Catharsis.

Perhaps I should have gone to bed earlier last night. Perhaps I should have had something more substantial for breakfast. Perhaps I could have prepared myself better. I can't stand the thought that I could be so weak.

But yes, it happened.

I sit down in a chair, the back of which is promptly lowered until I am stretched out. The lamp above me is switched on and immediately blinds me but I can't help but keep my eyes open. The dentist wastes no time in forcing open my mouth and jabbing the relevant teeth with her silver tool. "Do you have panadol?" she asks, as later on in the day I will certainly need it to aid the pain. Without explanation, without ceremony at all, it begins. Her assistant calls over: "the short one or the long one?" "Long one," she replies. Passed over in front of my eyes is the longest needle I have ever seen, just as silver and sinister looking as the rest of the dentist's tools but infinitely more frightening because I know it's purpose. Suddenly I feel it, penetrating my gum and my hands act of their own accord, the nails of my right hand start to dig into the flesh of the left. "Can you feel your lip tingling?" "A little," I answer and I wonder whether the anaesthetic will really do it's job. At the very least, it is making me feel nauseous and I try to block out that distinct feeling that I associate with being on my knees in front of a toilet... At this point I realise it will help to close my eyes and try to block it all out but too late - I know what's coming and before I can compose myself the needle plunges in once more...

Suddenly I'm awaking and I remember snatches of a dream, but I'm dizzy and this is unfamiliar and cold hard reality hits me. Something isn't right. My clothes are soaked through with sweat, I can hardly breathe and begin to gasp and to add insult to injury, I start to sob. I'm turned over on my side and my mother's hand clasps over one of my own. I hear snatches of conversation, "ambulance" my mother says and even in this state I know she's overreacting as usual. But ambulance or not, I'm terrified. My hands are shaking, I feel limp, and half of my face has finally succumbed to the anaesthetic, the metallic taste of which is still on my tongue. A part of me wants to be rational about this, to pull myself together and not frighten those in the waiting room, but the child in me prevails and I cling to my mother and continue to cry because it feels better than not. "You passed out, love," mum tells me. Pass out? From fear? Me?

All I know is, this could make for a killer bible talk illustration.

Bittersweet.

I adored being in Wellington over the weekend. It is only very rarely that I have the opportunity to be surrounded by family. I cherish the experience. We are scattered and so it is only in the event of death or celebration that we see each other. Despite the fact that I only see the lot of them every few years, I love them so much. I really wish that we could have somehow spent more time together than this, that we could know everything about each other's lives and that we could talk and laugh with some familiarity. I wish they knew who I was, that they could understand the person I have become and the person that I so want to be.

Inevitably talk turns to the future. 'Ministry' I answer and the replies are hollow, polite but ultimately confused. I begin to explain to others my hopes almost apologetically because I know it is not what they are expecting. And for a moment I wish I could say: "well I'm in my third year of international studies and doing advanced french by now which is just as well because I'll be heading to the University of Paris in July for a year-long study abroad program and I'd like to do honours and when I'm done? Well, diplomacy, policy-making or something of the like, naturally..."

Which is honestly where I would be if my first MYC hadn't turned my world completely upside down and I knew that my priorities had to be changed. I'm not the first to make such a decision, in fact I know people all over the place who are making choices that the world thinks are mad. I just gave up a glorified BA, I shudder to think what my family might have thought if I'd given up a Med degree...

But I refuse to regret it. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose - Jim Eliott, of course.

But what hurts even more is that although we have the same blood running through our veins, I will never have the depth of relationship required to explain why I made this decision, why I will keep making these decisions, why this is more than just religious fanatacism, that I'm not the same child they once knew, but different and better and happier because I'm free. Because I'm saved. Why are the people closest to us the very hardest to reach?