Blogless in Cambridge

School and work have conspired with volunteering and exhaustion to just about kill every ounce of blogger-urge I once posessed. Every now and again, I'll have a thought creep in and I'll start mentally composing a blog post. This often happens, uh, in meeting for worship, when a message will stir but not rise up, or rises up, but the room is already too full of words. But I don't follow through, and the idea or message passes. This may be for the best, anyway.

Things were tough here in Amanda-land for a while, emotionally and mentally, but most of the bits seem to be sticking back together. I think maybe the anticipation of spilling my guts in a weekly therapy session has also curbed some of the confessional impulses I used to indulge in with the blog.

The best thing I have going on these days is volunteering with a healthcare for the homeless program at a veteran's shelter. My responsibilities are minor--I'm mostly just cleaning up the occasional bit of pee and taking vital signs, and filling basins for the weekly foot-clinic soaks, but on a selfish level, it feels like a tangible step towards medical school, and on a deeper level, it's humbling and grounding to work with these men who have given so much and gotten so little in return. For the most part there is only occasional bitterness, and disproportionate gratitude for the little services we can offer. Here's a bandaid, here's some antifungal powder, here's some socks. Have a cough-drop. Almost every single man I've come across there has a powerful sense of humour, and the friendships that seem to exist between most of them are fully of lightness and in-jokes. I feel strange whenever I try to write about it, because the homeless are so consistently sentimentalized, and there's a lot at the shelter that is bleak and painful. At first, I was a little embarassed to make conversation with the clients. (that's most of the reason I'm there: to set up the clinic and then stay with the men and talk to them while they soak their feet) It's gotten easier as I get to know the regulars, and the things we have in common, like halloween, can lead to fascinating stories of pranks and costumes past. Other subjects can get sticky in ways you never expected. When they find out that I want to be a doctor, there are lots of jokes about me getting rich and forgetting them. If I mention off hand that it's cold outside, I can be sobered by tales of being homeless in January and losing toes to frostbite. These moments, where the distance between us is underlined (namely, my relative privilege, youth, opportunity and wealth) are generally brief, but leave me sheepish and speechless.

But I always feel human and connected at the clinic. When struggling with depression, or even just the esoteric demands of homework, those feelings can sometimes be in short supply. I am glad I'm getting to do this.

I guess that's all for now.