Growing Up

How life changes. In high school and college, I would spend hours on end with my friends; part of the education was the socialization process, the cultivation of relationships, the discovery of self. While I appreciate the education - figuring out my study habits, reading those core biology textbooks, immersing myself in learning - what I take with me is those friendships, those people for whom I'd drop everything to help. I remember the late nights studying, the bonding over personal crises that seem so trivial now, the trying new things together. At the time, I thought this life, this active and exhausting process of going out into the world with my friends, would last forever.

Slowly, it dissipates and we start settling into the life that for so long I associated with adulthood, a quiet private life, one which no longer courts spontaneous witching hour conversations sprawled on the floor, but which instead invites carefully scheduled appointments over coffee. I have noticed this change happening over the last few years. I love my co-residents, but the bond we share is forged over work and challenging anesthesia cases and mutual learning, not heart-to-heart revelations, ponderings about our future, questions of our childhood. I can depend on them, but I don't lean on them. It's a strange realization, the difference between professional relationships and truly personal ones. It's not a bad thing at all, it's a transition in life, a point of maturation, a sign of growing up.