Chapter 153

After the honeymoon, our marriage certificate arrived almost unnoticed. My wife and I were so busy easing back into work that mail barely registered. But eventually, I did notice it—mostly because the number stamped on it felt like it meant something.

412 was my mark on the American Board Exams. Proof that I could climb out of failure, even when it felt impossible.
4/13 was the date my mom lost it all. Proof of collapse—of everything I thought was stable crumbling in a day.
And 4/14…that was the date on our official marriage certificate.

We hadn’t planned it this way. We didn’t choose those numbers. But when I saw them lined up, I couldn’t help but think: maybe this was the universe nudging me forward. I don’t know if I believed it, but I wanted to. Wouldn’t that be the neatest bit of symbolism?

As we unpacked from the trip, those numbers lingered in the back of my mind. My wife had brought back bags of snacks from Don Quixote, Japan’s endless superstore. I had only a few pens and notebooks. Souvenirs feel meaningless to me now—3D printing makes most trinkets redundant.

Still, I liked the pens in Japan and bought a couple. While gathering them up, I realized I’d misplaced my pencil case. Searching for it, I stumbled on something else instead: a note I had written to myself years earlier, during my lowest point in optometry school. A time when I thought I’d failed completely—and then, somehow, pulled through.

Excerpt digitized from “pencil case note”

It’ll be a while before you’re able to look back and actually feel okay about whatever you’re going through. In the meantime, the best thing to do is enjoy how humorous all of the madness is. The feeling of defeat. The feeling of dread. All of this is part of life. Sure, it sucks—but it’s also evidence that you lived.

I hope what you’re going through isn’t something caused by your own mistakes, because I know how much we hate that. But if it’s something beyond your control, then I can only imagine how powerless you must feel. Honestly, I hope you never read this note. If you do, it means something has gone wrong.

But just like last time, you’ll eventually look back and see something beautiful in it. Right now, we survived what felt like the worst possible academic outcome. We went from utterly defeated to back on track. What a ride.

If you’re ever in this place again, remember how I feel now. Think back to that email absolving all our anxieties, how the sun at twilight suddenly glowed warmer, how a few sentences of text made everything okay again. How the clouds shifted from gloomy to radiant in an instant. Recall that. And know—it will get better.

P.S. Don’t forget to listen to classical music. Something timeless. It helped us through before.

End of entry

Wow, what a pretentious assh*le. How naive was I when I wrote that? And yet…Finding that note felt a bit light. It made the world just brighten up a little bit. I mean, it does also help that by now, the worst was over. The money was gone, the debts settled, the damage final. What lingered wasn’t crisis anymore—it was resentment, shadows, and silence.

So I put on Bach, the same music that had carried me through school, and let myself believe—just for a moment—that time could shift the light again. It was really satisfying when I got that email. Maybe there’s more moments like that in the future. Maybe, I should look forwards at the possibilities and not so much at what was lost in the past.