I’m blinking back tears...

  ...I’m biting my lip.   I have to focus on my breathing.  Deep, slow breaths – in, out, in, out - anything so that I won’t cry in the middle of my class.  I try to focus on what my professor is teaching, the topic usually provides so much inspiration for my always-active critical imagination seems colourless and distant.  “You’re okay,” I tell myself.  “You’re smart and motivated and sociable-“; this self-talk isn’t helping.  I’m dreading the night I have before me.   I know I’m not going to be able to focus on anything.  The mound of schoolwork now seems almost futile, and I feel utterly betrayed by my education.  I feel useless and absolutely paralyzed.  I realize that the last time that I felt this way was when my best friend died in a car accident after my first year of university. 

All of this was sparked by a colleague’s disclosure that she had been invited for an interview at a dietetic internship program to which I had also applied; of course, I had not received this same invitation.  It was at this moment that I realised that I would not be getting any interviews.  My friends, parents, and boyfriend all persisted to tell me for days that I may still hear from a program, but that feeling in my gut knew better.

I got home that night, put on my pyjamas, and laid on my bed with the lights off.  This was how my confused boyfriend found me, several hours later, with a mascara-tear-streaked face and a Kleenex box’s worth of used tissues in a pile beside me.  I resented his encouraging words.  Why couldn’t he realise that there was no other option for me?  How could he not see that the pain incurred by this rejection was unbearable in a way that all of the encouraging words in the world would never be able to relieve?  I told him he wasn’t helping and with a hurt look, he retreated.  It’s not his fault that he can’t fully grasp the colossal importance that obtaining an internship has in my life’s path and I can’t expect that he would comprehend how humiliated and judged I feel by my rejection .  I begrudge the system that initiated this rift between me and my very best friend in the world.

                Two days later, I’m working a Friday night shift.  I was so excited to come into work tonight; this is a place so far removed from school, from internship applications, from my ‘real life’.  Instead, I find myself barely going through the motions.  I forget to punch in someone’s order.  I get into a pointless squabble with a line cook about where the key for dry storage is located.  I am completely oblivious to the fact that a family of four has been seated in my section for the past fifteen minutes and have almost given up hope that they might eat dinner tonight.  This is fairly representative of how I’ve gone about my days: unfocused, uninterested, and, unfortunately, ill-tempered.

And then there are my colleagues – more than colleagues, they are my friends.  They are all passionate, incredibly intelligent, beautiful women with the same dream as me: help people, change the world, become a dietitian.  I am thrilled every time they tell me that they have received interviews and I encourage them to tell me about how they’re preparing and how the interview went.  It makes me sad that some of them can’t feel total happiness about their success because they know how hurt I am about my failure.  I’m just embarrassed to be the person who wasn’t successful; I’m embarrassed to be a barrier to their excitement.  I’m ashamed about this gulf and am desperately trying to ignore its presence.

So here I am, still blinking back tears, still biting my lip, still focusing on breathing slow, deep breaths in and out.  My positive days are starting to outnumber my negative days and I’m getting back to my life.  But – I know that I will have to go through this all over again: second round, next year, for as long as it takes.  I will get an internship – I will succeed - I will not go through this pain for nothing.