"Doctor"

From the moment she breathes she wants to be

doctor.

Mostly because it's doctor.

partially because when you say
---------------i want to be a doctor----------------
people suddenly look at you like friend
as if when some illness befalls them you'll remember the look friend and say
---------------ah yes. right this way my friend. i can help you-----------

95% of her college essays are about doctor

(later this feels like false advertising)

--------------She's going to be a doctor-------------
people answer before she gets a chance
she nods from behind a stack of books she carried back from the library
(uphill)

books like this are a hobby though the high school librarian knows her name
(she's stayed in at break twice to talk to the english teacher about books)
(she won't have time to read when she's a doctor)

In college she takes chemistry and calculus and psychology.

It's awful.

It's the worst.

Is doctor worth four years of things she hates

Out of dispair and curiosity she takes literature. writing. 

It's wonderful.

It's the best.

Professors write
---------------you have a large and intricate imagination suited to creating vast universes---------------
---------------your analysis is original and compelling; i'd never thought of it that way---------------

When she makes Dean's List she cries. She cries because she loves it.

she cries because doctor is something other people answer and she nodsin agreement with
she cries because doctor is secure; is money, is career, is security -- is something she no longer wants
she cries because she'd forgo security, money, career, the look of friend, to do what what she loves

That's the moment she becomes I. 

I fight the hollow glassy gaze that follows my saying I study literature and writing.

I fight the stigma of my genre.

I fight the moments of insecurity when she surfaces and wonders about doctor.

I am an I, never a she.