So that's it, today my school received the result of my USMLE Step 1 and so I went to the Office of Student Affairs to find out what I got. Yes, despite my fears, I did well, and still, I can't help but wonder if I haven't paid too high a price. I won't discount the fact that it will help me enormously with regards to advancing my career, but, to put it in perspective, it's not going to make me happy. It doesn't mean that I'll ever get what I want out of life. When you come right down to it, it's just a number, nothing less, nothing more.

And so I try to think back to one of the most wretched times in my life, those 20 days, with my soul crushed into a little ball, my heart carved up into little quivering pieces, all of my existence hinging on that fateful day when I would sit for the test. Everything else that I might have set my hopes on had evaporated, had been torn out from under me. Any memory or dream that might have allowed me to pass through the ordeal intact had been shredded, ripped out of me, cut up, burned out. But I passed through it anyway, feeling as I did that important pieces of me were falling out, irrevocably lost. I am sure that I have been changed for the worse, and yet anything that might of saved me lay out of my hands.

So was it worth it? The blood price, the soul price? I'm not sure it was, but it's all I've got right now. Visions of salvation fade from my sight, and I fear that the next few years of my life will change me more in the same way, until I've got nothing left but cold hard metal inside.

How melodramatic. But whatever. Fate goes where it will.