to you, whoever you are

'Cause even the stars, they burn -
some even fall to the earth.
We've got a lot to learn;
God knows we're worth it.

- Jason Mraz, I Won't Give Up

-+-

"It's like you're psychic."
"No, Christa.  You're just predictable."

D:

-+-

Thank you for being my silver lining.

Things have been difficult, but the laughter that you always provide and the smile that you always inspire never fail to transcend the limits of gratitude. It is the greatest amount of wealth.

When I beat myself up, you're the one that holds me back. When I'm going to beat someone else up, you're the one that holds them down to make it easier for me to punch them in the nads, because of course, only you're allowed to beat me up, right? You're one of few that's allowed to beat me up. That is, until multiple members of the few form the Anti-Christa Squad in my kitchen, then I just want to fight everyone. Holy shit. Oh my freakin' god.

You're the one that cheers and screams, "Oh my god, CHRISTA!" when we coincidentally see each other in the halls, in the green room, on the fourth floor of the library, in the lantern, in the S&E third floor, in Target, in another city.  You're the one that remembers my birthday, after seven years of giving up on getting presents on my birthday.  Your friendship is the greatest present I could ask for, but that wasn't enough for you.  You were always the one that wanted to give more.  

You're the one that remembers details about me, that nods when I tell you a story because you already know the ending, because you remember the last billion times that I've told it to you.  You're the one that still messages me on AIM, even though it's been years since we've had classes together.  You're the one that still visits me every year on my birthday, even though it's been almost a decade since I moved away.  You are the new face that I have barely met, or yet to meet, but I know that I'll adore you all the same.

When we stay up studying all night, you're the one that buys me breakfast and chats with me over coffee for as long as possible before we have to part ways. You're the one that wants me to watch all of your favorite movies so that we can talk in catchphrases and inside jokes. You're the one that laughs in perfect synchrony with me as we smile, walking towards our respective labs. You're the one that keeps me down to earth. You're the one that reminds me to check my technique, because I'm not as perfect an undergraduate researcher as everyone is convinced.  You're the one that convinces me that I am going places.  You're the one that drives me to chase those places accordingly.

You're the one that spends all day reviewing Microbiology with me, even when we're so exhausted that we're comatose on the floor of the library.  You're the one that stays up all night with me reviewing organic chemistry, taking frequent breaks in laughter.  You're the one that tells people that I have dates with my Biochemistry textbook, then smiles at me, "Some people just don't get it like we do."  You're the one that sings songs with me while we're both doing tissue culture work.  We don't just move monolayers, we move mountains.

You're the one that thinks I'm worth investing in.  You're the one that tells me in secrecy that I'm known as the one that everyone on the S&E third floor adores. You're the one that meets me between cities for a breakfast lost in time.  You're the one that reads all of my many websites and knows me almost as well as I do, if not moreso.  You're the one that knows all my flaws, all my mistakes, all my terrors, and you accept me all the same.  And at the same time, you're also the one that doesn't put up with my bullshit.  You're the one that I can be human with.

You're the one that calls me names.  You're the one that gives me nicknames.  I've learned that those two are completely different things, but both completely full with amity and fondness.

You are the one that respects me.  You are the one that makes me feel like treasure, when I used to feel like trash, and even when I sometimes still do.  You are the one that has turned to me, and you are the one that I've also turned to.  Not only are you the one that makes me smile, but you are the one that smiles because of me.  You are the one that I can be myself around.  You are the one that makes me feel wealthy.

I'm lucky to have friends like you.

Thank you for reminding me that life is wonderful.

Thank you all, for giving me a life full of love.

pathology

2 o'clock in the morning, something's on my mind.
Can't get no rest; keep walkin' around.
If I pretend that nothin' ever went wrong, I can get to my sleep,
I can think that we just carried on.

- Mika, Happy Ending

-+-

"You really take a lot from life, Christa."
"I don't know if I do, but... I try to." 

-+-

I've been taking a break to just let myself be lonely for a change.

The great thing about weak moments is that they're just that -- they're moments.

It runs in my kin to be susceptible to mental fragility, but luckily, I've recently been blessed with the gift of transience.

My year has been rough so far.  It seems and feels like I have kicked off the year with three weeks of mistakes.  Parts of my life are involuntarily living in the fast lane, while other aspects are just as undesirably dead in the water.  It makes it difficult to concentrate on how perfect everything can be, and how gorgeous everything actually is.  The sun is shining through the overcast and is kissing my cheek with delicate, minute amounts of warmth, yet I've spent too long feeling unsettled to properly appreciate it.  But even then, I'd still be doomed if not for these silver linings.

It's not even a clear feeling, it's not a definite sensation.  I just haven't been feeling... just right.  There is a pathology in my blood that I can't seem to diagnose, but it doesn't satisfy me to just let this virus continue to course through my veins.

For example, I've spent weeks being unable to cry.  It's one thing to spend weeks not crying, but another thing to be unable to.  Even when tears do touch my cheeks, I feel no connection between the sensations and my emotions.  Even when I was feeling so low, so fragile, and so burnt out, I just couldn't manage to cry.  I'm currently in the process of rebuilding my wick, and I'm immensely thankful for every ounce of recovery that comes my way.  But I am still perturbed. If I can hold so much empathy for others, why can't I feel anything for myself?

This month has just been both so similar to and so unlike my last seven months of explosive change and evolution.

But there's more at stake now, and it frightens me.  I've learned that my heart is not encased in platinum - it is flesh, and that fact is bewildering me.  I've been stricken into over-protection.  Ignorance is bliss, and thus, awareness brings fear and worry.  I've begun to see flaws in my attitude, and I'm struggling to adjust.  I still don't understand how to not give unconditionally, and I still must absorb that not all opportunities are opportunities to be seized.  I still need to understand that sometimes, coincidences must simply be left as coincidences.

It's so hard though.  I'm so used to giving away everything I am, everything that I possibly have to give.  But I've finally tasted what it is like to give too much, and it is a terror that has been proving impossible to reel back from.  I feel as if I've been welted with wounds irreparable.  With burns that will only scar into deformity.

It makes me wonder - 

am I taking a break in loneliness,

or am I confining myself to quarantine?

the "i just completely embarrassed myself" vent

I apologized for falling down the stairs.

We’ve never met before, but I’ve seen him everywhere.  I’m comparatively a nobody, but I know exactly who he is.  I’ve pointed him out to crowds and I’ve held my breath when he’s walked by.  He’s a man of reputation.

The problem is that somehow, every time I do something embarrassing, it’s been in the presence of this apparition that I’m still yet to meet.  He was the one that gave me the bewildered face when he overheard me talk to myself in war cries.  He was there when his kin shamed me, and I ran away in flustered confusion.  So I’ve known him for half a year without ever actually knowing him.

Today, we spoke for the first time.

I was walking up the stairs, when he turned the corner and we made eye contact.  Recognizing him, I made attempts to be pleasant and smile.  But the eye contact maintained, as if by trance, which in turn stole my gaze away from watching my step.

I face planted.

He helped me up, and picked up my things from the floor for me, and I was just apologizing excessively, with every apologetic word in my apology word bank.  I was the one with the abrasions on my hands, yet my reflex reaction was to apologize for submitting him to the sight of my embarrassing nature yet again.

He awkwardly laughed, taken aback by my apologies, “It’s okay!  But are you okay?”

I reassured him, “Yes, I’m okay!”

He handed me my water bottle that fell out of my backpack, and said, “Okay, good.”

Then I continued my venture up, and he continued his venture down.

And so ended our first conversation, and so continued his unfortunate proximity to my spaztic tendencies. :(

c-money

Wrap up your questions, keep them down;
let the water lead us home.

- Mumford & Sons, Home

-+-

"Christa.  You're skewing my data.  I'm trying to run an experiment here."

-+-

Not a single drop of sin, yet I know I'm going to wake up in two hours with a hangover.  I'm done with my Chemistry courses for the rest of my college career, but somehow there was nothing quite as enthralling as spending countless hours in the middle of the night going over organic chemistry nomenclature.

I missed this.  I missed my confidant.

He was the one that carried me through summer.  I was fresh out of my break up, and he was the one that stayed at the library late with me, because I told him that I was saddest when I was home by myself.  In the fall, I would lose him to fight the good fight of Boy Problems and Social Issues, but he was always the one that called me one of the bros.  He will always be the one that took me under his wing when I confessed to him a lifetime ago that I had zero friends in the entire city of Merced.

I leaned against his white board as he taunted me that all of my cell cultures are doomed because I'm the one that's handling them, while I warned him that if he couldn't draw out ethyl acetate, I was going to sock him in the stomach.  He taught me a valuable lesson: mac 'n' cheese tastes fantastic when mixed with sriracha sauce and ketchup.  It is an important life value that I hope to apply to my own life in the very near future.

I've missed the absence of worry, and I got to sample it through the arguments over optimal abstract structure for our respective research conferences.

No stress, no heartbreaks, no complications, no overthinking, no wondering, just friendship and science.

Friendship and science.

impossible

Live through this,
and you won't look back.

- Stars, Your Ex-Lover is Dead

-+-

"Well, you know, half of it is the attitude."

-+-

There is something so beautiful about aiming for "impossible," and truly believing that you have the potential to achieve it.

Yet, once you strike those diamonds, once you actually accomplish unearthing that core, "impossible" becomes dangerous.  It is both extraordinary and frightening when dreams manifest into reality.

The consequences are instantaneous.  You become unable to settle for less.  You can no longer chase improbables, because once you have tapped into that oil rig of impossibility, it becomes more than "achievement."  It even transcends amazement.  It becomes addiction.  

It is a high when life becomes unreal.  Once your storybook daydreams see the printing press, you can't close the pages anymore.  You can no longer bring yourself to look back.  You see the themes and the fables everywhere, and you meticulously pick stars from the sky and make them your own.  You decorate your room with them, to illuminate you, and you alone.

Yet the constellations on the wall, in all of their glory, are beautiful.  They are exhausting, and they drain you of strength and power, yet they are so beautiful.  You wonder why you ever tolerated their fire, until their luminous dances remind you of why you are always running, running, running.  It's enchanting.  It's gorgeous.

Whether "impossible" is under the magnification of phase contrast microscopy or in the relapse of distant memories, "impossible" is so gorgeous, it becomes difficult to remember how ominous it is.  It just entrances you in its spell.  It is bewitching.

Impossible is such a beautiful addiction.