Happy (HFD) Friday!! You have made it through another week supported by your new social media cycles: admit, cycle track, and gmail. Only 400 people asked you about a medical school update and your boss only asked once what the timeline for finding a replacement for you will be. You are not into medical school, you only heard rejections, the waitlists and 30+ schools who have ghosted you hold your future.

You get to work 5 minutes late and will act like you are behind from this all day, running around being extra productive. You stand next to the attendings and residents outside patient rooms. Some cool cases and you are reminded of why you keep doing this to yourself. At the back of your mind, you ask yourself if you’ll ever make it or if this is the closest you’ll ever get. You try to push that thought out of your mind and think ab how in a year you will know how this played out. That thought is no longer comforting.

Your presence is needed and you enter the patient room, but the imposter syndrome takes the best of you. The patient tells says you look young and wants to hear your life story, she use to be a teacher. You don’t mention your future, you focus on the past and present. You don’t invite commentary on a system that consumes you but is so unknown by those who don’t pursue medicine offering suggestions with good intents. You wrap up work, another productive week, but next week you will need to do more, spring deadlines are coming up.

You get a text from your mom: “this months horoscopes”. She is convinced that when your moon aligns it will all work out. You are the first in your family to navigate this path, and no one knows how to help you or comfort you in this process. We don’t talk about it anymore, everyone is tired of the “if and when”.

On Saturday, you’ll try to sleep in but that’s not productive, so you channel the energy into a new fitness challenge and you end up spending 2 hours at the gym. You go home make breakfast and open your laptop to work on some upcoming deadlines, you are still putting in last minute applications to open programs. What’s another few hundred dollars???

You remember that on Tuesday you said you would get drinks with a friend. You can’t cancel again, you canceled last time. You will go and for 3 hours you will try and leave this life behind to look at the people around you and remind yourself there is a bigger world. You will finally feel tired and excuse yourself by 10 PM to go straight to bed.

By Sunday, the week’s weight settles into your shoulders. You do laundry, a task that feels good because it has a beginning and an end. You listen to a podcast that semi bores you but it’s better than the silence. You think about last weeks patients. What they taught you and where they are now.

Sunday night arrives quietly. You set your alarm, pack your bag, and prepare to do it all again. Another week of almosts and maybes, of being close enough to touch the thing you want but not close enough to claim it.

Happy HFD Friday, you’ll say again next week, half joking, half surviving. And somehow, despite everything, you will continue to show up.

this is suppose to be a youre not alone in the uncertainty and working your a** off post - if you are struggling with your mental health please get help, we got this!!!