Experiencing Grief, Change, & Fresh Starts During My First Medical Board Exam - #USMLE #Step1

This last semester I took my very first board exam, USMLE Step 1.

As many medical students & physicians would tell you, this is an absolute beast of an exam and maybe our most difficult board exam as it focuses on deep medical science. We spend two years studying for this test, with the last semester leading up to it in an intensive, exhausting study mode. It's emotionally, physically, and mentally trying. We are talking 12 hour study days for months. During this time, studying is about the only thing you may have the bandwidth to do; all other aspects of life fall to the wayside. Not to mention the emotional turmoil of: "this exam may determine my future in medicine", "am I ready?", "am I scoring high enough on questions?", and "should I move my test back?". It's draining; it burns you out; it requires you to lean on your loved ones for serious support during this time.

I had to end my marriage at the start of my Step 1 semester.

I want to get a little bit vulnerable here because it is so important to normalize that this stuff happens, and it is not shameful. It's valid part of our journey through life. The amount of peers I know, including myself, who go through really tough stuff and think they are totally alone in the midst of med school is astounding. More people than you think go through hard sh*t in med school. More people than you think go through hard sh*t in life. Talking about it, being vulnerable, opens the door for others to not feel alone, and for ourselves to not feel alone. That is why I am opening up about this.

Here's my story, my perspective, & why this was such a difficult time for me:

The way my marriage ended was one of the most devastating things that has ever happened to me. It was shocking, it left me in pieces.

Long story short, I got totally blind-sided. My whole relationship with this person was centered around him moving to be with me. I never asked him too, it was his idea at the start of our dating relationship. We took all these steps for 3 years to facilitate his move, including getting married, combining families, and doing the exhausting, expensive immigration process. We were about two months out from the move date, when he told me out of the blue he wasn't sure he wanted to move, then stopped talking to me. I essentially got ghosted by the person I married.

The next time we spoke, he told me he had no intention of moving, and that everything was over. Just like that.

I was absolutely devastated. It felt like a death, having someone you thought you would spend forever with, drop out of your life like a stranger. It was confounded by the fact that logistically ending our marriage was a lot of work and literally painful because of the events that transpired. During this time I discovered a playlist he had created for another woman. She was one of his "friends". I found it on his apple music account that I shared with him, and it was flooded with love songs. All the songs he sent me at the beginning of our dating-ship to express his feelings, and all the songs he picked out for our wedding. It felt like he threw me away for someone else at the drop of a hat. It was physically painful discovering that.

Adult breakups suck, and are a logistical pain in the ***. Even though I got my heart broken, it still fell on me to file all the paper work for the annulment (we decided to go that route instead of a divorce). What was the worst though, was having no sense of closure, and no true explanation for these events on his end. It was like all the trust & love I had toward this person was set on fire and burned to ash.

Giving someone your trust & love is such a fragile, vulnerable act. It was truly devastating to have someone handle my feelings with such carelessness and coldness. From my perspective, he wasn't very kind toward me during this time. He treated me as if I've done something terrible, even though none of these events were my fault & I acted in good faith our whole relationship. I was the one who kept my word, I was the one who kept my promises. The way he treated me pretty quickly caused me to fall out of love with him, resent him, and have no positive feelings toward him in any way.

I've gone through a lot of therapy with a professional to address my feelings about this, and even more internal work on my emotions regarding what happened. I wasn't perfect. I definitely yelled at him over the phone, and called him some unkind things. I've made peace with that, given myself a little grace regarding the extreme hurt I was feeling at the time. I've also made peace with the fact I will never get a true explanation or answer as to why these things happened. Accepting that I didn't know this person as well as I thought I did, and that I am relieved I am no longer married to someone who would treat me like this. I've come to terms with everything at this point.

The one thing that still brings me sadness is the lack of closure regarding family members of his I really loved. Those people also fell out of my life as quick as you turn on and off a light. I think that is the biggest loss of that situation.

Now, picture all those deep feelings of hurt compounded by studying for perhaps the most stressful exam I'll ever take & trying very hard to keep it together so I could focus on that. It felt like a do-or-die kind of situation. White knuckles, emotionally & physically exhausted, have-to-do it against all odds kind of situation. But even still, I would try to study & wouldn't be able to prevent myself from crying for hours.

This was the point I leaned on my friends & family a lot. They are absolute gems I am extremely grateful for. They would bring me food so I wouldn't forget to eat, they would get me out of the house & spend time with me for a sense of companionship, and they would study with me to help me focus. At this point I also decided to get my puppy Ellie. I felt like I had lost a sense of family, and who better to return my sense of family than a puppy who cuddles & loves on me.

I also took a 3 week break from studying for STEP. This allowed me to fully experience my grieving phase & get it all out. I am someone who grieves deeply in the moment and when I'm done, I'm really done. Letting myself just grieve for nearly a month was so necessary for me to process what had happened, come to accept it, make a plan for moving forward, and be able to pull myself up by my bootstraps and study again.

For a while until I got on my feet, I didn't know if I could survive that semester with what occurred. By survive, I mean if I needed some time off from school, or if I needed to ask for an extension to take my exam (both of which would have thrown me off track from graduating medical school on time). There is nothing wrong with asking for those things if you need them, but I ended up not needing an extension & took my boards on time. That is something I'm very proud of myself for.

I decided to not ask my school for extra time because I had a little bit of a vendetta against my ex-spouse honestly. I felt very robbed. Robbed of my time, my trust, my love... even physical things like my literal money and my pinterest board of wedding ideas I had saved since I was in middle school. I deeply felt like he violated my humanity by robbing me of those emotions & acts of love I did for him. I felt very strongly that I didn't want him to take anything else from me. That if I couldn't test on time, and study as much as everyone else for my boards, then it would be just another thing he robbed from me.

So despite experiencing one of the biggest griefs I've yet to experience in my life, having to figure out how to get an annulment from someone who broke my heart & still advocate for myself legally for some sense of justice in what was truly a horribly unjust situtation, I still had to study for one of the biggest, most important board exams I'll ever take.

And I did.

That personal victory means a lot to me. Taking my board exam despite the world crashing at my feet, meant I won. I escaped a person who wasn't right for me. I didn't let anything else be robbed from me. I didn't let my future be robbed from me.

It taught me a lot about Grit.

I've been told before that I'm gritty, that I'm resilient. My life seems to be dense with these 'character defining moments'. Maybe I have personal pride about being gritty thereby forcing myself to show resilience, but this last semester was a very stark reminder of how hard that is. How lonely being resilient is. How exhausting, how draining, but also how empowering it is to walk through a dark forest alone and make it to sunrise.

"

when they buried me alive

i dug my way

out of the ground

with palm and fist

i howled so loud

the earth rose in fear and

the dirt began to levitate

my whole life has been an uprising

one burial after another

i will find my way out of you just fine - rupi kaur "

It is so renewing to have reclaimed my power and my sense of self from someone who nearly took it from me.

This is what freedom feels like.

I also studied for Step 1 during a season of great, wonderful change.

After some time had passed, I unintentionally fell in love with someone who really gets me. I mentioned him in my last post; he is an absolute gem in my life. Being with him feels like the eye of the storm: even if there is chaos around me, there is always peace with him. That is something I very much needed.

Starting a relationship, dedicating time and energy toward someone new is a big endeavor to take on while studying for a board exam. For me, it was completely wonderful and refreshing, but certainly was a change I needed to adapt to. A new person with new quirks & things to discover - who wants to study all day when this treasure is waiting to be uncovered?

We started our relationship right at the beginning of our dedicated study period - which is an extremely high stress, busy time. It helped that he is a medical student and also needed to study just as much as me. However, it also meant we didn't get as much time together right before our exams, which was a huge bummer. But that was temporary, and with him, I'm definitely in it for the long road.

An additional wonderful change was getting my beautiful puppy Ellie. Otherwise known as: Smelly Ellie & Ellie Belly. She gave me the companionship I needed in a very lonely season, but let's be honest, no one plans to get a new puppy while studying all day every day. It was quite the adjustment, but she really showed up as my little angel. She adapted to me & my routine, and was some of the best support during my anxiety heavy days leading up to the exam.

My point with this post is that we don't talk about life's curveballs enough. We don't talk about the bad things, the unglamorous things, the knock-the-wind out of you things.

We all experience the trenches in life, yet we believe ourselves to be the only ones; to be completely alone when it happens. We are not failures for experiencing life's entire range of emotions, dynamics, and rock-bottoms. We become more colorful, complicated, beautiful humans when we let these experiences teach us. Bring out our empathy. Help other people not feel so alone.

I think one of my biggest anxiety's in sharing my story - my wildly shocking, messy, embarrassing story - was the fear of judgement. But as I was thinking on it, I came to realize that most everyone has parts of their life that they are embarrassed of. That are messy, imperfect, and wrought with the fear of judgement. We set new precedents in society when we ourselves can be good examples. This experience has made me a much less judgmental person, because now I get it. I didn't get the perfect Disney movie ideal & that's okay. I have a much deeper understanding of other people's messy stories now. It's more important to me to share my mess, be apart of the conversation that accepts people for their scars and bruises, and makes the world an emotionally safer, less lonely place, than run away from a pretty significant part of my past. I didn't get the Disney movie, but I'm in the middle of an edgy version of a Hallmark one where I get to be fiesty, fiercely independent, grow from my mistakes, and fall in love with someone who values the trust & love I give them. Imperfect stories are so much more interesting anyway.

Kintsugi - a Japanese art form of which broken pottery is mended with gold. Helping us realize that we are more beautiful because of the breaking.

(Kintsugi is pictured as this post's cover art.)

If you take anything from this, I hope you know that going through tough stuff just puts you among great company. Great, interesting, understanding company.

If you're going through something during a stressful time - you can do it, I believe in you, and you're not alone.

Sincerely,

Natasha LaGrega