I did not realize the emotional pain I would feel over this breakup. Rationally I know that I had to do it, for my sanity, for my survival. But the irrational part of me is so powerful, it overwhelms my feeble rightness. I love and want this man, and yet my mind knows that I could not bear it. I loved and wanted another man, and he could not bear it.

Now I grieve. I feel I am grieving not just for this ending but for all endings. I grieve for my parents' hard lives, and my sister's retreat from reality. I grieve for the pain of all who have peopled my life. I grieve for my patients, living and deceased. I grieve for the disasters of our time, for the unconsciousness and cruelty. I grieve for my body and mind. My deepest being burns just as brightly though the pain engulfs all else. I have never felt this way before. My deepest well is uncorked. I can't help but to think that if I emerge from the other side of this whole, I will be more whole than I have ever been in all my life.

I went to the BiMart to pick up a few household items after my preceptor had been called away on a birth. In the store I was searching for a composition notebook for my paper journal when a very old woman came up to me and said she couldn't see but she was looking for letter writing paper. I pointed her to the right paper and she thanked me and went to get it, then turned back and approached me again. She said that her husband had always had a cough, and that he'd just been diagnosed with lung and colon cancer. He was going in for some appointment. I didn't know what to say. There was nothing I could say. I opened my arms and she stepped in, and I hugged her, held her close. We both broke into tears. She thanked me again. I mourn for her.

I find myself extremely intolerant of advice at this time. Well meaning friends keep wanting to help me understand where I went wrong. It is obvious where I went wrong. I was born. Don't try to teach me any lessons right now. This suffering must be completed. Platitudes are useless.