Kavya had just completed the certification courses. The next step was to embrace the identity she had worked hard to create for a decade under her own label, and her clinic was soon to open. Friends and family are eagerly awaiting the invitation and waiting to have a family doctor to consult with. But the invitations were not sent out. “When are you inviting us to your clinic?” was the first question in every encounter she had. At first, she excused herself for a delay and started avoiding alleys to avoid answering why the long-awaited future collapsed. Well, it wasn’t the future that collapsed; she did.
In India, women make up a large proportion of medical college admissions. The headlines say that girls are one step ahead of boys – the female breakthrough. No one keeps track of what happens after graduation. According to WHO data, women make up almost 57% of NEET qualifiers – but only 14% of practicing doctors in India. 20% of medically trained women aged 30 to 40 are not employed.
Dreams with terms and conditions applicable
After the years of preparation, the stressful attempts to get started, the tough competition and the financial negotiations with the family that supports her, until everything goes wrong. As you complete your internship and specialization, your plans slowly begin to realize that your skills in most clinical areas are only as good as your financial investment – and that depends entirely on a consistent family structure.
After the years of preparation, the stressful attempts to get started, the tough competition and the financial negotiations with the family that supports her, until everything goes wrong. As you complete your internship and specialization, the realization slowly grows in your plans that your skills in most clinical areas are only as good as your financial investment
For many women, this structure has a silent expiration date or is marked with an asterisk in the applicable terms and conditions. These become visible only when the largest part of the investment has to be made, and not when you have chosen the most suitable profession for a girl, which was the most convincing for everyone. The support that supports you during your studies begins to change if the idea of the clinic is not immediately put into action. When the investment required is greater than expected, when the time elapses between the actual milestone and the question of marriage arises. When you sense a subtle rejection of marriage, you are reminded of the pre-set checklist for a settled life, especially for girls, that needs to be ticked off once a marriage is finalized.
Was her graduation something she was only allowed to do to close the time gap until she reached the allotted time frame? Well, that wasn’t discussed when choosing a career as a doctor. What has changed? Or should it just be a matter of making their biodata look good enough to be suitable for a “good family man”?
The support is slowly losing itself in impatience. For some women, there is often a clear distribution of expenses that will fund their dreams before and after marriage. When this burden seems to shift entirely onto one family, the frowning begins. Now the calculations come into the conversation: how much has been spent, how many years have passed, how difficult this daughter has become compared to the easier future that was always open to her.
FII
They are so disappointed every time they fail when they try to fit my identity into the closed box of what constitutes a settled life. The further the support moves.
Was she given an education to give up years of hard work and earn a title that looks good as social status? Did it have nothing to do with having your own identity, your own life? Were these wings intended for flying or were they intended for social display? What can happen to her career if she stands up for her own family or the family she owns? One thing is overlooked even by herself. No one talks about what her body has been through.
What her body is showing is hormonal imbalances, recurring urinary tract infections, weakened immune responses, and fatigue that doesn’t go away with rest. Premature onset of hereditary diseases. Fear that doesn’t have a single trigger because there are too many. A feeling of impending doom, nervous breakdowns. Dismissed very casually by portraying women as moody, confused, too sensitive, low-key or too dramatic.
It’s not just women who react a certain way because of their dysfunctional physiology; It is also the case, as scientific researchers have documented – that chronic stress manifests itself differently and much more diffusely in women. These symptoms are not noticeable. They accumulate over time. And then we look for solutions through several specialist consultations and highly medication-based treatments. She teaches them about their habits, their diet and their lifestyle. In the end, even she takes the blame.
But have you ever thought about how to treat a non-physical cause with physical treatment? You don’t do that. You can do it. They push through because it seems easier. Your body doesn’t shut you down immediately; It signals you one thing at a time, either until you pay attention or until it can’t take any more. And the career that should feel like an establishment feels like a mountain. They are not the face of bad decisions. You’re just too burned out to feel enlightened right now.
Destruction of mental health and exceeding physical capabilities
I don’t come from a few research studies, a philosophy to protect women, or any medical literature. My personal experiences give me courage. When I was just a few months into my journey, I woke up one day with a headache and then out of nowhere with a severely stiff neck and how that became a part of everything I had to deal with in a day, along with the work pressures, the pressures from my colleagues and my family. How I continued to gain weight without significantly changing my lifestyle and habits. Weight gain coupled with PCOS symptoms. How one thing always led to another. And how I lost hope with medication because it only treated symptoms. How my functionality was affected in the clinic when I started to feel disorganized in my head, things kept falling out of my hand, even small procedures draining my energy, worrying about having to do the next procedure the next day in the clinic. I wasn’t tired of work; It was the entire architecture of how I had lived all these years that had collapsed before me. The circles I continued in my life expecting them to spiral upward – they didn’t.
Taking your time and stopping when necessary is not a mistake. I want to say this clearly because every instinct we are given tells us that it is so. “How can you leave this job – you’ve invested so much?” Exactly, I have invested enough. And I knew it couldn’t serve me, I couldn’t do it anymore.
And only when my body’s need to look deeper for the cause exceeded the temporary symptomatic solutions did I give it. I could finally see the costs I had incurred on the path to becoming what I was meant to become. Here I am now, not living up to who I need to be.
Before any other definition of a settled life, I settle into a core identity of who I am and the rest will be guided by that. When your body calls it, you better listen. The physical signs of my body were not the problem affecting my mental health. They were the first expression of my destructive mental health, which exceeded my physical ability to hold on to more of it.
These challenges are real, every other woman faces them in some form at some point in their life. The age worry that comes unbidden when you’re in your late twenties and still building up instead of settling down. You cannot fully control the financial worries that make your professional future dependent on family decisions. The change in perspective from people who were proud of you at twenty-two and quietly annoyed with you at thirty feels like a betrayal. A professional career is often viewed as a phase rather than a life. To do something before the real thing begins.
Life shouldn’t always feel like an either/or for them. Because the option of choosing to be healthy is often out of place. Taking your time and stopping when necessary is not a mistake. I want to say this clearly because every instinct we are given tells us that it is so. “How can you leave this job – you’ve invested so much?” Exactly, I have invested enough. And I knew it couldn’t serve me, I couldn’t do it anymore.
Choosing yourself is the most rational decision you can make, in a series of decisions made around you, about you, and for you, with your commitment to love, care, and fear of disappointing someone you love most.
Perspectives will constantly change, but your body will not wait for them to adapt to your needs. Your health defines your being and you can always develop a new identity, not one but several. What matters is how you identify your “self”! I’m done. I have paid the cost of all the important elements of mine. I’m tired of trying to accommodate everything I don’t feel like I belong to.
And when you read it, you feel like your own story is being told through Kavya’s words.
If you are in a physical mess for which there is no relevant explanation, if you are in a career waiting to feel like a comer but feel like a perseverant, I am not writing this to tell you what to do.
I’m writing this to tell you that no one will name this burnout for you, not your family, not your doctor. But you. And if you are frustrated with the physical irritation in your body. Don’t feel cursed.
Your body won’t let you down. He was the only one who was honest with you in the entire process. So don’t overlook it, be a gentle listener. Even if everything else is still unclear. Especially then.
