bubbles ready for when he came home reeking of formaldehyde, paying for the bills and health insurance with my own high stress job (I was a senior graphic designer at a medical publishing company...deadlines are my friend), and encouraging the hub when rotations got ugly, as they sometimes did. Add to that coaching for the USMLE parts one and two (we recently got through the third and last part with flying colors...whew), housework, and keeping a steady supply of Coke (the cola, you bad people), SweetTarts and Crunch'n'Munch on hand.

But I had a job I was good at. It was intense, nonstop and overwhelming, and I hated it, but I was damn good at it. I miss that assurance of my own competancy more than anything. I had confidence, I was...a professional. I had an income. I could pay for cello lessons. I could go out with the girls for drinks and bitching, and not have to ask for money, or clear it with the budget first.

The weird thing is, as much as I miss that part of my life, it would be supremely awful to go through parts of it again. There's no going back and all that. And now, I have something of infinitely more value...the Impling.

Things are harder now. If Med school was the first ring of hell, internship and residency have rings all their own, somewhere miles beneath that "deepest" ring (a walk in the freakin' park, that is). Now that we have moved away from our friends and a very beloved family, our support network is scant. I am with the Impling 24/7. We can't afford things otherwise here. And for me to work, I need time, and I don't have it. I have no wish to go back to marketing again. I want to move on, and move back at the same time. I want to take up painting again. With fresh eyes, and new ideas. So I have to wait. I sketch, and write down ideas, and bide my time. I'm impatient and depressed. And I always know that as awful as I feel sometimes, the Hub feels even worse.

As impossible as things get for the Hub, he keeps most of it to himself. And as this is a very SMALL community, getting into specifics about situations is not something he or I can do. Even here, I censor myself. I can't rage, because who knows who is reading? Yes, paranoia is exhausting.

It's wiping us out. It's wiping others out. Third year is supposedly much better than the second. We shall see. With the spectre of this past year still with us, it will be a while before I feel secure again.

So we take it moment by moment, and try to make our time with the Impling the best it can possibly be. What else can we do?