#62 Compartmentalization

My emotions have been like a roller coaster lately. One day I’m down, the next I’m not. Sometimes it changes in an hour or less. How can I write a blog that makes me cry one moment and then go see a patient the next? How can I be missing Eric fiercely one moment and then the next moment not be thinking about him at all? I don’t know, but I can.

I think I compartmentalize really well. For the most part I can leave my personal life at the door of the exam room and focus on the patient inside. Sometimes I break through, when a patient shares a story that touches me or frustrates me to the point of wanting to run screaming from the room, but most of the time I can do better than just hold it together. I’m definitely doing better than I was a few months ago when it was all I could do to walk to the exam room and even thinking about seeing a patient totally exhausted me.

I have always had the ability to compartmentalize, but I’ve never had to hold something this big at bay. Some days I think it’s amazing I can do it at all.

If I didn’t, I’d go totally crazy, but knowing that I do can seem wrong. How can I not be thinking about my brother? I don’t want him to fade away and become part of the past. I’m scared that if I compartmentalize too much, I’ll lose him more than I already have.

It’s moments like this, thinking about this, when it all seems fresh again. And yet not, somehow. Time heals. But what if I don’t want to be healed? I don’t want to move on and only create memories without him. I don’t. But I have to. And so I compartmentalize. Because I can’t break down when I’m treating a patient. And I can’t break down when I’m picking my sons up from school. And I can’t break down when I’m driving or out with friends or at the pool.

So I do it in small increments. I let it out here, to you. I think about him as I fall asleep and when I wake up. I think about him when I’m drinking my coffee on my back porch. In the quiet moments. When I can.