Heroes -A reflection

Exactly a month ago, on Friday the 26th of April, I received the biggest shock of my life yet. I had failed medicine. I had failed my last ever academic exam on the last day of the exam season in my last year as a medical student. A coincidence? Perhaps or perhaps not.

Since the announcement of the final year results, everyday has been a living hell. Everyday is a battle between me and my intrusive thoughts. Everyday I wake up to a billion messages on the class WhatsApp group about pmdc registrations and house job interviews, and it hurts. Everyday I wake up to a billion Instagram posts where I see my class fellows celebrating graduation and it hurts. Everyday I get messages of "support" from "friends", each of those messages feels like Judas's kiss. It hurts. 

It hurts to see what I have become, for not so long ago I was the class celebrity, the only person to have passed the step 1. I was poised to pass final year in flying colors and graduate as a doctor. But that was not to be. Atleast not for the time being.

I have undergone a roller coaster of emotions this past month or so. At first I couldn't believe what just happened, then for a very long time I was angry and resentful, and now I have realized that maybe I was too close to the action and needed to take a couple of steps back to see the bigger picture. 

Yes, I failed medicine. So what? I'll pass it soon enough. I still have my parents, a couple of friends and Milena. The best piece of advice I got throughout this time was from Milena's brother and he said "Every time you feel like why you? just remember why are you the only person to have passed step 1? why are you the only person to have gotten an internal medicine observership at UChicago? Things will work out trust me on this". I will forever remain grateful to my best friend Nauman and Milena's brother for coming to see me right after the results were announced. I may not have shown it then but I was broken, broken in every sense of the word, and the two of them coming to see me went a long way towards fixing me. My only regret is not being able to properly become friends with Milena's brother earlier for he's a man with a heart of gold. 

I once read in the book, Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw: the man and his times, a definition of a hero. A hero is not someone who does the impossible but rather is someone who uses the means and resources at their disposal to make an unbearable situation slightly more bearable for themselves and for others.

My heroes who made this the most unbearable of situations slightly more bearable are my parents, Nauman, Milena's family and finally Milena herself.

Milena, has no idea of how much of a support she has been all this time. Even in her silence I find the inspiration to keep going, for her, for us. She is my north star. This entire blog and all of the blogs within are in more ways than one, an attempt at trying to say out loud what I had in my heart all along. I do not wish to turn sixty and look back with regret thinking to myself, ہمیشہ دیر کر دیتا ہوں میں . I do not wish to leave a word unsaid, a stone unturned, a deed undone in her pursuit. I shan't.

Let's now kill this bloody supplee.

Milena if you're reading this I want you to know, I love you, always have and always will. I hope you'll keep me in your heart for a while, You'll be in mine forever.

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