burnt out

 

I feel totally burnt out! I dont know if its the on call effect, me Pmsing, cloudy foggy winter or if its me slowly waking up from my denial.
I just feel like crap, emotionally unstable and i could feel myself choking with my tears, trying so hard not to break down and cry because honestly, i have no idea what im crying for and it wont fix a thing !

Ive been having alot on my mind lately and being in that busy rotation doesnt give \you the time or the mood to sort these things out.

Im sick of talking about it too, i want a solution. I want to put an end to it. I want a friend who i could trust, talk to and who could actually DO something to make me feel better. Its funny how in a city of 5 million people, you fail to make friends .. atleast MATURE friends who are not high on hash or drunk all the time !

I know i shouldnt rely on people to make me feel better or fix me but at the moment, im totally burnt out and out of energy, i cant even force myself to go to work or workout or even go shopping for crying out loud. Winter is here and i havent gone shopping yet !

I could switch my xmas holiday and go home instead of going to disneyland but i dont think this will help, i have a feeling that ut will only make it worse on me .. because ive reached out for help from alot of people there and were helpless and some ended up making it worse on me. I dont blame them, i mean if i knew what this is all about, i couldve fixed it.

I think i should stop now.. the more i think about it, the deeper i sink ...

why leaving is that hard

So this is where my journey ends.. When i first arrived in kuwait for my vacation, i was home sick for toronto and i never expected myself to break down like this.
Ive been pretty emotional and tearful in the past few days prior to me leaving to toronto. Ive been having so many regrets regarding not spending enough time with my family and fears about losing them.

When i firat arrived to kuwait at the beginning of october, my dad told me that one of my aunt"s was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer but she was pretty stable and asymptomatic and within one month, ive been informed that her condition has deteriorated so badly and that she has less than 6 months to live. Being a doctor, i know what pancreatic cancer is and i knew that she wasnt going to be cured but just realizing that she wont be here next time i come for a visit has struck me with fear.. Within one month, she recieved a diagnosis of death and within 6 months, she will no longer be here.. Realizing how things can change so quickly !! I realized that it could be anyone else, it could be my dad, my mum, my grandmother, any of my siblings b3id elshar inshallah.

Being abroad, away from family and friends could you put you in that risk, the risk of losing anyone and being left with regrets for not spending enough time with them.

My friends keep telling me that therez nothing i could do and the reason i am abroad is to make my dreams come true, little they knew that  i dont see my subspeciality as a dream and it is definitely not worth it but its a choice i made ans i have to stick to it. Dont get me wrong, i do like psychiatry and i have no regrets choosing it as career but its not worth the pain im feeling right now.

My friends and family dont really know what i really feel. I only post my happy moments/pictures. They have no idea how lonely it is there, how tough it is to go through this on my own. Toronto is one of the busiest  and fast growing in the world. It is full of immigrants and people seeking a chance to live. Everyone is working hard here and they have no interest in socializing so its hard to make friends here and most people are found in groups, like all asians, all indians, all arabs! Most of kuwaiti students are doctors like me and they are either too busy trying to survive the residency and the on calls or have their own family and satisfied with that as a social life .. everyone thinks of being abroad as a '' COOL '' thing, actually, i used to think the same way .. maybe it is a cool fun way if you are off as a student, as a bachelor student but definitely it is one of the most stressful experiences as a doctor/resident ..the way medicine is taught and practiced here in kuwait differs a lot from the way things are done in canada. i don't think they train us and prepare us for such responsibility here in kuwait. In canada, you feel as if the medical students are waaay better than you and can handle critical situations better than us residents/doctors. with this, comes great amount of stress, depression and low self esteem. you feel as if you wasted your life away during these past 7 yrs . add to that the long working hours in canada .. the average working hours for any profession is 8am till 5pm but for doctors it can get as hectic as 7am till 7pm .. during my consultation liaison rotation, there were days when i left the hospital around 8:30.. it can get really crazy!

so we got stressful job , no social life and then lack of support. the time difference between kuwait and canada is like 7-8hrs .. even in the lucky days when i leave work as early as 5pm, it will still be too late to call home coz that would be around midnight and most of the people would be asleep by then. you can try staying up late till midnight canada time but then that would be as early as 7 am in kuwait and the majority are busy getting ready to work or still sleeping .. this leaves you with nothing but the weekends to try to keep in touch with people back home.

i have no regrets coming here or doing that .. it wasn't my 1st choice but i know this is happening for a reason and i have a feeling that amazing things will happen in canada .. I'm just saying, its not as easy as it seems .. and I'm not as happy as i pretend. in a matter of fact, i don't dare to show my family and friends how fragile i am here .. in the past few days, i broke down a couple of times and i told a couple of friends about it, a lot of em were shocked and didn't know why i was crying. they thought things were perfect here and that i was having a blast ..

i think I've ranted enough …

just wanted to get these thoughts off my chest . and I'm beginning to get really sleepy right now .. i still have 2hrs before my next flight, I'm so drugging myself out and sleeping the whole flight ! its 14hrs25min flight and there is no way on earth that I'm going to stay awake all flight long.
sadly, im reaching toronto around 5pm so i can't just jump in bed, i got one day to fix my sleep which is impossible but one can only hope right? so ill probably go for some grocery shopping then deal with the piles n piles of mail that i know that they r waiting for me and i bet most of them are bills!


cant keep my eyes open anymore

perhaps too emotional?

I'm sitting here in Amsterdam Airport when a young lady, I say about 20yrs old in a KLM uniform offering me biscuits and attempting to take away my used plate. A while ago in the toilet, there was an old lady, I say older than 50yr old cleaning the toilets .
two scenes with the same reaction, i felt really sad. a 20yr old girl should be out there making her dreams come true, and a 50yr old lady should be resting at home playing with her grandchildren. I know a job is a job and sadly, not everyone is born wealthy and most of the world have to work really hard to make a living. Maybe life isn't fair. I just can't help feeling sad when i see such people .. young children selling products in the streets, old men doing hard labor work, old ladies cleaning houses and stuff .. it really breaks my heart.. i get the urge to hug them.
Ive been told by one of my seniors in Canada that i have this good emotional sensitivity to other people's feelings .. perhaps im too sensitive?
I guess i shouldn't judge,  i mean that girl atleast have a decent job and not another homeless person on drugs or doesn't have to sell her body for money and i guess that old lady is taking care of her self instead of rely on others.
and maybe things will change for them eventually. ive seen how life flips completely for me and for others. Maybe this is the beginning of something beautiful.
okay, its been a long flight and my brain is a bit slower right now so i'll finish this later on

in a dark place

ive been in this dark place way too long ...
ive been feeling like a mess .. ive been too impulsive, cant control my anger and been so insecure. im trying to recall when is the last time ive felt okay ... i think that was 3 yrs ago .. when i was still in med school .. my only explanation is, that i was too busy to think about anything else but my studies .. after graduation, i thought its time to take care of myself and i guess thats when hell broke loose .. i think i took it too seriously that i started finding defects in every aspect of my life .. and then came the obsession of being perfect ...
then i did psychiatry and started psychoanalyzing myself .. and finding disorders in my thinking ..
ahhhhhh *bangs head on keyboard *
i need to step back, take life less seriously.. loosen up more .. bring back the old carefree person in me ..
the keyword is: CARE FREE .. sob7an allah .. it seems so easy and simple .. i mean, whats easier than NOT CARING AT ALL .. yet to me, it seems so hard and almost impossible :s

sick

so i have finally gotten sick..
wow such a relief ..
lol no i'm not mad, i have a pretty good explanation for this ..
you see, one of my biggest concerns about going abroad and being on my own was getting sick .. i rarely get sick but when i do, i get sick so bad and ive always needed a little bit of pampering and nursing :P
no seriously, i was dreading getting sick here ..
and unfortunately, i did get sick .. i think i have the flu or something ... the weather has changed dramatically in the past few days .. it became cold all of a sudden ..
so yesterday, i had that nagging headache with this bad lethargy .. as if a truck drove over me .. i slept the whole day .. and i had that scratchy throat ..
but things were not as bad as i anticipated EL7AMDALLAH !! i managed to make me chicken soup from scratch :D .. and i did have couple of friends calling me and offering to come over to nurse me lol ..
im so glad that i got sick .. coz now i know that getting sick when ur on ur own isn't as bad as i thought .. i mean el7amdallah it was only the flu and nothing serious but still, im glad that i found out that i could take care of myself ..

OHH OHHH and i learnt other stuff too .. so ive always been a workaholic and a productive freak . i cant just sit still without doing anything .. i cant just have a lazy day .. even when i was sick before, i had to do something like read a book or watch some documentaries .. i cant just waste time in bed . this was very unacceptable and yesterday, i had the urge to grab a book or something .. and believe me, if i was doing this for fun, i would have let myself but i know that that urge to read or do something is out of my obsession of being productive rather than having fun .. so i stopped myself .. i was getting restless and the urge was getting stronger to do something but i kept stopping myself and did nothing but sleeping the day away ... and this is considered a big achievement for me lol .. yep .. doing nothing is not easy for me at all ..

and the other good thing that i learnt is, to give myself a break .. Canadians are workaholics and they never take days off .. coz that means less money .. thats why you rarely see people taking sick leaves and stuff and ive always had that feeling that if i take day off, ill give em the impression that im a weak person or something and since this is my first year, i cant afford giving my supervisors any bad impressions. there were days when i wasn't feeling well enough but i had to push myself because i thought, i should't ask for breaks .. but then a friend of mine told me '' YOUR HEALTH COMES FIRST, YOU COME FIRST, IF YOU ARE HUNGRY, YOU LEAVE YOUR PATIENTS AND GO EAT. IF YOU FEEL SICK, YOU EXCUSE YOURSELF '' .. ive always been hesitant to do such stuff .. there were days when i didnt have lunch coz i was busy with my patients , there were days when i missed my doctors appointments because i couldnt tell my supervisors that i need to leave for my appointment .. you cant blame me, doctors in kuwait have traumatized me lol .. they were so mean and rude and would never let us leave for lunch/appointments so im not used to asking for these .. but it seems people are more considerate in canada and i guess i gotta learn how to ask for my rights .. i mean, here you can just call and tell them you cant come coz you are sick and no one will ask you what kind of sickness you have because privacy is a big issue here !! but in kuwait, they demand you to bring a sick leave or tell them what u have and if they are not convinced, they will force you to come and work :s ...

the thing that im trying to say here that ive started to learn how to loosen up a bit .. and thats something that i really need ...

running away

you keep on running away ..
I cant blame you.. you've been hurt so many times .. by so many people ..
I've always thought I could be the one, the one who make all that pain go away ..
but it seems that ive only made things worse for you ..
I had a feeling that you will eventually run away,
I was hoping you'd run back to me ..
if not,
I wish you a safe journey,
and I hope you find yourself somewhere safe and warm,
somewhere you can call home.

ramadan in north america

ive meant to update this long time ago .. and i know ive said that a thousand time but i really wanna update it more often, for my own sake :s it has been 3 months since ive arrived to canada and those 3 months passed by too quickly :S .. i still get home sick sometimes and i believe the reason is that i still dont have many friends .. the weekends are the toughest coz im either home all day long or out on my own and its really not fun being on your own .. ive always wanted to do this .. travel and live on my own .. but you know, its not as fun as you think it is .. especially if you are working and here in north america, people work ALOT !! things can get really stressful at a times and miserable if you lack support ... now ramadan was quite a challenge .. so in toronto, emsak is around 4:30 am and breaking fast is at 8:45 pm nowdays .. you go to work from 8-9 am till 5-7pm .. and people around you are eating and drinking .. thats not the worse part .. the worst part is, when you come home around 6-7, you're already exhausted and tired, you try to cook some fotor and then you break your fast at 9 and by 10pm, you cant keep your eyes open .. so its like the whole day is wasted because you're at work and even if you're home, you'll be too tired to do anything and at night, you're sleepy and actually you cant even stay up late because you got work the next day and there will be no coffee to help you stay awake .. do you get what im trying to say here?? ramadan in north america SUCKS est'3afer allah .. not only its draining me physically since ive been living on one meal .. but MENTALLY TOO .. i swear to god, everyday id be debating with myself if i should break my fast or not!! in my whole entire life, ive never wanted my period to come as bad as i want it to come right now .. i just cant take it anymore :( and what ye7er too is that there has been alot of holidays here and you'd want to use those holidays to go out, do stuff or even travel but you cant because you're fasting .. dont tell me to go out despite my fasting, its really hot and sunny + people are eating everywhere + alot of walking involved + im already as diadventage because i only eat one meal a day .. i tried waking up for so7or a couple of times, i either missed it coz im so exhausted and couldnt hear the alarm or id wake up only to realize that fotor is still ga3d 3ala chabdi :S i just cant wait till ramadan is over :( and thats so sad because i was lookng forward for ramadan :( the good thing about ramadan that it has forced me to cook everyday and be creative with it lol .. yeah that clashed with my dieting plans .. but who cares!! i only eat one meal a day .. i should eventually lose the weight .. i hope :S so yeah, ive been experimenting with different cuisines ..

we got some italian futor, some middle eastern futor .. tiramisu which i need to PERFECT because all tiramisu here has alcohol in it so the only tiramisu i'll be having is the home made ones :( ive actually eaten a few ones here without knowing that they had alcohol and gotta say, it does taste different ... NOT IN A GOOD WAY LOL .. wallah, chena fe dowa ka7a :S today, im steping up the game a bit and im having asian futor, the plan is to do some suhsi, baked spring rolls and dumplings .. now thats gonna be a challenge :S ill keep you updated :D