If I Used My Voice

So, on top of learning how the universe actually works, I've chosen this life that is painted in a veil that makes it look like everything gold in the universe, but instead, it so easily kills and snuffs out and burns out and drains for no reason...all to likely have a heart attack before I'm 30? 

Nope. 

Damned if I don't, though...dead if I do.

So what's better, being dead or being damned? Because I have a life that I love to live and I have no interest in spending it in some mundane, predetermined routine because I take my time and I make my path.

Children of academia, stand up. Stand up and be recognized as a human, the once per semester that you are allowed to do so; today is the day. Some of us are here because we were told we were good enough. Some of us are here because we were told we weren't. And some of us never believed that we were even allowed to exist in the first place so stand up.

I am not interested in being your savior. We won't start a revolution today. But for some reason I wake up in the morning and I find it so impossible to remember that I have the opportunity to decide what I want to make of my own life, and that is such bullshit. I'm not in it to win it all, at all. I'm in it because I love it, and the minute I forget that is the minute I lose, so it's a lose lose situation and we feel like we've exhausted all of the opportunities we felt so lucky to have had but the truth is that we haven't. 

The truth is very simple.

The truth is that we are not condemned to feel worthless, or to feel used. No matter how many times you ask yourself because you can't get rid of the throbbing behind your eyes, you probably don't have a brain tumor. It's your academic brainchild trying to hatch its way out of something that you couldn't understand before because that is education and that is the real revolution here.

In every subfield of physics we talk about how so many physical phenomena are path-independent, so why would we ever exclude physics graduate school? I was trained to think straight and narrow while I hid the ways that I still think far and wide. There is not just one way to do this, and scientists can be so uncreative sometimes. I'm not here to rush through. I'm not here to see who can get her PhD the fastest. I'm here to learn, so let me. Let me bounce around. Let me pick up skills here and there. Let me travel, let me explore, let me absorb, let me go.

It's just graduate school. I want the world.

Anew

Here I am, back in what used to be the soggy South and what is now more like a slightly more humid and less slushy version of a Michigan March. I'm told that these frozen fractal mornings are limited, possibly done already...but I can't help but roll my eyes at the fact that I thought I moved away from all of this. But compared to life north of the Mason Dixon, it appears that I have.

Post break, I'm still tired. I fully expected to become bored and hungry for knowledge within a week, but the joke was on me because I make it a point not to lead a boring life. There were too many people to see, too many things to do, and frankly, not enough internet to do actual work due to the ice storm knocking trees into power lines. 

The ice, for me, was a frigid blessing.

And after spending a considerable amount of time with my family in Michigan, having been pleasantly surprised by my only having to dodge one or two facetious  smirks after they learned that I had been "actually challenged by something" (and how invalidating to my work ethic and achievements was that?!) I had told my story several times. Of how I'm tired, and burned out, and have been for quite some time. And how my endocrine system had apparently flatlined and how I'd been numb, and how unhealthy and ludicrous it all is, and how much I love it but how unworthy it seems to sacrifice myself in the pursuit. 

But I made my way back down to pack my summer clothes and migrate, just like everybody else as traffic had suggested. I arrived in Florida with sleeveless shirts and, as we were to find out, my anxiety in tow. It's fascinating to me how my body will behave the way it believes it is allowed to behave, based on the environment. In Michigan, I am allowed to be tired and burned out and trying to slowly return to regular hormonal functionality. But with my family in Florida, I have found that it is entirely acceptable to be a bit of a zombie really, then anxious, then emotional, then shaking, then fine. And the love and the Xanax abound. 

I don't know why. I can't handle two families at once, so I separate them; and apparently compartmentalize my mental health as well. But despite all of this, I knew that I had hit a point. And contrary to how it may seem, I did have a slightly productive break in more ways than one.

So yesterday I had class until noon, but then I spent the next several hours in and out of various appointments; seeing doctors, getting referrals, setting myself up for what a dear friend called "a trifecta of wellness." Because a trifecta of wellness it is, and it's necessary. I think that it's been necessary for quite some time, but I am the poster child for stubbornness and I would wait until my career is absolutely on the line for me to make any sort of change. Or, is my career not on the line yet? It may or may not be; nobody will really give me a straight answer around here. But nevertheless, my health is on the line. I can't do this anymore if I want a prayer to achieve the things I'd like to achieve. It's only fear, possibly (probably) shame in the way. However, at this moment in my life where I'm willing to disrobe my cloak of shame because, well, fuck it...I might as well take advantage of myself. 

And I am proud to finally do so, and so looking forward to getting better. Let's get better.

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.