A personal account of love, grief, and ambition during an incredibly formative period of my life. Part 1 is about the heartbreak that set everything in motion.
Looking back now, I don’t know how obvious it was to the people around me, to the strangers who met me, or to those who followed what I shared online. Maybe they could see it. Maybe they couldn’t. But when I look back, the internal chaos is impossible to miss.
I was suffering in ways I can barely put into words while simultaneously beginning my journey to becoming a doctor.
When it happened, I was beginning a post-baccalaureate program to complete the coursework I needed to apply to medical school, navigating COVID, juggling 4 different jobs, and trying to make sense of my complicated relationships with my mother and father.
Then my boyfriend abruptly unraveled.
In the weeks leading up to his breakdown, I was buried in organic chemistry, calculus, endless assignments, and taking my first serious steps toward a career in medicine, yet he routinely complained that I wasn’t giving him enough attention. At the same time, he was posting photos with another woman that blurred the line between friendship and something more, prompting friends to ask whether we had broken up.
Then things became even stranger.
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