Tales of the time before the open road

The prospect that liftoff was at t minus twent hours and my suitcase wasn't packed shook me out of the mind-numbing stupor that settled first when I started watching the adventures of Professor What online two weeks ago and further when I'd become so engrossed in the series that the pathetic unfortunate romantic in me sniffled and blubbered and lamented and was generally useless after the particularly heartwrenching ending of the first season of the tenth Professor.

Admittedly, I really haven't done much in the past weeks. Oh, there was the occasional afternoon at the pool, the (shortlived) decision to go running every day, the Doorknob Debacle in which four different doorknobs broke in the course of two days, the Centipede Catastrophe in which the house was (and is still) invaded by centipedes, the Tarantulean Terror in which (no later than tonight) a giant hairy tarentula took a stroll through the living room and was promptly chased out with a broom, the Lizard Non-Alliterative Residence in which a giant lizard (and I mean giant, you could impale that thing on a stick and have a filling lizard kabob) took up residence in the compost bin, and a few other similar episodes. I did manage to christen the new stove and oven with a rather magnificent (if I do say so myself) array of tarts and cakes and sauces, but that's about it.

And now, I am less than ten hours from taking off in a plane headed to gay Paree, as Georgia would say, hopping on a train to less gay but still fairly joyful Angers, sleeping off the jetlag, and keeping my fingers and toes crossed for a job interview at some place possibly related to pharmaceuticals? while Mother and Sister and Brother head off to Spain to join Father on a business trip. And then again, I may shortly afterwards head off to somewhere else potentially related to biology if it turns out that the High And Mighty Professors really were too busy to answer me before. I hold little hope, but I know for certain that a jambon-beurre is in my near future, and that near future looks very delicious bright.

PS: Who's excited for the World Cup? Oh, oh, pick me!!!

How kind

Fifteen emails to ask for the internship, a thirty second phone call a month later to be notified that my requests weren't processed and they weren't taking any more students anyway.

I spent the rest of the day sulking in bed.

A run-in with the Tea Party

Mom hosted a tea party for the feminine francophone contingent of the City Back Home this morning. Which means, essentially, that a dozen or so elderly ladies sat around the living room for a couple hours, complaining about their knees or bragging about their past career in fashion and the expensive private international school they helped found in Big Huge City.

It also means that Mom's Best Friend brought her six-week-old daughter, and that Hitherto Unknown Lady, mother to the only school-age French children in the whole city, happens to be a marine biologist whose home institution is located fifty kilometers from the one to which I applied for this summer.

Speaking of which: early to bed for me, because I have to be up and functioning for Important Phone Calls at 8 tomorrow.

Catching up

It has been a very, very long time since I blogged regularly. It's summer, so with all that free time until I maybe get an internship, I should have time to catch you up on my life and catch up on yours, dear readers (who miraculously remain faithful after my long hiatus, I could not be more grateful to you!). So, without further ado, here it is!

I spent Monday and Tuesday in Big Huge City, visiting Friend Who Likes Science Fiction with all of the usual suspects. It's funny how we see each other nearly every day, but to make goodbyes official, we have to spend some more time together.

Goodbyes don't make me feel very sad, although I'm not sure why. Maybe I've learned that this is a very small world and there's a good chance I will see people again, maybe knowing there are phones and the internet and email and instant messaging makes it easier to (sometimes) keep in touch, maybe I'm just not very good at people?

In this case, I know for a fact that I will be seeing all of them a good number of minutes every single day as we will be living together. It's exciting (we're going to live together!) and terrifying (we're grownups...) but mostly exciting (we're going to live together!). Of course, there will be issues. Many, many issues.

Take food, for instance: Crazy Redhead Mathematically-Inclined Friend is vegetarian and Childish Booksmart Friend is very picky, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem since we'll probably just cook our own meals and are used to a semi-vegetarian diet anyway. Internet-Savvy Friend recently discovered that not only did she have Celiac disease, she was also allergic to every type of grain, corn, rice, soy, fish, chocolate, and many other things. It's already become a sore spot, as she suggested that the kitchen be kept gluten-free, a request none of us were willing to agree to but instead compromised (this means that the kitchen has to be scrubbed clean after anything we make so she doesn't get sick). More than being just a cleaning issue, it's extremely hard on her to not be able to eat food besides potatoes and eggs and vegetables, any food she feels like, or do something so simple as go to a restaurant or put sauces on meats. Over the past semester, we've seen her get overcome previous issues obviously caused by her allergen-rich diet, but she has also started being violently sick whenever she accidentally eats something she shouldn't. It's hard to hold her when she's crying, knowing there is absolutely nothing I can do and I can't even share my stash of Lindt 70% to make her feel better.

Pets: Crazy Redhead is allergic to cats, but Friend With Many Pairs of Sunglasses' little brother is even more allergic. Her family must get rid of their old cat, and for now it seems we will have an extra tenant in our crazy household. A tenant expressly forbidden to enter the rooms, but who will be showered in love and attention nevertheless.

Relationships: Things are going well for the couples, but the possibility of a breakup is always there. It could be awkward for everyone.

On the upside, though (and I may have mentioned this once or twice before), we'll be living together! That should make it easier to keep up with everyone's lives and probably act like an old married couple of seven wives by the end of the year.

(It's getting late. I will finish updates later and sleep instead!)

Taste of summer

There's nothing quite like the illicit feeling of swimming naked in a pool at midnight.

Summer, Day 1

My favorite box to unpack in the first one, whatever the first one is. The feeling of taking your belongings, carefully packed in some other place, in some other time, and arranging them. Bringing your life out of storage.

My least favorite box to unpack is the last one. The one with all the junk you didn't know where to put. You've already spent time unpacking, putting away, organizing. This is the box that makes the move definite, the box that says "you live here now," the box that takes your careful organization to instant mess because there was no place to put the junk anyway. I usually avoid unpacking that box until the very end, when I have to pack again and move somewhere else.


Today, I slept in and enjoyed the stuffy hotness of my room, the sound of rowdy cardinals in the trees, the horn of the passing train. No slammed doors, no muffled music in the hallway, no forgotten alarm clock in the distance, no sleep-deprived crammers slumped over books outside their rooms, no hum and beat of the City. The first day of summer.

As I turned in my key to the front desk last night, leaving dorm life behind maybe forever, the strap of the ex-shower flip flops I was wearing broke. Shower shoes Bookish Friend had given me on the first day of college two days ago, broken shoes on the last day of college this year. A sign?

The End, The Beginning

There was a Boy. There was no Boy. There was a boy between the states of Boy and Non-Boy.

Now, there is not, and never will be, a Boy.

I tore up the "Happy birthday, with love" card. I threw away the dried purple flowers. I deleted the phone number. I trashed eight years' worth of emails. I removed contact information, email addresses, and screen names.

When I get home, I will burn the letters, throw away the Prom corsage, throw away the movie ticket of the first kiss.

There is no more Boy, there is no more feather. What for eight years was the greatest joy of my life was for six months the worst thing to ever happen to me.

There is no more Boy, the scale tips up, and my life can begin again.

Crazy talk

Being crazy: It's the thing you know only happens to other people, until it happens to you.

I'm crazy.

It's not the kind of crazy where you wear funny jumpers and own ten cats and mutter to yourself as you knit tiny sweaters for destitute hamsters, it's not the kind of crazy where you run around the streets naked but for a long beard while mothers shield their children's eyes, it's not the kind of crazy where you go bungee-jumping and sky-diving.

It's the kind of crazy where you think life is normal sometimes and the rest of the time you don't have the strength to do anything. The kind of crazy where you know for a certainty you're a failure and sometimes you don't even know who you are. The kind of crazy where you have to keep yourself from breaking down and crying during class or during dinner or because someone said your hair was cute.

It's the kind of crazy you don't see for years and years and years, the kind of crazy that grows like a black hole but somehow stays unnoticed until a feather tips the balance.

My feather fell very, very slowly for a month and a half, and then everything collapsed.

One night, I just found myself tossing and turning in the middle of the night, sobbing, my head full of thoughts I couldn't deal with, sobbing, unable to remember my name or why I existed, sobbing, with a bottle of very strong pain medicine in one hand, sobbing, trying very hard to do what I knew was something incredibly stupid.

I didn't do it. Instead, I got up and made a cup of tea, and that mug full of water was the most important thing in the world for the whole trip down the hall to the water fountain and back.

I saw a therapist, I talked to my friends, I tried to fix things.

In the past, being depressed was all right. Being depressed was only a minor down, something I could get out of by playing the Glad Game and taking a little break.

This wasn't anything like that. This still isn't anything like that.

This is like a hole you can't get out of, a hole you don't even see the walls of because you can't even see past the crushing oblivion that is everything you try to think of. There is nothing in the world worth living for, there is no love, there is no happiness for you, you are worthless, you are stupid, you shouldn't even be here.

For the longest time, I couldn't write. Couldn't muster up the energy. Sometimes I'd think of the words without writing them down, sometimes even words were too hard to think of. It was better to just sleep.

I'd like to say that I know the cause, I'd like to say that it's over now, I'd like to say I'm completely cured, but I can't.

What I can say is I know the feather, I know the worst is most likely over in great part, I know I'm on the way to someday being cured. It's not much, but it's a start.

The greatest problem is that it comes and goes. Today was a beautiful day, but two days ago I was sure I would never have the strength to come back to school after a week of holidays because I wasn't good enough, because I couldn't hack it, because I was terrible at everything I did.

Tomorrow may be a great or a terrible day. There is rarely a middle ground.

Some things give me hope. For example, there are three children's books I've wanted to reread sitting on my desk, there is the finished take-home exam, there is the list of things I have to do and the schedule I've made for myself to do them, there's the class trip to the sea next weekend, there's the fact that you, readers, keep on commenting here and worrying about me when most people really couldn't care less.

Some things make me quake in fear. For example, there's all the math homework I think I understand but really just looms like a mountain I can't climb. There's the Cell Bio that seems ridiculously easy but somehow bores me to actual tears during lecture and trips me up on silly mistakes. There's the emails I have to answer, the appointments I have to schedule, the things I have to plan and organize.

I really want to say that I'll be all right. That it will pass and I'll get better.

But when you think one day that everything is done and over with and the future looks bright, only to be run over by a train, there's not much you're certain of.

Hourly Comic Day

Click on the pictures to make them bigger (in theory).

I have no idea how to present it any better...