—

Now, here at my final residency ceremony, I shifted in my seat and glanced at my mother as she proudly anticipated my name being called. I concentrated on the rhythmic tapping of my heel. Just a few minutes more in this auditorium and I could start the business of moving on. I was careful not to kick the stranger beside me, to make the tapping fine and swift so it wouldn’t bother anyone but could still distract me. I looked down at my ring finger—I could still see the light tan mark where my wedding band had been, the skin around it darkened by the sun. I quickly rubbed my index finger over the area. I rubbed it to take away the pain, and I kept rubbing, hard, as a single errant tear seared my right cheek. The strategy wasn’t working.

Every graduation had sucked in its own way. High school graduation had sucked the least. The ceremony itself was revelrous. My whole family attended—no great feat, given that my family is small. Grandma showed up in one of her lacy church hats, which was nicely complemented by her deep berry lipstick. Grandpa, taciturn and smiling, was there in a smart suit, his camera, as always, by his side. He was the family photographer and the consummate observer. Grandma was the matriarch and the voice for them both. My mother’s favorite sister, Eileen, was there, and my parents, my brother, and my sister, cheering with the rest of those gathered at the commencement for the National Cathedral School. The feeling of being surrounded by my fellow classmates, sixty-six other young women, many of whom would undoubtedly alter the course of history in critical ways, gave me unparalleled pride.

So, high school graduation itself wasn’t bad. Leaving my family home for college was the bittersweet bit: The place was all I had known as a little girl, and yet nearly everything about it had been wrong. As I packed, listening to Deee-lite on my CD player, I took with me my inner child. The girl I was, who had never been permitted to come out to explore and be fanciful and weightless. Tucked into a small box, I carried her on the long drive to Cambridge, Massachusetts, because outside of the Orchid Street walls she might finally find a playground.

I won’t go into detail about my college experience. Much has been written about centers of elitism and privilege like Harvard University. Some of it is true. It is true that at one of the first social events at Harvard I attended, a white male classmate told me that I couldn’t possibly be black because I didn’t speak like the two black people he knew from his neighborhood—and since he was, clearly, the arbiter of “blackness” he felt he had the right to say that to me. What I didn’t know at the time was that this would be a fitting introduction to the four years of micro- (well, really, macro-) aggressions to follow. It is true that when a student sexual violence prevention group I was a part of approached one of the deans with a multipoint plan, her response to our inquiry to centralize resources for rape victims was “Harvard doesn’t hold your hand.” She meant it. In less than the time it took for her to close her door, the discussion was over. It is true that when I heard of the scandal of wealthy people literally purchasing their children’s admissions into these universities, I wasn’t surprised—this rampant inequity was well-known to all of us who were there; the only thing bizarre about the story was that the public behaved as if they weren’t aware. While these ivory towers have traditionally served to elevate those who already have unearned privilege, they may hinder those who do not, by virtue of immutable attributes such as color, family class, sexual orientation, gender, and physical ability. The increased scrutiny on these institutions to live up to the standards of conduct that they profess to exemplify is warranted.

As for the graduation ceremony itself, suffice it to say that various people gave speeches and I skipped the majority of the events.

It was my graduation from medical school that was a complete derealization. It wasn’t just that my grandparents were no longer able to travel—my grandmother had developed advanced Alzheimer’s, and my grandfather had stayed at home to care for the woman who had always anchored his world—but that Morris, my biological father, attended. He had been at all the graduations that came before, and it had been awkward each and every time. Up to that point, he had helped pay for my education, so I had felt obligated to extend the invitation. (I didn’t yet know that I had the power to choose.) By the time I entered medical school, my parents had been divorced several years, which had made my conversations with my father sporadic and forced. I watched Morris shake hands with my instructors and tuned out his recounting of the nurturing fathering that he didn’t do. As we posed for family photos, a tension in me snapped: Each camera flash documented that the charade my family had always been was now publicly foisted onto this next stage of my life, where it was neither welcome nor tolerable.

Soon after I finished medical school, Dan and I got married. I had promised my mother I wouldn’t get married until after I’d earned my medical degree. As she had told me many times, she wanted me to own my degree all by myself. I had decided not to invite Morris to the marriage celebration; in fact, he didn’t even know about it. Not long after, he let me know that he no longer wanted to be a part of my life. This was during one of the many phone conversations he coerced from me, asserting some type of genetic imperative to maintain a connection to one’s family. When that failed, he’d try to control me with threats to withdraw financial support. When that failed—I decided that accepting his money came at far too high a cost—the coercion stopped. As far as I was concerned, the title of “father” had to be earned, and I began to define “family” for myself, concluding that inclusion in this group could be forfeited.

I cut these cords to support myself. I knew by then that it was only from that space that I could make my own assessments. It was only then that I could finally confront him about his abusive behavior. I told him that he had been a terrorist in our family, that he had so profoundly ruined some of its members’ lives that they struggled with substance abuse, that my mother still flinched at loud noises. I told him that if he ever wanted to communicate with me again, he would first have to acknowledge the truth of who he was.

Instead of admitting that any of what I’d said had even occurred, he vanished. He made his choice.

It is better to be left with a ghost than a ghoul, so his disappearance from my life was an acceptable outcome.

* * *

—

There was no graduation from my internship, just an escape. My four-year emergency medicine program required that I complete my intern year (postgraduate year one of residency) in another field before returning to complete years two through four in the ER. The thinking in the profession at the time was that it was too tough to start off in the ER fresh out of medical school, that it was better to get a year of training under your belt in another medical discipline first. Figuring it would give me a well-rounded foundation for my practice in emergency medicine, I elected to spend my intern year in internal medicine. I almost didn’t care where I completed that first year—for me, it was simply a 365-day means to an end. Still, I decided to diminish the pain by choosing a program with the relatively higher pay and other creature comforts a wealthy hospital affords. I therefore dutifully completed that year in a prosperous area of Long Island, at a hospital where, upon entering each day, I was greeted with a classical selection from the pianist seated at the grand piano in the lobby or from a serenading harpist.

(I had not anticipated that even this would not quell my longing every single day for my next medical home, in the Bronx.)