That Grad Grind

I'm not really sure how to pass this energy.

I mean, I could do lots of things. And I'd be lying if I tried to say that I didn't cry while listening to "The Climb" by the old Miley Cyrus like a giant baby defeatist. Mostly, I've been driving and consuming and resting on the couch, watching and being inspired by a plasma screen full of people who made it. 

And me, on the other side of glory, soaking in the opportunity to fail. Guys, I'm in trouble.

But I was told recently by somebody very wise and very wonderful, that I am not powerless.  That perspective is everything. And during this horrendous albeit incredible beginning to my graduate career, I felt powerless in every way. I worked so hard, couldn't pass the tests. I explained the fundamental fabric of astronomy as eloquently as I could, my students can't tell the moon from a wheel of cheese. I have a deep love for learning, I can't fit anything else inside my head.

BUT (because there is always a big BUT in my life, always):

This is not defeat. Nor is it complete failure. It's failure all right, but not completely. Because I know that I couldn't have changed anything about this past semester to make myself magically more test-savvy. I was asked to "change everything" about the way I study and learn, and I won't. I'll always be me, babe. Sorry.

Instead, I'm changing my perspective. This is affording me the opportunity, for the first time in a while, to assess. Assess, reassess, and rework my entire grand plan for my academic life, as it were. I'm not particularly interested in staying where I am forever, nor am I particularly psyched about doing everything at light speed. I'm more of a sound speed kind of gal. Just because I'm always on the run doesn't mean I'm always running. Come on. I'm tired. What's the damn rush? I'm twenty three years young, and I want to feel and do and see everything. I'll take my time, thankyouverymuch.

So if I can survive next semester, maybe I'll just try at a Master's. Take it slow. Soak it in. Graduate education is a blessing; a unique opportunity. I don't want to rush it, squander it, glaze it over. I want all of it.

All of it, in my own time, on my own terms.

For You, Not Me

What if my life has nothing to do with me? 

I mean, I'm this arbitrary mass of blood and bones and tissue, with a spirit that doesn't quite fit inside and a heart that doesn't claim just one single home.

So, I don't want to live for just myself. I'm far, far too flighty for that. 

But, dedicated.

Dedication is a beautiful, rich phenomenon. My hands have never moved with more finesse, my feet have never pounded the Earth with more intensity, my arms and my heart have never opened so wide for myself, but for all of you. Dedicated to you, I'm limitless.

And during this season of life where my existence is a wonderful shade of chaos and strain and stretch, the bombs are falling around me; not on me. But, I can see where they are landing, right on top of you, and I've signed up for the disaster relief. I want to ease your burns. Rebuild you. Renew you. Be your bandaid.

And on the day-to-day, I can't dive in so deeply...but I can dedicate. So on Friday, I'll know the ins and outs of harmonic oscillators for Lawrenzo. Dear friend, you are everywhere to me, just like Michelle Branch said and I decided to E/B/F# my own chord progression into a 3,000 mile drive and I feel so much better and so much like the wind, and the ocean behind my eyes, and I've spent so much graphite while reaching for the solutions to our universe. And Lawrenzo, the one of the two of us who could really understand it, couldn't carry the whole, wide world and now the whole, wide world weeps for him. But he's everywhere. He'll be with me on Friday. He's with me now. He always was, and always will be.

And for the rest of you, use me. My life was orchestrated for your benefit; I exist for you, I ache for you. And eventually, I'll heal for you. We'll heal together.

Because My Brain Isn't

Staring at the ceiling, all I see are the black dots that cover my field of view after I've taken in too much coffee. It's an anxiety symptom, it's a dehydration symptom, it's perfectly explainable from a biochemical perspective.

Let's pretend for a moment that we can chalk it up to a bad week. A bad semester, even, but maybe that's going too far already. What am I doing here? I thought I knew. I was built for academia. But, I would also like to stop feeling powerless in every aspect of my life. Academia is not the place for that.

Now let's pretend that it's just because I have that (un)fortunate case of wanderlust that prevents me from being content where I am, regardless of where I am. There's no cure for that, besides incessant travel. And I incessantly travel.

Now let's pretend that I've placed myself inside of a seemingly perfect situation, and that it's somehow wrong, or I'm wrong, or it's too much.

It's too much.

I won't get a therapist. Don't believe me when I say that I will. I should, but I won't. I know myself enough to know that much. I'm closer to getting a double mastectomy than I am to getting a therapist. It's not easier, but it's...easier.

And in general, things are wonderful.

It's just that my brain isn't.

That Was Unexpected

If you would've asked me which traumatic event in my life would've been capable of sending me busting out of a Starbucks in tears, panicking and shaken and unsafe, I would've guessed, you know, that whole sexual assault thing. I mean...obviously.

But that would've made way too much sense to be a scene from my life. Because in actuality, I was minding my own business and studying Classical Mechanics at the Starbucks in Anderson, when the worst anxiety trigger in the whole world walked through the door.

Church people.

(and the crowd gasped in horror)

It was my own fault. South Carolina is lousy with Christians, and it was Sunday afternoon. But the thing about these church people is not just that they're Christian; I'm Christian. I've just spent the past year of my life completely and utterly embarrassed by that fact, because I can't handle the baggage that comes with the label. My relationship with God became extremely personal this year; so much so that a once harmonious topic of conversation now has the power to disintegrate my voice into a symphony of atonal shakes and sounds. I can't talk about Jesus anymore. He is profoundly inside of me, and that is where He shall remain. Buried deeply. A constant companion, and a great comforter and friend. But this is for me to experience, and for you to mind your distance.

So, these church people. I recognized them. There was such familiarity there, almost tangible, glaringly obvious; aggressive, even. Aggressive because they all arrived at the same time, wearing blinding highlighter green t-shirts with their new service times in giant font on the back like some glorified heavenly billboard meant to litter the streets of gold upstairs; and their smiles and high-fives and "do you think the sound was extra loud today" and their iced teas and cappuccinos and their laughter and camaraderie and community and "let me tell you about Jesus, bro!" 

I can't.

I realized that it was too late. I had thoughtlessly chosen the one seat at Starbucks that was literally in the corner of the wall; I had cornered myself, with no hope of escape. I shuffled my papers. Everything about normal mode theory seemed unimportant and distant, and the Hillsong album pumping into my ears seemed almost woefully ironic. 

Pitifully, I scampered into the bathroom and let fall the developing tears. Because I can't help but grieve for my lost community that they are so blessed to have. And I couldn't imagine that I'd ever be welcome in a group like theirs ever again.

Anyway, I managed to escape. And I cried all the way home, furious at the Great I Am for being "so mean" as to let this happen, the day before a big exam for His sake, and furious at myself for having a bad anxiety day; I had been doing so well.

So, why had I reacted like a serious PTSD victim? It surprised me, too. But I think it's because I invested the majority of my life involved in what I believed to be (and what very well may have been, for a while) a healthy, inspiring church environment with a church family who loved and accepted me just the way I was. But the more I reflect on this belief, the more diluted I find it to be. Yes, I have some deep, genuine, grace-filled, Christ-centered friendships that still exist from my years at Trinity, but there is a devastating flip-side to this coin. I've realized that nobody has made me feel worse about myself than some of my church "family." I mean, besides my own self. But, really? A church family is supposed to stand behind its members in trying times, not kick them while they're down or fire relentless accusations out of context, standing on dated scriptures and peering through narrow perspectives, spitting venom yet speaking of love. That's dysfunctional.

And dysfunctional it was. I backed away from church. And almost a year later, clearly, I'm still in an excessive amount of grief over the loss of such a deep foundation to which I had held fast. I am happy for the lovely, smiling green-shirted church people that came to Starbucks...all at the same time. I am also green, with envy. I'm tired of feeling like an outsider. It's a giant blow to anyone with a relationship with Jesus when one feels unwelcome in God's own home. It makes it difficult to establish trust, or believe in grace from what proclaims to be a gracious community.

But, I digress. I feel no better about the situation, so I'll probably go to the damn church. Otherwise, these things will keep happening. I will keep feeling terrible. Little by little, I'll start attending; I know when the new service times are, after all, thanks to the green shirts. And who knows? Maybe it'll blossom into one of those genuine communities that I crave so heavily, and I will grow because I love to do that. I will find other people like me. I will have the opportunity to share my gifts and my grace.

Or, the green-shirted people could start an exaggerated rumor that I'm a Godless lesbian with an alcohol problem.

Either way.

Hello Operator

I would say that a bottle of wine will convince you to love Quantum physics, but the truth is, it will convince you all by itself. We love things that we can understand; but more importantly, we love things that we cannot understand. Quantum mechanics is both, neither, and some star-crossed state in between. It's everything.

It's literally the reason I crawl out of bed every other day after sleeping far, far too little. It's captivating. It's my one saving grace in graduate school; the passion for the fundamentals, the moment when I realize that I'm ready to go back to basics in order to understand the basis. Genuinely, this time, and with great relish.

And now, for Quantum and everything else:

"The work will teach you how to do it."
-Estonian Proverb

Conservation of Energy

"So, if you don't mind...what grade did you get in your undergraduate classical mechanics class?"

My, what a loaded question. I assume, professor, that you're asking me this so that you can understand how I weaseled my way into graduate school after handing in such a preposterous first homework set, furthermore seeming almost smug and extremely aware of how much sense my answers didn't make. I assume you believe me to be some sort of system-playing fraud; a woman about whom people should be advised and warned. Someone who does not put in the required effort; someone who might not survive this school.

But, let's go back to undergraduate classical mechanics. Let's see if we can dissect what really happened that year. Never mind the fact that I think that most of us were rather bored and confused in that class, or that it was three years ago, or that I hadn't written a Lagrangian since I had last been asked...never mind all that. There's quite a deeper story.

You see, I lost months of my life that year. Honestly, I can't even construct a decent continuum of memories; only bits here, bits there, bits that may come back someday...but I hope not. I do remember a few things, though; unfortunately, none of them involving how to define forces of constraint. Instead, I remember laying on the ground, unable to move, bright fluorescent lights above. I remember the never-ending days of self-imposed routine, the work, the not sleeping.

Because I knew that I had to sleep quickly and wake up early before the sun would rise. I would trudge in the dark through piles of snow on bitter cold mornings, and when I arrived at the pool all bundled up, I'd strip down to barely anything and swim as if my life depended on it, because it did. I knew that my morning swim would be the only thing to sustain my energy, my life, that day. 

The day I found out, part of me died. And everything is jumbled up after that. The phrase "sexual abuse scandal" barely begins to scratch the surface of the horrible things that were being unveiled in front of my family's eyes, but any other phrase cuts too deeply. And then, the bad press. Every inaccurate news article about our private lives was taken and laid  bare for the internet, at the mercy of any bored, ignorant passerby. And oh, how they relish in the opportunity to volunteer a digital opinion! Some expressed keystrokes of sympathy and disgust, others essentially called us liars, and probably everything in between. And we hid. We pretended it wasn't about us. We tried to protect ourselves.

I lost my mind that year. I became severely unwell. I was exhausted, unreliable, ridden with anxiety, useless, helpless, defenseless, and depressed. I was a little more than a high-functioning corpse. Even now, just the memory of it...it is by grace that I do not remember most of this, but, oh! I'm being rude. You asked me a question!

See, I'm caught in a nuance of the memory now, scrambling so that I don't drown in it. It is several years later, and I have certainly healed considerably. But the mention of that year, of anything during that time, has the potential to send me reeling backwards. Because sadly, I lost everything I once knew about classical mechanics. I lost almost everything that year.

But you didn't ask for that. You didn't ask for details, or context. You asked for a number.

"I received a 2.5 in classical mechanics."

Thoughts, Uncategorized

I am not a patriot. I am not a nationalist. I don't like these terms for the same reason I didn't like the concept of religious denominations, when I used to actively discuss my faith. I feel as if, instead, my time has been better spent developing an understanding of what it means to be a decent human being. Not a decent American, a decent Christian, or any kind of decent specimen of any number of subcategories in which any organization-driven mind might automatically place me.

Rightly, or wrongly.

But then again, what's right is seeming to be more and more slippery and abstract as time goes by. The right shoes for me are certainly not the right shoes for you, if you don't have a size 9 foot and hate Converse. It's as simple as that, but on another hand, far, far more complicated.

So, I let you buy your own shoes. I'd appreciate it if you'd let me buy mine. Just two decent humans, unassumingly wandering about in our respective perfect pairs of shoes.

It seems so obvious, so easy. But I'm not that brilliant. Sure, I'm working towards a PhD in physics, but when I get sad, I can just go and do some math. And there's plenty to be sad about, nowadays, even in the middle of a life that far exceeds my expectations, or wildest wishes. A life that makes me happy, when other things make me sad.

Everything is balance. Everything.

Sinking

Are we supposed to be ashamed of everything, now? Of our bodies, our choices, our thoughts? The things over which we've thought and prayed; the things for which our hearts beat? The cruel realities of our pasts, and our most precious, fragile, hopeful wishes for our futures?

I'll have no part of that.

"If grace is an ocean, we're all sinking."

I'm sinking in God's grace, in growth, and in life. Sinking into deeper depths and out of the shallows. Finding creative ways to be genuine. Pulsing every second. Probing along with curious, careful fingertips. Learning to accept myself, to love myself, to embrace myself. 

I won't own any more shame. I can't afford it.

Slam

See, people like me, 
from day one, 
have felt like some unwelcome side effect of a pill
that was supposed to make them feel so good inside
but instead
it deteriorated their entire selves
in exchange for a brief moment of pleasure,
of solidarity.

And people like you have made people like me feel worse
for decades after that
and decades
and even now.

Because, see, we as a society have convinced ourselves 
that the inside of a mailbox
or something that has been dead for 30 million years
or money
is more important than the pulsing inside of a
currently breathing
human being
and her soul.

Daughters of the universe, be strong.
Be aware.
If my daughter ends up
in jail for any length of time,
I want it to be the result of her standing up
for her beliefs
her convictions;
unafraid and unshaken
by the foolish screams around her.

This is something that I understand.
How awful it feels
to lose your community
your foundation
because you have done 
what
was
right.
And then I will know what to say 
to her
in encouragement.

Because you, in your irrelevance,
your lack of perspective, 
your lack of vision,
scribble your judgments 
and your hatreds
onto rectangular scraps of paper

and you take your words to the bank
and you pull them out of your
back pocket
but I know from whence they really came
just around the corner

and you take your words up to the counter
but you can't cash that check, baby.

It's going to bounce.

Now watch me do the same thing.

Owning It

Oh, healing process, how you take forever. Forever.

At this stage, I am grossed out by everything and have patience for nothing. I'll take this over irrational paranoia, but still. This is a tough one. It seems that the only way to grow through this phase is to painstakingly, monotonously, begrudgingly do very small, very basic nice things for myself.

To Do (or die) List:

1. Take a damn shower...eventually.

2. Buy some organic zucchini.

3. Go the hell outside and climb some buttes.

4. Make some kale chips.

5. Sit on your yoga mat with a cup of tea.

6. Pick up Symone and sing another vocally lazy rendition of "Skinny Love" like you actually know what the lyrics mean.

7. Love yourself. Try to be convincing.

See? Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. It's one of those times when I know that I'm the problem, the solution, the victim, and the survivor. I'll figure it out. I'll talk it out. I'll stretch it out. Eventually, I'll stop feeling like a leprous criminal. An intruder in my own life. A square peg in a round hole. Diseased. Twisted. Wrong. 

Eventually.

For now, I'll own my perceived disfunction in an otherwise successful, colorful, wonderful, adventurous existence. I'll enjoy the ride until the next stage, whatever that may be. Hopefully, it'll be the part when I actually see myself as my friends do, as my colleagues do, as my little sisters do, as my big sister does, or most profoundly, as God does. 

Hopefully.

Soul Update

Oh hi there, readers. 

I would just like you all to know that I am in the middle of, perhaps, one of the happiest times of my life. Adoration for my job and for the people with whom I interact is continuously present, and I'm honored to be doing exactly what I had wished I could do.

But still, as per usual, I want more. I always will, which may be a contributing factor to my becoming a scientist. This time, though, I think it's because I finally have time to rest and to think about what exactly I'm missing. Sure, I miss MSU as well as my friends and family, but this is different. This is the kind of mourning that happens for something that hasn't happened...yet. It's when I realize that everything might be connected, and the bottom line is me.

The truth is, part of me really, really wants to be that girl in the sports bra and the bare feet, the one picking the organic kale from the Farmer's Market, scaling rock faces and freely expressing herself in the yoga studio. That girl loves her life. So do I. That girl loves her body. I do not.

And the fact that I hate my body so much is probably intimately connected with how dissatisfied I am with my insides. My life is incredible; my soul is broken. I'm just now beginning to realize the true scope of my brokenness, but I think that maybe that realization is an important part of healing. It's simple: I'm not getting what I need. Not physically, not mentally, not emotionally, not sexually, not relationally, not financially, not medically, not nutritionally. Now, I don't think that others are so much to blame for any of this. Some of it is just because of the season of my life. Most of it is because of me, and my blatant refusal to take care of myself because I, for whatever reason, do not believe that I deserve to be taken care of. It's ludicrous, but it's completely true. It's been true for a very, very long time. 

I've had bouts of serious self-love, but they never seemed to last. Something would happen; I'd lose community, I'd lose time, or I'd lose my mind. Something. And just like that, I'd internalize my negativity and begin to doubt myself again.

It's time to stop. It's time to realize that all of my self-directed dissatisfaction covers every aspect of my life. I've been frustrated lately because I thought that I was stuck; that I didn't have a clue how to proceed in my own healing process. Maybe I can begin very simply. I can begin to feed myself healing foods that can feed my soul instead of just feeding a sugar craving. I can get outside into the sun, and under the stars. I can let myself sleep. I can sing, I can pray, and I can write. Everybody knows that this is a journey, and it's time I started moving forward in mine.

Manifest Destiny

No, no. Not Manifest Destiny in that awfully imperialistic and self-righteous sense; I mean it in the sense that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. Beautifully, and divinely. 

I love this feeling. It usually births itself around June, or so. Truth is, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be because I'm not in Lansing, which has been a little bit of an enormous pill to swallow for some people in my life. It isn't personal. I mean, it is personal, for me. My life, my happiness, my education, and my potential require me to be as far away from Lansing as I can drive, so I happily oblige.

It's incredibly energizing to be out here teaching astronomy at Badlands National Park. Often times, I momentarily think about the amazing fact that I'm here, doing exactly what I love to do, and how simple it all was. There is something humanly magnificent, magnificently human, about gracefully achieving a personal goal; it makes me smile for that brief second of thought.

I'm getting used to working nights again (sort of) and using the night sky as my own personal chalkboard in my vast universal classroom. I get to talk about lots of things. Things about which I'm well-versed, and things about which I have some knowledge, and things about which I want to learn. Crazy things, non-intuitive things, mind-blowing things. I love how curious, inquisitive, and clever our visitors are; in particular, I love how excited people get when they see solar flares or Saturn's rings for the very, very first time. I've had people from the countryside, people from the city, amateur astronomers, and all of their children.

Oh hi there, baby fever. Welcome back! You guessed it: the kids are my favorite.

There have been a few particular tots who have captured my heart lately. One very young little girl was given the opportunity to see the Sun through a solar telescope, through which the viewer can see solar flares and sunspots on a big, red circle of a Sun. It's always hard to know whether or not the kids can see what's in there, because most of the time they have to be picked up by mom or dad to get to the eyepiece. To both of our delights, she saw the Sun and triumphantly declared: "Circle!!" I told her that she had done very well, and that the circle she had seen was the Sun. And my heart melted.

Today, I was climbing one of the buttes behind our housing units, and two little boys from the house across the field came over to keep me company. One of them, clutching a plastic figure of an alien, told me that he wanted to be an astronaut when he grew up. Then, we talked about what kinds of aliens we would like to discover; what they would look like, how many arms they would have, and of course, how many balls they could juggle. And my heart melted again.

Then tonight, while Tina and I were setting up the telescopes for the Night Sky folks to see the Hercules cluster and Saturn, I was in full-on teacher/fact-spewer/excited scientist mode. And the moment that melted my heart beyond any possibility of repair happened while showing Saturn. Another very small little girl, being held up to the eyepiece by her father to see Saturn, squealed in the most perfect, ecstatic little voice: "You can see its rings, daddy!!" 

I died. Of joy.

Because I want them to experience what I do and think that it's the coolest thing they've ever seen. Not for my benefit, but for theirs. In one of the several NOVA Science Now episodes that I've watched today, a female Japanese scientist who is developing incredibly intelligent prosthetics has devoted lots of her time to becoming a role model for young girls, future scientists. She nailed it when she said that she hoped that "they would do better than me." Educators do not educate for their own sakes, or for vanity, or for heaven's sake, the salary. We educate because we haven't given up on humanity. And because kids are damn clever. Smart and resilient and curious; they already are scientists. I am glad to work in an environment where that curiosity is encouraged rather than snuffed out of them by rigidity, rules, and standards. They can breathe a little bit easier out here, and so can I.

Also, the video for Rusted Root's "Send Me On My Way" was absolutely filmed in the Badlands. You all now have every reason to be incredibly jealous of my life right now. Guys, I'm happy.