Bubbles

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/timeshift/raj.shtml
I say, "let them eat cake." We're seeing a repeat of this wall of prejudice today. It's bad enough for 'native' Britons to emigrate to Australia to take up 'cushy' GP posts in the outback. I feel cheated by the slimy mongrel government that dares to call itself the saviours of the NHS. Let the whole rotten system collapse (like the Tube). They probably won't learn their lesson, but a nasty wake-up call to the masters of the universe is long overdue.
Unfortunately, I may depend on them for a job.

Which brings me to the medical bubble. The horrid, reflecting spherical prison that is the world of academic medicine. It's weightless and weird. A world unto itself. A protected place...and yet a trap for everything within it, longing to touch the outside yet afraid to do so, knowing that if those within step outside their boundaries their world and everything they know will burst around them and they will enter a far, far uglier world than anything the bubble held. You see, the medical bubble, for all its unfairness, idealism, caring, bigotry, poverty, wealth, rabid competition, generosity, self-serving stabbing-in-the-back, kindness, slimy sucking-up, pressure, overwork, failure and achievement - is simply a reflection - of the world outside. Leave it and you're no better off because it's just a closed-off continuum of the agony of everything you can experience - just with a different set of rules - in some ways, no better - and no worse...
So I'm scared. Terrified and horrified. Petrified and mortified. My bubble is not bursting - it's imploding.

Splintered

It's been 4 years. 4 years and I'm still the loser I was when I began. No progress there.
I have found a convenient dichotomy - the basis for my current 'framework for living.' It scares me. No, not 'multiple personalities' but just the way that a deliberately self-deluded person finds it necessarily to continue deluding himself in order to keep going. Here goes:
1) Happy me - the eternal optimist, appreciates things 'for what they are' (whatever that means).
2) Sad me - can't let go, clings to the past, constantly preparing for the worst, siege mentality, loner, trusts nobody
3) Kind me - would give selflessly in the name of charity, sees all people as worthy of being loved no matter what
4) Cruel me - sheer survival instincts applied even to daily living in blips of paranoia, vengeful and suspicious

The way in which it's possible to skip between the different extremes (usually in response to external stimuli) can be terrifying. You split yourself so much that you lose sight of what "the real you" actually is, so when people want to get to know "the real you" they see only a facetious lump whose attempts to modulate his accent are a symptom merely reflective of the deeper schisms within. Jekyll and Hyde, but not as grand. I don't even try to 'suppress' things; I merely attempt to behave as dispassionately as possible. I am becoming a drone, an automaton as far as emotions go. It's true to some extent - you can numb yourself to the outside world as a defense mechanism - and compared to many other people, I haven't even been as exposed to horrors that would make such a response more legitimate. In that case, it'll be interesting when the puddles of inconvenience become pools of adversity...