29th January 2000

I was lying in bed just now looking out my window at the clouds flying by, and it was strangely therapeutic. I'd like to spend the whole day doing it but I've got to get up and go to work now, it's Saturday and I'm on take. I'm beginning to lose count of the number of days I've walked home in the dark after clerking patients, and it's beginning to strike me that I'm a real clinical student, and on the brink of becoming a doctor. Sure, sure there's two years more and it's a long time for things to happen, regimes will fall and new faces will appear whilst old ones will out to pasture, but the reality is it's a bloody short time and I'm just a little bit scared. I think I'm beginning to go though a start-life crisis, possibly a little prematurely, but I am. It's partly my personal tutor's fault for sitting me down yesterday and discussing fields of specialty with me and casually knocking aside all the quaint little ideas in my head with "it's not so much what you hope to be but what opportunities are presented to you that will decide your specialty". He's a urologist. I'm not sure I can stomach the thought of repairing people's "waterworks" as they call it in my hospital, for the rest of my life. Nonetheless, he likes it.

I was out last night with two friends, and they're depressed. I sat in their house and laughed and made jokes and tried to make them laugh, in fact I was a little bit hyper, but it was rather hard. There's something about people who are depressed, about their lethargy and their apathy that feels slightly off. And a couple being depressed together is something else. In my little naive dream-world I've always imagined that the opposite parties would work to keep each other happy, that all the sharing and telling each other everything would be for Something, and somehow make things more bearable. But last night I saw mostly self-centredness, with some degree of selflessness, yes, but a lot of depression thrown in, and I suppose that's the way it goes. It's all a sham isn't it, the fireworks and electric moments fade to naught, and in the end it's all about two people tolerating each other.

There's a couple of people in this firm I'm on that I get along well with. There's P, a BBC guy, well rather a malaysian-chinese guy who's been here yonks and is effectively BBC. P's tall and has this pixie-like mischievious look, and he's friendly and funny, and we have bizarre discussions about getting together with white girls and about Dr C B, the Swedish babe of the century (really. really really really. believe me.) who also happens to be tutoring us. Unfortunately he has a hangup about Singaporean girls so I won't introduce him to all of my friends out there who're reading this. I'll rub salt in it by saying his family's also well off and he wears a Tag Heuer watch and is quite tall.

There's D, a Greek girl with red hair. She's cool and funny and warm and motherly and almost always has a cigarette in her hand, and many's the time we've had coffee and bitched about our colleagues and the doctors that teach us, and it's hard to explain this to a non-medic but it's such a warm, fulfilling feeling to be able to sit down to a warm cup of cappucinno after a long day, out from the cold, and talk to a friend you can trust not to rat on you to the consultants. D used to chase me around the consultation room during the GP firm with a tendon hammer, much to our patients' amusement, and mine. I don't think I'll ever fence anyone using a tendon hammer ever again.

Then there's A, an English girl who was born in France. She's not very tall for an English girl, roundabout my height and blonde. Like most blondes she's got pretty features, but somehow there's something different about the way she looks, compared to the English girls. A certain understatedness, a lack of cosmetic enhancement, something simple and frank. She doesn't wear jewellery or carry a mobile phone (believe me, in London that's way not run of the mill) because she doesn't see a need to. She speaks with an effortless British accent but can't say "gastrography" because it's not French enough, and she cracks me up. She's also extremely funny and has a lovely smile, and sometimes I catch her eye and find myself smiling, and I like her.

I've often wondered why it is people say "I like so-and-so", nono, you don't understand, "I REALLY like so and so". What's with all this liking anyhow? It's the old two people tolerating each other scenario isn't it. Perhaps it's also partly the mask thing coming back into play, my best friend emailed me yesterday to say that maybe we wear masks because we see so much going wrong around us that we can't fix that we put on the masks to protect ourselves. Well, perhaps, perhaps not but I do agree that we put on the masks to protect ourselves. So we say "like" instead of "love" even when you have the classical complications of that strange condition called love, (tremor, weak knees, sweaty palms and god knows what else) and it takes forever to actually get the words out. Or maybe that's just the minority, and the vast majority of the world is busy saying I love you when they mean "I like you". I'm still working out the dynamics of this one.

I've done some thinking recently, old man that I am, and I've realised I don't need, or want the mutual tolerance scenario. Sure, somedays I'm sorely tempted to, and it might be nice and warm and fuzzy to find someone you rather like, and get together with her and parade her to the world, and gently do things together with her, then hopefully the like escalates and everything becomes rosey and wonderful and honeybees fly through the fields of gold... not. Not for me, anyhow. I'd rather ride the rollercoaster, although once upon a time I swore I'd never want to again. I'd rather the highs and the lows brought on by the simplest actions of a certain individual you really do love, or the silly things she says. I'm one of the stranger blokes out there who doesn't even like people easily, and this life I've met about three people now I really laugh with when I talk to. But that's just part of it, laughing. There's something else undefined that's mostly to do with what's in your head. There's something silly that brings out the best in you when you're there laughing and you've got the words to say and the wit to make someone else laugh, when normally you're either too tired to bother, or else you're making all the noise to two friends and everyone's laughing and you're the focus of attention, whilst inside you see that the friends are depressed and, well it's a hollow feeling. I don't know where falling in "like" goes, it's iffy and about taking a chance isn't it, and I've come to believe somehow that it's just not worth it. Maybe it's the fact that I'm a medical student and have so much happening around me in hospital that I feel like there's no space left for anything but to breathe, or maybe it's the things that I've been through, that I've actually been on the rollercoaster before and wish I could get back on, but I do know this, there's a defined path falling in "love" takes. It may not always work out but it runs on the rails of the rollercoaster, and nothing else seems to compare. If nothing else, it creates rare memories that one will cherish, and probably miss wistfully someday - but that's what life is all about isn't it? Making memories. It's not just about living for the moment, but about creating your mental logbook so that someday when you're old and infirm (it happens. believe me. I'm doing Geriatrics right now and everyone's old and lovely and retrospective, and some are content with the lives they've lived and most are ridden by the fear of death) you'll be able to think, I did that! and be happy about it. I've met widows and widowers who remember their lost loved ones wistfully, but aren't rushing to embrace death, and who smile at me sunnily when I show up to clerk them and break my heart.

Sometimes I wonder if somewhere out there someone can hear me when I'm down or when I feel like I really need to say something to her. It's not a generic someone but a very specific person whom I'm shocked to find I still miss, and it's silly but true thatI lie in bed watching the clouds and think maybe if I believe hard enough she'll hear me, like an intercontinental telepathic telephone. It's a childish thing to think, but sometimes, just sometimes when things go falling down around me I wonder about it, and after about ten minutes to half an hour in my nice warm bed I laugh it off and get out into cold reality. But once upon a time I really did believe it though... amongst a lot of other things. Funny that I should have come to believe all these things that I do now, because there was a point in my life when I was an unremitting cynic, who couldn't even bring himself to believe in love. Who would have, I suppose, if he hadn't got on that rollercoaster quite unintentionally, been quite happy to test out the mutual tolerance theory repeatedly, well, okay, why not let's see where this goes. And the funny thing is sometimes when I really really hurt and I really did believe, the phone would ring, or I'd get an email, and I'd laugh it off as pure coincidence. Once upon a time I got a remarkably unremarkable email from you, and I knew that was when things had gone wrong between you and whatshisface whom you're probably back together with since that was his plan all along - can't you see it? And I didn't know how I knew, but I just did, and I quashed it as childish fancy.

I don't think you'll ever read this, hell I don't think a whole lot of people will ever read this at all, just a few close friends who'll wonder about my state of mind and about what all this is about, but I knew what that roller coaster was through you. If you'll forgive me saying so, those few months of - whatever that was, an unspoken agreement I think you called it - were amongst the happiest in my life, hell they were the happiest in my life. Which was ludicrous, given the circumstances, but just to hear from you and your thoughts was intoxicating, and enough. I remember I was happy even during my exams. What chance, that. The lowest points in my life seem to focus about you too, the mornings and nights I spent watching the sunrises and sunsets from the beaches and cliffs by Coogie bay wondering what it'd be like to lose you forever (which it seems I have, now) and wishing you were there to see the beauty of the sunlight coming off the sea (which I'm sure you do now and then anyway) were amongst the most wistful I'll ever feel. Were you for real when you said you'd have liked to have met up earlier and gone blading and stuff? I'd have liked that too. That night in your mum's car when everything was all muddly in my head and you turned around to say goodbye at the backpacker's place, your hair was loose and rather unkempt and falling everywhere, and there was something heartrending in the look of your eyes, and it all seemed so final and that that would be the last time I'd ever see you, and the sadness I felt then was simply undescribable. The day you flew for greener pastures comes a close second. And the evening in Hyde park, well that was rather odd because it was both high and low. And somedays I really, really wish you'll wander across these pages by accident and perhaps think about the things I've written and contact me if it's appropriate, because as far as I know I've intruded on you enough this lifetime beyond what is sensible and acceptable, and I mustn't anymore. And somedays I read my own pages and think God it'd be stupid if she ever read this, thank God she never will. And the reality is, nobody will ever read these pages except for my best friend, who will try to sort me out, and well, that's okay.

I used to speak to you and send you emails exactly as these pages are written, and somedays I wonder is this nagging feeling I have simply because I can't share them with a person, any person, or was it you all along, somedays watching the sunsets off tower bridge or waterloo bridge by myself I wonder is it because I can't share all these mini miracles with a friend, any friend, or is it because I can't share them with you. And I think we both know the answer.

I won't ever do you the indignity of putting your name up here, so you can rest easy now.

Be well, my friend.