One thing I learned over the past few weeks is that a smile will take you a long way.

I learned really recently that I've gained a reputation in the lab as the happy, peppy, enthusiastic intern. 

"Does she like, just wake up like this?"
My housemate: "…Yeah."

That's kind of cute, right?  I mean, my boyfriend of almost six years broke up with me hardly three days before the first day of my internship, and I was pretty much on a nonstop eight-week-long rant about my depression.  Yet, in my internship, I'm the girl that's known for my cheeriness.

But I know why.  It's 'cos I freakin' love my lab.

Sometimes, I feel down on my luck.  Sometimes, I feel numb.  And sometimes, I feel like I'm collapsing under the weight of my own heart.  But every single beating moment in that lab coat is nothing less than truth.  It's far and few between, but there are actually days now where I can go almost the entire day without thinking about Phuc, because I'm just concentrating so much about my pancreas cell progenitors and about regulatory T cells.  I'm way more stoked to do chores than I should be.  My post-doc is back, and I'm honestly nothing but smiles and giggles whenever we work together.  I wake up already so excited to chat with everyone in the lab, because they're all just such interesting people.

My lab manager did an impression of me, and it was the most high-pitched hamster-like thing.
".............................. WAIT, IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE ME??!"
"...He's pretty damn close, actually."
"GODDAMNIT"

It's gotten to the point that my lab manager stopped his normal assumptions that every single undergrad wants to go to medical school, never asking me what I'm planning to do in the future.  But where he used to ramble about how I'm going to be a doctor, now he goes, "Yeah, you're going to go into a PhD program, right?"  Damn.  

So whatever enthusiasm I have, it's evidently showing much more than I could have possibly realized.

So this was just my secret way to have a chance to just ramble on more about my lab to someone, because I talk about it non-freakin'-stop with everyone I spend any time with, and I want them to not shoot me to shut up. XD

SUCCESS

"When you daydream, you never daydream about the person that you are. Rather, you only daydream about the person that you want to be."

I don't need to daydream anymore.

DAMN

Not really, but that's damn poetic.  I've pondered that quote for years, probably for almost a decade now.  Wouldn't that just be such a boss response, though?  Shit, I'm all over it.  This is the level of bossness that I need to get on!

First, I need to overcome these BUTTFACE mosquitoes that plague Merced and plague my life.  I got a bug bite on my thigh yesterday, and it has very earnestly swelled to a diameter as large as my open-palmed hand.  No exaggeration.  Possibly an understatement, if anything.  Merced mosquitoes don't play around, you guys.

AND NEITHER DO I!  Like that transition?  Me too.

git

on

mah

level!!

The only things worth concentrating on now: getting better, becoming a better person, and nonstop bossing.  Check, check, and triple check!  Eat your heart out, brah.  :)

There's too much music in life to close my mind and skip a beat.

And this bass is booming.

SHIT JUST DROPPIN PHRASES EVERYWHERE

But you didn't have to cut me off,
make out like it never happened,
and that we were nothing.
And I don't even need your love,
but you treat me like a stranger
and that feels so rough.

- Gotye

-+-

I'm carrying hope by the fistful.  My heart is not just on my sleeve, it's on a billboard on the shoulder of the 99.

And truth is, it's complicated.  There's a lot of complication in heartbreak.  It frustrates me because it's not linear.  I'm better, but I'm worse.  I'm ready, but I'm not.  I miss him, but I don't.  I love him, but I hate him.  Sometimes I feel absolutely crushed, and sometimes I feel like I'm amazing.  Damn.  Females, amirite?

But one thing that never ceases to hugely bother me, is how much it seems like I never existed.  I still don't get it.  It's ridiculous.  It's as if his beaming smiles and his unsurpassed joy whenever I visited Davis... just never existed.  Why do I have to remind myself that I existed?  Why do I have to remind myself that the last five and a half years actually happened?

Very thankfully, I can gladly say that it's become something I can overcome more easily than I could eight weeks ago.  It's not something so pervasive that it takes over my life, although it used to be.  It's stopped affecting my self-esteem as much, but it's still something that takes a toll on me.  It makes me question myself, but the doubt is now a fleeting burden. I would worry about it all night, but when I come into the lab, everyone is just so kind to me and reassures me that I'm not worthless.  So secretly, it's something that is worrying me right now, but I'll get over it.

But what bothers me most about it, is that it makes me wonder the most horrible, painful question imaginable:

Was it all a lie?  

When I thought that he loved me, was that a lie?  To imagine, that the last five and a half years of love was just a lie...  there's just no worse feeling in the world.  I'm not ready to face that.  

I can be as strong as I want, I can become Wonder Woman, and I will still never be ready to face that.

Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over,
but had me believing it was always something that I'd done.
And I don't wanna live that way,
reading into every word you say.

- Kimbra

-+-

My friends and I sat down and we rapped for a few minutes about myself and Phuc, and damn. I'm just making progress all day, err'day!  It was weird saying a lot of this stuff out loud, since I got used to just typing it out for the last couple of weeks.  But damn, I'm confiding in more people and I'm making better friends with the people I met in the first few weeks of summer, and it's going well! One of my friends got really teary during the pep talks and when I described my story, and I was like, damn these girls actually really care about me.

-- "Back in high school and even during the first two years of college, I always only saw myself as 'Phuc's girlfriend,' and my self-esteem was entirely dependent on him.  And it's only now I'm finally realizing that I'm not 'Phuc's girlfriend,' I'm Christa.  And that's actually really cool."

-- "Christa, I don't think you ever needed to force yourself.  Everything you do is just so natural, and we just love you for who you are.  I think you were really just amazing the entire time, even when you were really shy.  And you never needed to hide that."

-- "But honestly, I think you really are a completely different person than before."

And I'm like, shit, damn, fucking straight.

Then I asked, "Dude, do I talk about my lab a lot?"
-- "Yeah, you really do.  No one else talks about their lab as much as you."

LOL, FUCK

Because I'll be honest, all this really important chatter happened about Phuc today, but I sat down to blog and I just wanted to rant about my lab again, and had to spend some time getting my priorities straight.  But I was trying to organize my thoughts about my lab, and honestly I can only imagine vomiting out everything in a random, unorganized, nonsensical, attention-deficit rant.  The gist in the broadest form possible: "It's educational and awesome!"

-- "So honestly, I talk about you guys a lot.  I think my housemates are sick of me already.  And I think they can describe my project as well as me by now, I just talk about the lab that much.  But they think all of you just sound like the nicest people.  So basically, I'm kind of fond of this lab."

Anyway, I'm going to sleep.  I had a hugely eventful day, but damn, I'm tired.  You guys are missing out on all the details, sucks to be you!  If only I could just give you access to my brain! (lol i'm saying that as if any of you care about my day)

But I have a very important schedule for tomorrow: bum out after my symposium! :>

PAYCE OUT XD

You, who resigned when I finally decided that I was alive:
I'll be OK.

- Sondre Lerche

-+-

Today was the last day of my summer research program.  

I finished strong: I ended the day by destroying the suicide note that I was working on for more than a year.  I'm anxious of letting go, and I'm progressing with caution, but I could not be happier.  I'm moving forward.

It's just been an amazing eight weeks, and it's just been a fuckin' good day.

Cheers.

Damn, how did I get so lucky?

You know the feeling that you get in your tummy, when you're just full of butterflies, but you just can't pinpoint what it is?  You don't know if it's love, or excitement, or nervousness, or a mix of all three, but you just know that your tummy feels funny.  I've had that all week.  I've just been having the most intensive and demanding week, and yet it's also been just amazingly fulfilling and rewarding.

Several months ago, when I was accepted into my first choice research lab, when I was accepted into the internship that I applied for, and when I was accepted into the house that I wanted to rent with all the people that I wanted to live with, I relapsed into depression.

'I got everything I want, yet... nothing's changed.  I don't feel any different.  I still feel useless, I still feel lifeless, and I still feel alone.'

Clearly, I just had no freakin' clue.

Everything's changed.  

Everything.  

-+-

It was my turn to give my presentation on my stem cell research.

I had just spent nearly two hours with my heart pounding a mile a minute, with my heart in my throat and my throat in my stomach.  I was just sitting behind a desk watching other student presentations, yet I felt like I was upside down on a rollercoaster.  

There were four affiliated research programs presenting at the symposium today, and I was the last presenter for my program.  Throughout the entire afternoon session, I spent every second between every presentation in panic mode: "Oh dear god, we're one person closer to my presentation, I can't handle this!!" -- "Christa, calm down and drink your juice, just drink your juice!"

At the very end of the presentation of the girl before me, my entire lab just filed in, abruptly occupying the majority of the chairs in the presentation room.  My faculty mentor, my post-doc, my research associate, and all of the graduate and undergraduate students of my lab.  All week, they have been just so excited and supportive of me; they posted my symposium schedule on the huge lab whiteboard, reminding everyone to come see my first research talk and wishing me luck as I worked on my project.  "CHRISTA'S TALK IS 3 PM IN ROOM B, BE THERE!!"  

My cohort patted me on the back, "No pressure, Christa."  I thought my heart was going to just explode, and I thought I was going to just faint right there and then.  I've never been more nervous for a presentation in my entire life.  I've never been this nervous for any final project, or for any performance in theater.  I don't think I've ever experienced any amount of performance jitters like the anxiety that I felt today.

All day today, on the day of my symposium, my heart was just pounding, not because it was my first research talk, not because it was the climax of my summer internship program.  I barely cared about any of that.  It was because...

I wanted to make my lab proud of me. 

As applause rang for the presentation that preceded mine, I gingerly made my way to the front of the room, and scanned the audience as my program director introduced me.  I had so many friends in Merced that came all the way to campus just to see my ten-minute presentation.  

All of my lab members were just glowing.  They just looked so happy to see me and to be there for me.

And I felt safe.

Then, I promptly proceeded to just fucking kill that presentation.

Highlights: Impressing my principal investigator + everyone actually left their experiments to see me talk before rushing back to tend to their experiments + when I got back to my seat, my research associate held his hands in a heart for me!  Now that's when you know you've done good!

Sometimes, this lab just treats me too well.  I swear, it's like they're all psychic and somehow know that I have a history of self-esteem issues, and then just know all of the ways to make me feel like I'm worthwhile.  I was the only person in my presentation room to get the same kind of lab support, and now that I've recovered from my murderous amounts of anxiety, I'm just so thankful.  

Even everyday in the lab, they all just make me feel so motivated and excited for research.

"Christa, I know I'm hard on you, but it's only because we know you're smart.  We wouldn't go through the effort of investing in you if we didn't plan on keeping you around, right?!"
"Christa, you should hear the way that everyone in the lab talks about you, they love you, and everyone wants you to succeed."
"Christa, you're just contagious!"

I'm starting to feel like my life is scripted.  Poor sad emo girl enters internship, and supportive co-workers/lab members restore her faith in life.  It's almost unreal.  But dear god, it's evidently working, because I just feel great.

Next Tuesday, it will be two months since Phuc broke up with me.  And to be honest, I totally forgot about that until just now.  Has it really only been two months?  But my post-doc is back in town, and we're going to start stem cell culture next Tuesday.  Are you kidding me?!  I've only been dealing with normal differentiated cell lines for the last six weeks, and I'm going to finally start stem cell culture next Tuesday?!  Excitement for the day that I finally start handling stem cells > anxiety over the two-month mark.  Hands down, any day, any time.  Honestly, I cannot wait for next Tuesday.  Bring it.  'SUP?

I can keep writing for days, since I stopped blogging to practice for the symposium today.  A lot has happened since then, and as much as I want to ramble more and more about how the symposium went today, I have to rest up for a big day of research tomorrow!

Now that the symposium is finally over, tomorrow begins the first day of no-hassles SCIENCE!

And again, there goes the butterflies in my tummy!  I can't wait!