i just got home from the hospital and it’s like 2am and i just… i don’t even know what i’m feeling right now. i finished a double shift and like obviously i’m exhausted but it’s not just that. i keep thinking about what my life could’ve been and it’s really fucking me up. i went into peds bc i thought i loved kids and like i do but today… today was just… a lot. we had this little girl, maybe five years old, come in with like, a really bad fever and seizures and her parents were just beside themselves. totally frantic. and i’m trying to be calm and professional and do all the things but like inside my head i’m just like, ‘oh my god, oh my god, oh my god’ the whole time. we stabilized her thank fuck but it was touch and go for a while there and i just felt this immense like, almost disassociation. like i was watching myself do the thing but i wasn’t actually *there*. and then when i finally got to leave, i was walking past the oncology floor and there was this like, smell of freshly baked bread coming from the cafeteria or something. not even from like, a real bakery, just the hospital cafeteria. and it just… it hit me like a fucking truck. i remembered culinary school. my husband, mark, he was my boyfriend back then, we were both in culinary. we had this whole plan, right? this whole like, vision board situation. we were gonna open a bakery. ‘the daily dough’ we called it. so fucking cheesy but we were so into it. we even had a logo designed. a little rolling pin with like, a wheat stalk wrapped around it. god. we spent hours in the kitchen, like, covered in flour, arguing about proofing times and the right ratio of butter to sugar for a croissant. we were so stupidly happy. like genuinely happy. we’d be exhausted but it was this good kind of exhaustion, you know? like you created something tangible and delicious. something that brought people joy. and then my parents, especially my mom, she started with the ‘what are you *doing* with your life?’ stuff. she’s a doctor, my dad’s a lawyer. so like, they’re very… established. and they just couldn't understand why i’d want to like, bake bread for a living. it wasn't a *career*. it wasn't *prestigious*. it wasn't like, helping humanity. and i remember this one fight with my mom, she said, “you’re so smart. you could be a surgeon. you could be making a real difference.” and i just… i started to internalize it. like maybe she was right. maybe i was wasting my potential. maybe i was taking the easy way out. mark tried to tell me it was bullshit. he kept saying, “babe, you’re good at this. you love this. don’t let them get into your head.” but she already was. so i switched. i applied to pre-med, did all the extra classes, worked my ass off. and here i am. dr. [my last name]. pediatrician. saving lives. making a difference. and i’m standing in my kitchen at 2am, staring at a half-eaten container of chinese takeout, and all i can think about is the smell of sourdough. mark’s asleep. he still bakes. not professionally, just for us. he made those little brioche buns for dinner last week. and he’s happy. he runs his own successful little software company now but he still gets in the kitchen every weekend. and he’ll sometimes look at me when i’m like, dead on my feet after a shift, and he’ll just kind of… sigh. not in an annoyed way. just… a really quiet sigh. like he knows. i just… i don’t know if i made the right choice. like, i love my patients. i do. and it’s incredibly rewarding when you help a sick kid get better. but there's this… pervasive sense of like, anhedonia sometimes. like i’m going through the motions. and i see other people, my friends who followed their creative paths, and they just seem so… fulfilled. not even necessarily rich or famous. just genuinely content with their choices. am i just experiencing like, classic post-shift burnout? or is this something more like, a chronic underlying dissatisfaction that i’ve been suppressing for years? a low-grade existential dread? i feel like i should be happy. i have a good husband, a great career, i’m in my fifties, like, i’ve accomplished things. but i just feel… empty. like a really hollow ache right behind my sternum. and i just keep seeing those fucking brioche buns.