One Day More

I have a battered, wooden dresser next to my bed. It has four drawers and is covered with Post-Its and drawings detailing Kingdom Animalia, arranged in evolutionary order, along with a timeline of Life on Earth and details for gel electrophoresis. The top drawer holds all my athletic gear: tank tops, mesh shirts, shorts, the stray soccer sock. The second is home to three fat plastic binders crammed full of wide-ruled paper filled with large, childish handwriting detailing tales of lost knighthood and turbulent seas. The third drawer contains my comics collection that I hardly ever touch anymore. All the plastic-slick books with their colorful pictures are gifts. One Pearls Before Swine collection is covered with numerous bling-sporting, cigar-smoking Stephan Pastises. That one was from my brother.  The fourth drawer often gets stuck; it is slightly crooked on its runners. In it are a coffee thermos from my grandparents and a few battered wide-rule notebooks, also filled with crooked script. Most of the drawer, however, is filled with scraps of paper, some laminated, some in cheap plastic frames, some crumpled and shoved far, far away from the light. Along with the scraps of paper are a few pieces of recycled polished wood and lengths of itchy ribbons in all sorts of colors, from which hang more shiny pieces of metal.

I don't really like to open that bottom drawer. It requires far too much effort to jimmy it open, and even then, what is there to see? Fancy paper with big words on them? Frames commemorating achievements of years past? Medals worn for one brief, shining moment, then cast aside as inconsequential?

Surely, the shelves above my desk are covered in trophies; honor chords and medallions hang so thickly that I might be typing under the lost Hanging Gardens of Babylon. All I have up there, however, are soccer medals and trophies from years gone by, little post-it notes from my brother on a Christmas many years ago. I can't bring myself to take them down even though my achievements have by far outgrown recreational summer leagues and afternoons scoring own-goals.

In my drawer are a Mayoral Proclamation, unopened letters of acceptance, heavy plaques of commendation, framed tokens of membership. For some reason, I like to hide them away and pretend like they don't exist.

And yet, I gave up a medical internship at USC for a chance to go off and win some more awards. How does this make any sense? Whenever I hear mention of my friends in the program, my stomach starts to crawl because I think: That should be me. But it's not. If I had been forced to make this decision a few years ago, I would have chosen the internship over anything. The medical field. That was my dream. Now? I'm not so sure. What has changed?

I leave for State tomorrow, and am looking forward to it with equal parts excitement and dread. I need to get out of here for a bit, but am not particularly keen on word-sparring with other girls for an entire week. Maybe it won't turn out like that. I hope. Right now, I have just one song on my mind.