It’s raining today, a very grey world. And damp. Even though it’s bleak, shy patches of colour peek out. Purple flowers in my front yard. Pink and yellow flowers in the yard around the corner that I picked by L’s request yesterday. She’s been pressing them for two days under all four phone books in the house in preparation for a Fancy Manicure. Against my will, I will also be getting a Fancy Manicure.

There’s so much anxiety in the air, I can hardly make words. It’s like reaching the bottom of the slide at Margaritaville where you’re going so fast you can’t even take the deep breath you need for the plunge into salt water.

Breathe.

I don’t know what to tell you. My thoughts are scattered and dwindling, like the days until MBBS, like potholes on Kingston roads, like Riverton smoke some weeks ago.

There is news: local news, national news, international news. Heads of State visiting, vendor shacks being demolished, students massacred in Kenya. And there is life. Trips to Sovereign, fancy dress parties, clerkship exams and MBBS. I’m always struggling with how to reconcile external events with my internal life. How to hold on to emotional impact and evoke social and political feeling while still trying to find the perfect shoes. I digress, but I really wish I could find the perfect shoes.

It seems life is all about balancing nuances. I love nuances, but I’m terrible at eliciting them or acknowledging them or even realizing them most of the time. And even though the world is a million shades of grey today, and I like that, I spend most of my time imagining things as black or white, this or that, me or you.

Maybe because my life has boiled down to right and wrong answers. Even the calendar has been corrupted. For me May means sink or swim, June means pass or fail and July? July means life or death. Mine, and the patients’.