I'm sleepy.
Today was another long day, but a good one. I had very nice patients and good surgeons. I tried my very first real praline cream. There was a sandwich that showed up when I needed it, for free, on the table in the break room. I got one oreo cookie too. That was pretty exciting. Just enough to bring back the memories from childhood.
I walked some, on my break, for a case had cancelled. A surgeon wasn't available. And there was an extra case I was able to do, in the gap.
I'd really like to go to bed right now. I have tomorrow off. But I have a million things to do. And the house! Dishes are in the sink from Tuesday...my life is crazy hectic.
Ross wants me to write to you.
There is something that happened on the way home, he said it is very important for me to write it.
I keep my promises.
Sometimes not right away, but I do fulfill them when I can.
Ross, I keep my promises to him always first.
So here we go.
I was driving home. It was dark. I didn't have dinner yet. Ross asked me about my dream home when I was like, eighteen.
I laughed.
I hadn't thought about it in years.
My first job was in Tomorrowland selling fast food. I started at Coke Terrace ( Tomorrowland Terrace), then the next summer I was at The Space Place (doesn't exist now). My second job was at National Car Rental just outside the park.
But my two weeks of training was in Newport Beach!
I used to take the car down the 73 all the way to the end--yup--there was no more past Jamboree--and I would take it or MacArthur all the way to the training place.
On the way home, sometimes I would cut over a hill, all the way to the ocean, and drive PCH all the way home to my parent's house, much to my delight!
And I dreamed!
I dreamed that one day I would be lucky enough to have a beautiful home in Newport Beach, with a beautiful family, and a beautiful life! I used to enjoy looking at the different houses by the road and fancy which one of them might one day be my own.
I had my whole life ahead of me!
Ross asked me, gently, 'Carla, what happened to your dream?'
I sighed.
It crashed into reality, and besides, no one has dreams like that any more. It takes lots of money I don't have! Property taxes and mortgage and all those things! I couldn't afford it!
That's when he asked me to write. He wants me to put it 'out there' how our attitude about our dreams changes, so much so that we feel that our early childhood dreams, which we wished for with our whole heart in all our innocence, are nothing more than a big fat empty joke!
I thought about it a little bit more.
To me, the dream home represented the stability, security and love I would have liked to have experienced growing up. We were very poor--North Long Beach on a teacher's salary--and my sister and mom yelled at each other a lot. I didn't like it. I loved my family very much. But I couldn't stand to live there.
I hated it so much I left home and never looked back at eighteen. I went to college.
Then toward the end of college, I married. Just to be FREE from that incredibly painful home where one person had way too much influence on the rest of the family.
I had thought that marriage would bring me the stability, security and love I lacked growing up in North Long Beach.
Well, that marriage went sour.
I entered medicine, hoping to find the stability, security, and love I lacked growing up in North Long Beach (I can always trade my services for food! I thought, when I signed up)
I remarried looking for the stability, security, and love I lacked growing up in North Long Beach--and also, hoping to 'make it right' after the pain of the first divorce.
This too ended badly.
That's why it seems more of a joke, my dreams of a house in Newport Beach. Because I TRIED for the stability, security, and love I lacked growing up in North Long Beach--by marrying Mark, by becoming a doctor, by marrying Frank...do you see?
Earlier, or perhaps around the same time, I'm not sure, Ross asked me what my happiest memories of my homelife were?
It was when I would drive home from work, and Anthony was waiting for me by the door, as a baby, and mom and dad were here with him. The warmth of that welcome was astounding! Every single time.
It warmed my heart. And I enjoyed the companionship of my parents, sometimes enough to even watch 'their show' with them, Dr. P-f-i-i-L (keep off the radar if his search engine looks for his references to his name).
I noticed how I looked for my happiest memories, I went to the past with my thought processes. Ross had challenged me why I didn't dream of happy things to come, with anticipation of the future?
Ultimately, I think it's because I spent my whole adult life, looking to fill the hole in my soul--from my LACK while growing up in North Long Beach, and never actually succeeding in it.
I failed.
I failed to find the home in Newport Beach, with the family, with the security, with the love.
It hurts to dream.
It hurts to dream about houses and families and security and comfort and love after all my 'crash and burns'.
My home is nice, but not like I had dreamed. And it needs some major TLC here. I'm working too hard to actually spend time in my house enough to feel like I have the stability, security and love.
There is no stability with an anesthesia job. Anything can change. There's no security.
But there is love.
Tonight Anthony asked me if I wanted anything from In and Out burgers. He was at the drive through with the sitter. I came home late.
That's thoughtful. And caring. And kind.
I like that.
Ross wants me to pick up where I left off on my childhood dreams. He wants me to recapture the spark, the exuberance, the exhilaration to think--'what if? what IF???'
It's worth a try.
I think he wants you to pick up where you left off on your dreams, too.
Ross
Carla go to bed! I love you. You have written well for me on this topic. Now sleep!
