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.

Slice my starry eye.
Light his coat in turpentine.
Kill the bitch that bats an eye,
Elvis.

- Alex Winston, Velvet Elvis

-+-

"Christa… you're an odd one."

It gets pretty obvious when I develop a blogging bug.  It's on and off, but it's pretty chronic.  After all, this year will be my ten-year anniversary with this site.

Ten years.

Ten years later, and sometimes I still find myself narrating my day in my head.  Sometimes, when I'm coming down with a blogging bug, my thoughts sound not like a jumble of disconcerted thoughts like they usually do (see: i'm a spaz), but they read almost too smoothly, flourished with hooks and diverse sentence structure, speckled with literary tools, as if I was reading one of my blog posts in my head.

This was found among those thoughts.

-+-

(MERCED.  The weather is windy, and the sky is overcast.   GIRL emerges.  Her hair is disheveled from the breeze.  She is clutching her hand around the strap of her bag.)

GIRL:  That's always a strange moment, isn't it?  It's always strange when you find yourself evaluating yourself.  When you...

(Pause. GIRL hears a familiar voice, and turns around.  No one is there. She turns back around, and continues on her daily route.)

GIRL: …when you wonder about yourself in the same way that you wonder about a good book that you're still reading, or a good television show that you watch weekly.  You wonder about the state of the characters.  You find yourself more than intrigued, more than going with the flow.  You are sincerely invested, and you find personal stake in the foreshadowing, in the subtle hints and clues scattered throughout the plotline.  You tremble at the question: what is to come?  What is going to happen next?  Then again, I should be personally invested.  I ought to be personally invested in myself, after all.

(Beat.)

I found that I am not feeling at my best.  That fact irritates me.  I should be feeling at my best.  Life has been absolutely extraordinary, in spite of any and all detriments, obstacles, and inconveniences.  Because that's what those mistakes heartbreaks fears regrets have to be to me.  They have to be miniscule.  They have to be minute.  I can't let these things get to me.  Especially when so many of these things are completely out of my control.  But bad news: they get to me.  They do.

They really shouldn't be, especially when you consider how absolutely amazing things have actually been recently.  I've exorcised my ghost.  My tirade has met a joyous standstill.  I'm crossing off more and more on my bucket list everyday.  At the same time, I'm opening more doors, more opportunities, and more ceaselessness for my future.

I may not have Love, but I have love.  I bear witness to that everyday.  When my friends from years ago travel hours to visit me in Merced for a one-hour dinner.  When Chimichanga Mountain & Co. surprise me with a Valley of dreams, goals, and aspirations.  When my Rock takes a moment to teach me a new handshake, and then tells me in a rare moment of sincerity, "Thanks for being there for me."  To be honest, that's enough for me.  For once, my heart and mind have no ties, no loose knots to poorly built anchors.  I just looked in the mirror one evening and realized it.

"I'm a bird."

And that's beautiful.  Things are absolutely beautiful.  I am taking a risk everyday, yet I feel safe.  I have less stories under my belt, and that's a relief.   It's narrowed down to just one narrative, although annotated in red ink with, "For Now," but it's a welcome story indeed.  Life is picking up, yet it doesn't feel so fast anymore.  I'm relieved.

Yet I don't feel at a high, and that's irritating.  I feel like I am stuck in the middle somewhere.  I feel like I exist between heaven and hell.  I feel like I am stuck in purgatory.  I am in this void of space that's simultaneously refreshingly comforting and worrisome in its discomfort.  I feel as if I should be at a 10, but my mind is stuck at a 5.

Admittedly, I did need chicken this week, so that might be it.

(FLASHBACK.  GIRL and BOY are driving away from campus.  She is sitting in passenger seat.)

BOY: You wanna get something for dinner?

GIRL: Sure. What do you want to get?

BOY: (Shrugs:) I always decide.  What do you feel like?

GIRL: I always feel like chicken.  (Laughs.)  Actually, chicken is this huge comfort food for me.  Whenever I'm sad, my friends know that I'm in a dire need for chicken.  Like back with my ex -- we got in this huge fight once, so the girls made a Chicken Night out of it.  They took me out for chicken wings and we just watched a movie together.

BOY: Aw, that's sweet.

GIRL: Yeah, it was really sweet.  You can tell when I'm really sad, because that's when I need chicken.  So now you know what to get me if you ever want to cheer me up.

BOY: (Quizzically:) But we had chicken before, and you weren't sad then.

GIRL: That's because I wanted chicken.  There's a huge difference between wanting chicken and needing chicken.

BOY: Oh, I get it.

GIRL: Yep. So actually, let's not get chicken, because I'm not sad.

(TWO WEEKS LATER.  Again, GIRL is in passenger seat.)

BOY: Do you want to get something for dinner?  I can cook something or we can go out.

GIRL: Actually… can we get chicken because I'm sad?

(CURRENT DAY.)

GIRL: It's been forever since I've needed chicken.

Like the day that my ex-boyfriend broke up with me.  I tried to run away from it all.  I was going to run away, get out of town, start life somewhere else.  Then my feet started to blister, and I realized that my geographical options were quickly narrowing down to the immediate neighborhood.  My plans to disappear were becoming steadily more unsuccessful as the sores on my feet became more painful.  So I did the next best thing: I walked to the local boba shoppe and bought popcorn chicken.

Then some miscellaneous whatnot happened after that, but since then, I've moved on and life has been, for the most part, absolutely amazing. Clearly, it was the chicken.  Chicken primed me for amazing awesomeness in the face of crippling destruction.  But it's actually kind of disheartening to see the tally: I've needed chicken twice this week.  And it's been forever since I've needed chicken.

(Beat.)

I don't want to need chicken anymore.  I want to get out of this rut.  I want to get out of purgatory.  I want to see the value in every speck of dust again.

I don't want to need chicken anymore.

You are my favorite song;
always on the tip of my tongue.

-The Civil Wars, Tip of My Tongue

-+-

-- "I didn't even do anything!"
"Christa.  Don't act like you didn't play a hand in this.  You did something."
-- "No, I mean-"
"No, I know what you mean.  And I get that.  You did something, but you also tried your best, and I respect that.  But you can't just rid yourself of all responsibility like that."
-- "No-… I-… Sigh. Argh. I'm distraught!"
"Good.  Just be distraught and get over it."
-- "...Okay."

-+-

By the by, if I'm not frequenting here, I've also started using my tumblr again (mostly for prose/fiction/creative writing), and sometimes also my twitter (random nonsensical useless stuff; primarily just used for when I have no one to text).

"This is Christa FOO.  Gimme ur money this is a stick up. Thug lyfe playah yee."

-+-

"Just like high school all over again, eh?"

I wanted to nod my head, but honestly, that wasn't a sentence that I could connect with.  I didn't go through any sort of anything in high school.  I was in this safe little bubble all of high school, this cozy little nook of lonely warmth and comfortable prudency.

Not anymore.

About five or six months ago, I sat on the floor of the tissue culture room, distraught and in tears.  Everything just seemed to be going so... wrong.  Everything seemed to be so difficult and irreparable.

In some strange, inspirational twist of fate, everything afterwards fell perfectly back into place.  I couldn't handle everything, so I just let go, and just braced myself for utmost disaster.  Yet, without lifting a single finger on my part, everything somehow worked itself out.

Somehow, everything turned out okay.

However, oscillations have an echo.  I am currently experiencing the residual waves of that first catastrophe, with some brand-new hurricanes thrown in, just for good measure.  Luckily, they are weak.  They are mere vibrations compared to my focus on academia and research.  Not like before, when the tremors of the earth shook me down, and I cried into the sleeve of my laboratory coat.

So today, I suddenly realized something.  I think... that this will turn out okay, too.

This time, I'm learning the hard way all over again that "turning out okay" isn't always in the form of warm reunion, in the restoration of amity, in the revival of unity.  Sometimes, it's meaningless to have the pieces fall back together when the puzzle is incomplete and the table is crooked.

I'm learning the hard way that sometimes you just have to let yourself do nothing more than sit there, sip your coffee, and just quietly wonder about the strangers in your life.

And then you have to press on, because you know that everything is going to turn out okay.

Everything is going be A-OK.

(At least, until the next echo!)

Oh, I've got this friend
holding onto her heart
like it's a little secret,
like it's all she's got to give.

- The Civil Wars, I've Got This Friend

-+-

The vulnerability resonated in every syllable.

"..."

Equally so, I've begun to witness the sheer ferocity in silence.

The enormous amount of fear that can be carried by the sound of nothing at all.

-+-

Your bark is so much worse than your bite.

It stings more than it hurts.  It bothers more than it tortures.  Bottom line: it's epidermal.

You used to carve yourself into the deepest layers underneath my skin.  You would appear not like a heart of flesh and substance, but like an apparition.  I feared you like I feared a night terror.  Oh, how you would haunt.  You would lurk in every corner, every crevice of my conscience.  You were like I dreamed you into existence, but unwillingly.

However, like every other lackluster ghost, you're a faded image now.  You're no longer that phantom that taps on my shoulder in the dead of night.  You're not the shell that I look for in every room.  You're just that weird smudge in the corner of my photo album that I can't decode anymore.

Maybe you're there, but honestly, probably not.  At least, not anymore.

Thank you, though.  Really.  I mean that.  You've hardened me, and I learned a lot from you.  You've actually been a pretty immense piece of my life for quite a long period of time.

But I don't even think you're going to leave a scar.  I wouldn't be surprised if you end up washing off like a pen mark.

Then, the slow drive by your neighborhood, when I hold up a triumphant middle finger towards your house.

Suck on that.

Sat on your sofa;
it's all broken springes.
This isn't the place for those violin strings.

- Ellie Goulding, The Writer

-+-

It's really interesting how that works, isn't it?

I've spent a lot of days sitting here in front of an empty New Weblog page, and simply can't think of anything to say.  I can't think of what to write about, so now I'm writing about how I can't think of what to write about.

There are stories, but they've reached the ears of friends and confidants instead of these pages.  That's honestly part of why I wrote so little when I was with Phuc.  These pages are where I turn to when I just want to speak, and speak to anyone; when I just want to make sure that my life and my thoughts are being chronicled somewhere, anywhere; when I turn to rambling as a form of advice.  So currently, the stories that I would normally spill onto here are scattered among hearts in the world.  It keeps me away from my love of writing, but still, I kind of like that.

Meanwhile, I am now engaging on the tedious endeavor of bringing my research to culmination.  I thought I was peaking at the National Undergraduate Research Conference, but since then, I've taken on four additional conferences at which I will be presenting.  It's not as overwhelming as it honestly should be, which only means that the gravity of the next two months hasn't hit me yet. 

When it does, I'll be sure to let you know.

Other recent events: started tutoring, got a new housemate!  I'll try to make everything sound more fun and eventful later, but I just wanted to stop by before going back to study/work!

Truck on, CV of mine.  Truck on!