then and now

It has been a year since the break-up. I started this blog last spring to help ward off stress in the way that always helps me — getting my thoughts out there and talking or typing someone’s ears and eyes off. When I get things off my chest, I feel like I can temporarily really rest and calm down. I started the blog at the time I was studying for my first MD boards exam and little did I know that the world had other plans for causing me more doom.

I want to celebrate what I have done for myself in these 12 months. I started my clinical year off with Ob-Gyn, and if you can remember from those late night blogs in may and june, I was working while aching. My love for the speciality was enough to keep my head up and distract myself from the pain I was in. Some nights, I was so tired and sad when I got home from shifts I just went straight to bed when I got home at 7 pm. I ate, I cried a lot, but I also showed the doctors and the team how committed I am no matter what. If it’s one thing the toxic side of medicine has taught me, it’s that the show must go on. One time in PA school when we had weekly back to back exams, when we were going through it my friends and I would say “cry about it today but tomorrow go back to studying.”

After Ob/Gyn, I continued on to my other rotations and on a break went to Portugal, as you may also know from that blog. After that trip is when I became a pescatarian and I have not looked back since. Yes I still have low blood pressure issues and still feel faint every month but, vitamins and electrolytes and plant-based protein are doing me good.

I let myself love a new speciality, and I really leaned in. I am so incredibly content with switching to General Surgery and it gives me chills when I think about how much I had to change my brain to let myself explore something I did not think would be in the cards this way. I showed myself when you start to take the steps to self-love, your world comes together. Things make sense.

I’ve been being softer on myself over this healing process. Thanks to therapy, I am loving myself. There is a version of me in 2018 who did not love herself and for many reasons did not let herself believe all the good she deserved, so I do this for her, for who I am now, and for who I want to be. I let myself sleep more when I need more of it, take very long walks or skip them depending on my mood, obey my skincare routine 99.9% of the time, read books or watch TV when I need a study break, push myself to work out classes and give my body strength, text my friends when I need them, meditate with my hands on my stomach as I close my eyes and breathe, and remind myself of how capable I am. I’ve been letting myself lean on my friends when I need them and not feel bad about it, I feel like when I do my makeup I am doing it for me and I take my time to let myself check in with me and see how I can feel my best. I download the dating apps and I also delete the apps. I take a lot of time for myself on weekends— my ideal friday night is a face mask, a glass of wine, movie, and bed before 9.

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5/16/2026

I finished my last rotation exam of third year. I am officially done with what I think was the hardest year of my life (it rivals 2021). Waking up this morning with no alarm ringing, letting myself go at my own pace, and thinking about how I want to spend this weekend before I begin studying for Step 2. So far, it has been spent spring cleaning and parsing out clothes to donate. Exactly a year ago I was in utter disbelief and gearing up for months of rumination, sadness, and depression. I remember taking a book to read in Park Slope while I had a spritz and waited for Lex to come meet me.

Just before she arrived my dad facetimed me. There is one thing I am sometimes too smug to give him credit for, and it is how well he senses when something is up with me. I hadn’t told him yet, I was not ready to, and while I am drinking my drink he asks me how he is — I say fine quickly and move on.

—This facetime was extremely reminiscent to a time in 2018 when I called him in tears at a restaurant in Dubrovnik seeking his solace while I was going through volatile breakup from a volatile relationship. I sat at a beautiful restaurant alone eating mussels and drinking a class of rose, crying through my bites causing a nearby family to stare. My dad could see and hear my pain and let me sit in it while he knew that it was eventually one day going to get better. Even another rewind, after a one-or-two-off dating experience in 2021 (that my dad surely knew nothing about) where I discovered lovebombing, he called me on the day things ended hard and fast, and randomly told me how special I was and how much I have to offer someone by just being myself, and in-so-many-persian-dad-words he told me not to believe everything a man says. —

Lex and I went on day drinking and it ended with her and JT reminding me of who the f I am and how it easy it is to love me and show up for me. Over this past year, I pushed myself and showed myself I can do hard things. I can change my career speciality, I can be there for my family in times of tragedy, I can still give back to myself when I don’t have the energy to, I can unlearn the parts of myself I hate. I learned that if I am dwelling on things I cannot control, then I am not loving myself enough. I learned that Friday nights should be spent alone at home. In exposing and relearning myself, I have more grace for him. I became gentler on myself and watched my world align in front of me in new directions when it felt like everything had shattered.

My first break up piece was called puzzle pieces, and I write this in happy tears now, telling you I have since made my own work of art, that I have crafted better pieces that mesh even more deeply together.

I can do hard things.