to live and love at the edge of the world

Some nights, I stay up cashing in my bad luck.
Some nights, I call it a draw.
Some nights, I wish that my lips could build a castle.
Some nights, I wish they'd just fall off.

- fun., Some Nights

-+-

There is something poetic about today.

The way that the day was so perfectly laid out. It was like someone rolled out a red carpet for me, preparing me to face this.

Life has been wonderful. There is no doubt about it. I saw the other side of the nation, a sea of green, with walls marbled with red, white, and blue. Flecks of gold lined the skies as I held my breath and looked up, thinking, "This is amazing.  This is the most beautiful thing I could have ever imagined."

However, life has the tendencies to throw you curveballs.  Like when you finally have time to sit down and write, it's on the worst day that you've had in a long while.  It's on the last day of the entire year.  It was a lot of little things, building up over weeks and months, culminating together, all on this one day.  Life is beautiful.  Life is glorious in all its gifts and privileges, but those are stories that I have to put on hold right now.

Because, at this moment, I am stricken.

I sat there, literally crippled by tears.  I have not cried like that in a long while.  I could not breathe.  My hands trembled, barely able to hold myself up.  My vision began to tunnel.

"Breathe," I was told, in a kind, reassuring voice, "Gather yourself.  Breathe."  

It was so different from the Old Life.  I used to cry like this a lot in the Old Life, and I was used to sighs and exasperation when this state of mind used to be a regular visitor.  I was used to a harsh snap of, "Can you stop crying?"

I followed, and I calmed.  I calmed into numbness, and then into anger.  My thoughts took an intermission to ponder, '...Five stages of grief.'

"Promise me that you won't do anything stupid.  Promise me."

I grunted, and refused to raise my head.  I kept staring at the floor.  Soft, beige carpet.  Nothing in the world could get my eyes off that carpet.  Off my purple toenails sifting between the soft brown threads.  For the first time, I could not bring myself to give a definitive and honest, "I won't."

I don't remember the last time I have been so fragile.  For a year, even considering everything that's happened, when compared to last year, I've been a rock.  I've been dumb, I've been stupid, I've been vulnerable, I've been impulsive, and I've been every variation of all of the above, but this felt new.  Fragility felt so new.  When I trembled at the touch of a fingertip on my shoulder.  Where the small words, "You should go," stripped me of my ability to hold a breath.  I fell, unable to keep myself sitting.  I fell, and I lied there, crying, unable to get back up.

"Is there anything that you want to say?"

I shrilled, "What am I supposed to say, huh?  I'm losing my best friend today."

"What?  What, no!"

And then, I said it.  I said the words that will terrify me for lengths of time that I cannot predict.

"This always happens to me.  Everyone always leaves me.  Everyone always tells me that we'll always stay friends, and they never do, they always leave.  Everyone always promises me that they'll always be my friend, but they all lied, and you're lying now too, because everyone always leaves me, everyone always leaves me."

And I realized, that all those months, all those times where I always insisted things like, "My life always gets turned upside down," and "The carpet always gets pulled from underneath me," it usually had to do with someone leaving.  I realized that when Phuc left that fateful year ago, it set off a chain reaction of departure, where I now always expect everyone to leave.  I have given my most valuable, life-changing friendships a countdown until they inevitably come to an end, and my life completely changes once again.

Life has left me waiting for people to leave me.  I walk into everything now with the mindset, "I am going to treasure this for as long as it lasts, because I know that it will not last."  I've formed a notion of transience, of fleeting joys that must be cherished to the fullest before their deaths.  I called it an adaptability to an ever-changing, fast-paced life.  I know now that in reality, it was a coping method with abandonment issues.  I don't know how to react to that.

At the end of the day, it was all just a case of miscommunication, and I just blew everything of out proportion and I severely overreacted.  Life is actually still beautiful as it's ever been. 

But there's a crack in my rose-colored glasses now.

I don't know how to react.

PS I promise that things don't actually suck.  It's just that I don't really need to write in my journals and diaries until the need to vent the bad days.  I am writing this with fresh mental wounds, and I'm sure that my mood and my thoughts will improve with time and reflection.

I owe you a happy blog post sometime.

a little nighttime adventure

I've wasted my nights, you turned out the lights.
Now I'm paralyzed, still stuck in that time
when we called it love.

 - Maroon 5, Payphone

-+-

-- "It's good hearing from you."

-+-

I don't know how else to describe him as anything other than a lone ranger.

I drove down R St. by myself at one in the morning, in dire cravings for something topped with sour cream.  Distracted by being unfamiliar with my destination, I didn't see the dog in the road.  The little white pup wearing a little blue jacket.

He ran out to save that pup.  He just ran into the middle of the street, gave it a little push on its bum with his ankle, and the furry little creature trotted away with a bark.

He tipped his hat to me, and went back on his way.  It was the black of night, yet the way that he sauntered off... it was truly as if he walked away into the sunset.

Ease on, cowboy.

Ease on.

DC: the invite

Live your life until love is found,
'cos love's gonna get you down.

- MIKA, Lollipop

-+-

"There's a lovely lady outside…"

-+-

Oh my goodness.

I was asked by my university to be its Student Representative of Biomedical Research at Washington, DC this May.  Members of the university faculty came to a consensus that I'd be the perfect student for the role; they want to fly me out to Capitol Hill to advocate federal funding for UC biomedical research.

"No pressure.  It's just your future riding on this.  And the future of all of us.  No pressure."

The only complication (and it's a big complication) is that it's during finals week, but so far my professors have been supportive; I've already rescheduled one final, and the university reassures that they'll do whatever they can for me to attend the event.  So if everything in the stars line up just right, then I can pursue this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

-- "No matter how this pans out, I just want to thank you for the invitation.  My academics must come first, but I'm extremely thankful just for the opportunity."

Truth.  Although actually getting to fly out to DC on behalf of biomedical research would be way way better. 

I'm trying to not put all my eggs in this basket, but goodness, it's kind of a big deal to me!  Whew!  I'll be sure to keep you all updated on whether or not I ultimately actually get to go!

Meanwhile, busy April is not getting any less busy!  I've just been given my assignment in my research lab for next semester; my lab wants me to Level Up to transplantation work with mice, which is a complicated and time-intensive training process that requires a great amount of commitment, so I have to meet with my laboratory staff to sort out next semester.  I've also got a research conference this Friday, so I'll be spending all week prepping for that, midterms, and my research publication!  

Go go go!

UT, in summary

I see your blue eyes
every time I close mine.
You make it hard to see.

- Colbie Caillat, I Never Told You

-+-

"Welcome to your home for the next week!"
-- "Gosh, that's true, isn't it?!"

-+- 

Throughout my entire trip to Utah for the National Conference on Undergraduate Research, time was lost on me.  I literally tried to write and blog every single day that I was there, but could never find the occasion to properly do so.  Each day was packed with events, from the moment my eyes opened in the morning until my slumber in the late night.

In the next month, on top of coursework and extracurriculars: four more conferences, a manuscript, and arrangements for a fellowship.  I've been succumbing to the stress of deadlines, but that's okay.  You've got this, kid.  You've got this.  Science, science, science.  That's what I have to do.  Science, science, science.

I've etched out so many half-completed stories, but timewise, my ability to narrate and story-tell has been severely hindered.

But regardless, there are things to know about Utah.

In Utah...

* there is a diner where I am known as "Christa the Scientist."
* I met an amazing girl whose boyfriend told her that she needed to "go make friends," much like how my ex-boyfriend did the same in the Old Life...
* ...so I taught her how to play billiards, even though I completely suck at billiards. 
* there was a first-time meeting between Californians, two states away from California.
* a major benefactor of type 1 diabetes research firmly held my arm as she told me, "Christa, solve this disease."
* by sheer coincidence, I met my future housemate this summer...
* ...and my future employer...
* ...and was confirmed to stem cell research on olfactory regeneration at one of the largest biomedical research facilities in the entire world.
* I indeliberately inspired a network between one of the conference's plenary speakers and my university, sparking ideas for collaborative research efforts.
* I shared a drink with the police chief of Salt Lake City, who now boasts about me as the first scientist he's ever met.
* I was captured by a local legend in photography.
* there is a woman that epitomizes spunky, and sought to pass it down to me.
* I met a member of Sigma Xi, a scientific honors society that has yielded more than two hundred Nobel Laureates.  She completely tore my poster to shreds, criticizing me left and right, rendering me in helplessly nervous stutters throughout my poster talk...
* ...until afterwards, when we shook hands as she told me that I did great for my first conference, and to seriously consider submitting my research to the next annual undergraduate conference of Sigma Xi. 

I didn't realize just how much happened during the span of the conference until I got back to California and had to answer the simple request, "So tell me everything about Utah!"

Someday, when I have the time, perhaps the narrative can exist in full.

Until then, Utah.

day one

I would kill to be the cold
tracing your body and shaking your bones,
but I can't sleep at night.
I can't sleep at night.

- Now, Now, Wolf 

-+-

"If you're cold, just say so."

I'm cold.

-+-

Welcome to Day One.

Day One is the most pivotal. 

I like to believe that as long as you can get through Day One, the rest of it will taper off.  Granted, it won't taper off like the drifting volume of a whisper, but it will gradually disappear in waves.  The pain and the sadness return periodically, but it is the slap in the face on Day One that hits the hardest.  Eventually, it becomes that dream that fades in and out of memory. 

It'll become either a fond token of nostalgia, or it will become a nightmarish blur.  On Day One, it's impossible to predict which direction it will take.  You don't know if it'll become that priceless antique that you save on your mantelpiece, if it'll become an unwanted stain that you can't get out, or if it'll become that patch of dust that you've long forgotten about.

On Day One, that doesn't really matter.

What matters more is that on Day One, your universe, which was once small and simple, suddenly turns around.  Suddenly, you realize just how big the universe actually is in comparison to you.  Suddenly, it dwarfs you, and it renders you feeling powerless.  You feel like nothingness.

On Day One, your challenge is to overcome … nothing.

People respond to nothingness in a variety of ways.  Oftentimes, it is with various coping methods.  It is in venting, in sleeping in, in pints of ice cream.  It can be in lonesomeness, or it can be in the gathering of friends. 

Once upon an epoch ago, at the end of a crucial Day One, my life almost ended.  That was how I responded at the time.  Since then, I have borne witness to many Day Ones, various in their situations but all equal in their outcomes.  They started with nothingness, and they've since then all ended in nothingness.  I have spent months stitching together a tapestry of blurs and regrets.  Of lost dreams and what could've beens.  Of Day Zeros that I still play back in my head, over and over, time and time again.

This time, Day One started with the words, "You've been crying."

"No," I murmured, ineffectively trying to cast a veil over my lie, "What?"

Then, "I can see it in your eyes."

That's the way it always goes when you read like a book.  Like I do.  There is actually very little mystery to me.  I am linear and predictable.  So there should not have been any surprise in my tears, in my heartbroken frustration as I sobbed into an unfamiliar shoulder, one that I've never had to cry into before, 'I can't believe this is happening again.'

Yet, as I heard the familiar speech, the familiar reason, the familiar apology, there was little I could do besides quietly understand that this was, in fact, actually happening again.  I, too, mustered the familiar responses, truly convinced that this was going to end up just like every other Day One.

"I'm okay."

"Christa, don't lie to me."

"I'll… I'll be okay."

(sigh)

Welcome to Day One.