But in spite, or maybe because, or maybe in parallel with all this, I think this is probably my worst term so far. I feel so overworked and constantly tired — these are pretty normal feelings, but usually I’m the tired-but-fulfilled kind of person.

Right now, I’m tired and resentful. One of my close friends moved 400 miles away for a job and I hardly had a chance to say good-bye. I’ve ignored other friends who are going through parents’ divorces, deaths, and nasty break-ups with first loves. I didn’t spend nearly enough time on my grad school applications and am taking the GRE exam a week late. After spending 5 days/week in the gym this summer, I’ve fallen out of shape and my blood pressure is through the roof. I dropped out of tennis only 1/4 of the way through the term. My fancy-ass camera is still on auto-focus because I haven’t learned to use it. I don’t know anything about any of my friends’ lives (except for my best friends) and my roommate sometimes thinks I’m mad at her because outside of sleep, I don’t spend more than an hour at a time in my bedroom. I haven’t had a kiss in nearly a year.

I, of course, feel like (and am) a brat for complaining about this. If this is the worst term I’ve finished, then my life is going very well, which is fairly true. It’s a bit too late at night to think about this though (5AM). Tomorrow is my last final exam. I’m anything but prepared for it. My plan thus far is to spend half the time doing a good-faith effort, meander home through the rain, do a couple of shots, get a massage, drink some more and wonder how I really feel about this year so far and how I feel about what’s still to come.

Each week, I put it off to deal with things like school, jobs, friends, and, towards the end of the quarter, a boy. I don’t have a lot of luck with boys, but I always put my best foot forward — I only need one success to make all the failures worth it.

And so I pursued, egged on by the occasional unprompted moment of attention. I was the more charming, accommodating, and sweet than I had energy to be. In this week, the last possible week I could finish my writing portfolio in order to make deadlines, I thought about him more. After every paragraph, sentence, word, keystroke, I responded to him.

As of this morning, the last day of break, I had only written five pages, half of what I wanted.

His last message to me was a thank you for doing a great favor for him earlier. I’m glad we’re such great friends, he wrote.

As of an hour ago, I was angry at everyone and everything I knew. Angry for having been so unrelentingly nice and sweet and sacrificing and with nothing to show for it. I was so angry, I ignored everyone and sunk into my laptop, clacking keys to drown out the world.

As of 10 minutes ago, I finished the essay I have spent a year thinking about and 10 weeks trying to write. The first draft is 12 pages, 7 more than the applications needed but not a word more than what needed. I normally name essays after a memorable quote from the essay itself, but I am struck instead by a Death Cab for Cutie song paused on my iTunes. I label the piece “Summer Skin,” save, close, and say goodnight.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to put a stop to it. I talked to one of my friends, one of my best friends here and whom I’ve known for years and cannot think of anyone I’m closer to. I asked and talk to him about things we have never talked about before.

“Can I ask you a question?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Are you lonely?”

“Yes.”

“Me too.”

We talked about pursuing our romantic interests made us vulnerable, let the world know that we are lonely, human, hurting. We talked about how if these interests didn’t work out, we would just be exposing ourselves like open wounds.

None of our romantic interests have worked out.

And yet our admitting of our loneliness has rebuild burned bridges and brought us closer together. It’s true that we are lonely and that friends cannot fill this loneliness. That friends alone will not be enough to fill this. But for now, we can be lonely together. And that, for now, is enough.

“We’re going to numb up this area so we can put staple in it,” a doctor told the patient in a very calming, “it’s just like the stuff they use at the dentist.

“Hah. Except at the dentist they don’t put it into your face,” someone answered. Another person chimed in, “Really? That’s what my dentist does!” The entire room laughed, including me.

It’s amazing what a sense of humor will get you through: any number and severity of infections, belligerency, and grotesqueness can be abated with a laugh. And it’s amazing what a sense of humor will not get you through: what little things, things that are products of your own imagination, that cut you deeper than you knew was possible.

A few nights back, I translated for an elderly Vietnamese woman. She wasn’t in any terrible danger. In fact, her diagnosis was quite mild and she was given proper treatment. The problem came when she asked us to call her a taxi — her daughter was out of town, her son had to work in a few hours and should sleep, and none of the buses were running. But hospital policy does not cover taxis.

The woman was gentle and sweet and somewhat frail and reminded me of my grandma, a woman who bought me books, sewed me costumes, and chased down ice cream trucks for me during my fat child years. I begged several people for advice, including the doctor, the woman’s nurse, and a clerk on how to help the patient get home, all of whom sent me to the other to get an answer.

Eventually, the patient said that she could pay for her own taxi, and unrolled a thin roll of bills from her pocket to show me. I only nodded and showed her to the waiting room, where the taxi would pick her up.

I like to think I have a strong sense of humor and can notice funny things about many terrible situations that would otherwise leave a more serious person disturbed. And yet there are these situations that I can’t defend against, that grab me on the face and make me see that I am not so removed or protected from any of this, that I can be touched.

2) I checked in on patients at 3AM and one of them couldn’t get over the fact that I volunteer during “graveyard.”

3) Anticipated everything my attending doctor was going to tell me about lumbar punctures, IE spinal taps, and thought about them before he told me.

4) Friended said attending doctor on Facebook.

5) A student administrator for the volunteer program said that I was a great writer. He continued to read my shift logs even after he moved on to a different position.

6) Got the intern to admit that my hair was at least the second best in the hospital. (And even I will admit that the girl who took first place has me beat.)

7) Finished my last shift in the ER in this volunteer program, but am wrangling a way to volunteer outside of the program. This means same work (possibly even more) but instead of unflattering muck green scrubs, I get to coordinate my own outfits again. I think sky blue looks good on me, no?

I’ve accomplished more general, habit goals, too. I cook more often (Ramen counts, right?) and go to the gym and read for fun regularly. I had a few dates and have generally chilled out. And, relatedly, I’ve become less uptight with my sexual encounters. This is not to say that I have an open door policy (does that metaphor even make sense here?) but I’ve been trying to move away from needing to trust the person with every fiber of my being and without expecting any sort of emotional obligation. In the business, we call this “no strings attached.”

I met the last “no strings attached” guy through some connection dealing with academics — he is an English teacher, I’m an English major. He lives in a ritzy adjacent city and invited me over. It was dark by the time I got there. Only a few lights were on in the house, but as he pulled me by the hand to the bedroom, I could see that he had great taste: hardwood floors, a majestic fireplace, a flatscreen TV sitting in front of a plush suede couch. I wasn’t sure if I was more in lust with him or his house.

We met a second time that week because his “housemate” was out of town for a short period only. It was lighter this time and I asked for a tour. He showed me the 2.5 baths (complete with cascading shower head and jaccuzzi tub), his fully-stocked wine pantry, the cozy guest room, and, finally, the only bedroom in the house. I figured his housemate lived in a different wing of the house he didn’t feel comfortable showing me.

“This is beautiful,” I told him. “Exactly the kind of place I want to get when I’m older.”

He smiled sheepishly. His partner had a much more successful career and paid for most of it, he told me.

I froze. Partner? And then it all hit me. The one bedroom in the house. The meeting only when his “housemate” was out of town. This wasn’t a housemate situation. This wasn’t even an open-relationship kind of situation. This was full-blown adultery, with me right in the middle.

He didn’t realized he had slipped up and I didn’t let him know he had. I couldn’t meet his eyes and couldn’t think about what I had come over for. I looked away from him, towards the downward-facing picture frame on the night stand, and wondered if I could or should be taking sex and love so lightly afterall.

Whether it’s to calm the patients about the random 20something staring at them or make me feel like a part of the process, I’m not sure. I usually assume my name and presence is inconsequential to patients. I’m supposed to be a fly on the wall, observing doctors, and when you’re in the emergency department, a bug is the last thing you’re going to notice.

But last night, on one of my last shifts with this particular doctor, my name stuck. A patient with a slew of medical problems, not least of which included paraplegia and anxiety, needed to be turned every few minutes and required contact and consolation even more frequently. Attention is gold in the ER and what he wanted is generally impossible. And yet he called for his nurses, his doctor, and somewhere in there he called my name. I’ve worked in the ER for about a year and a half now and have learned to steel against many things — belligerency, odors, stains — but I couldn’t ignore him calling for me directly. Every three minutes, nearly on the dot, he called me to turn him, to clean his space, to fetch him something to drink. My name gave him some connection to me, something I couldn’t ignore.

Other patients began using my name, too. To translate, to ask their nurses or doctors for more medication, to generally complain about their situations. And no matter what I was doing, I ran to them. I was like a Rumpelstiltskin in forest green scrubs.

And however unpleasant it was to dispose to patients’ urine-soaked tissues or beg their doctors for x-rays of their noses (no such procedure exists), I was glad to help them in something, to feel like I was serving some kind of purpose. At the same time my name gave patients the power, it gave me validation. I usually feel useless and powerless to help anyone that doing anything, even the most unglamorous of tasks, made the night one of my favorite. The patients used my name to remind me that they mattered, but in using it, they let me know that I did, too.

I already have ambivalent feelings about my writing: the process is what I live for, but my results don’t get published and most people who read what I write give me a circuitous compliment about the content rather than the writing. And though writing isn’t about recognition, my lack of stellar results kind of hints that I don’t have a strong chance in applying to masters programs.

This isn’t necessarily the end of the world, but it’s something that I’ve wanted for some time and throws my plans for the next few years through a loop.

I don’t have a spending addiction (I don’t! I’ll stop anytime I want. Next week.) but there are things that I am always on the lookout for (Hint: they rhyme with “m-shoes,” “m-bowties,” and “m-books.”) and these few things I “desperately” need:

A casual white blazer. (You could argue that I can only wear this in the summer, but I would counter that California is always sunny, suckah.)

A non-grandpa grey cardigan. I came home from Big University for summer break and noticed that my grandma had gotten into my closet and looted my favorite cashmere — I don’t know if this says that my grandma is stylish or that I’m an old lady.

Well-fitting blue jeans. I’ve always had trouble finding jeans that fit my skinny calves and large rear. Lately I’ve been working out (I know, right?) so I have to contend with growing quads, too. I used to wear skinny jeans but have started to move away from them, which is igniting a larger identity crisis than I would care to admit.