Healthy Emily 2010

In school today, we discussed a thing called Healthy People 2010, which was a ten-year plan of national preventive health care objectives. We are very close to the year 2010, but we're very far from achieving the reductions in HIV transmission, new diabetes patients, obesity rates, etc that were set as goals in 2000. The idea was to increase the community's overall health through education and preventive medicine.

In a weird way, I identify with this failure to meet goals. I had a set of goals, too. I wanted to be kicking ass at medical school and happily married. I wanted to be thinking about starting a family. I wanted to be saving for a home or retirement.

Those goals have pretty much all failed. I'm surviving in med school, but I'm nowhere near ass-kicking status. I'm definitely not happily married, although I am in a good relationship. I'm back to square one when it comes to families and homes and retirement.

It's really frustrating to think about how much of a setback in terms of my overall life goals that marriage was - why couldn't I have just dated him? Why did I think it was a good idea to marry? What was my big problem?

I don't have great answers for those questions, and while I mostly focus on the silver linings and stay positive and realize that I've learned a lot, blahblahblah, I am still sad at having all my goals squashed. I don't feel victimized or helpless - I know I screwed things up myself, and I take full credit - but I do feel sad that this is how things all turned out. Shitty circumstances + shitty decisions = damn, that was shitty.

Oh well. There are now Healthy People 2020 goals, and I have a new life that I am setting up, slowly but surely. Rebirth, right? Spring is good for that. Reorganizing. Pulling yourself together and getting your butt in gear.

So I stick my tongue out at my old life and old mistakes. It all frustrates me, but SO WHAT. I am moving on. SO THERE.