Passion

 The wedding is gonna be Sunday, April 22, 2012, in Santa Cruz. YAAAY!!

Also, I am amazed at how, so far, 75% of the people I've spoken to about my wedding fears have offered to do something to alleviate them. Like make my dress. Or take our pictures. Or find us a location.

Dude. A Practical Wedding is right about everyone coming together and helping out. This wedding is gonna be seriously awesome.

Also, anyone have an invitation-printing hobby? How about wedding cake-baking?

Hurrah!

Okay, so I'm leaving early tomorrow morning. I fly from Hartford to Oakland, where my good friend Neal will pick me up (I hope). Then we'll spend two or three days hanging out (and climbing) in SF, one of which I will probably ditch him for and spend hanging out with bananasofdeath and owlishness, who are both in the area... Then it's down to Sunnyvale to see fieryminge (YAY!!) for a couple days right before her birthday. She'll give me a ride down to Santa Cruz, where I will pick up Ann's car and go pick up her at the SF airport. Then the real fun begins. The 14th to the 18th we'll be hanging out in Santa Cruz doing all the normal Santa Cruz-y things (and I might even have lunch or something with Jamie!). On the 17th we're going skydiving (I need to call and make the reservation...) in Hollister, and on the 18th we start our cross-country drive from Santa Cruz to Boston. And we can stop through Reno on the way and pick up my new laptop, which is already expensively awaiting me safely in my parents' garage.

After two weeks of cavorting across the country, we should arrive in New Haven and/or Boston. I'll help Ann move in a little, then come back to New Haven for a day or two, and then I fly from Hartford to Reno on July 4th. Then my parents and I will drive across the evil desert to Salt Lake City for my cousin's wedding (YAYAYAYA!!! And I found out yesterday that a couple of my far-away cousins will be there, so I get to see a few people I haven't seen since before THEY got married). Then I fly directly home from Salt Lake City to Hartford on the 9th, and collapse into a little ball and sleep for a good five or so hours before going back to lab.

It's gonna be an awesome summer.

Also, I will probably not update lj. At least, not regularly. But I will make a full and detailed report upon my return.
Have fun!

I guess today is one of those three-entry days.

Sometimes I think better in the shower.

I sat down and wrote a letter to him last week (of course I never intend to send it). The funny thing is, I started it the morning before I got his email. I finished it the morning after I got his email, and it was full of all the things I would say if we sat down face-to-face in a perfect universe. Here is what I would say if we sat down face-to-face in THIS universe. "I want to be friends. You mean so much to me, and I want so badly for you to be a part of my life. I think we can be friends, and I'll do everything in my power to be a good friend. I hope that, in five or six or ten years, you can forgive me, and that someday, when the stars are better aligned, you could consider giving me a third chance. But in the meantime, I just want your friendship, and all I offer you is mine."

I wonder what he'd say, or if he'd believe me, or if he'd somehow slip into that perfect universe and say something ridiculous.

I feel like I've been living outside of myself for the last 15 months. Or even longer. Like I've been sort of looking down on myself, making decisions that seem rational as a third party. I haven't made first-person decisions in so long... Didn't I decide I wasn't going to go to grad school? Didn't I decide to take a year off, unless I got into UCSF? Wasn't I more focused on the "year off" than the "UCSF"? When did someone else step in and decide that taking a year off was a bad idea? When did that person decide that moving to Connecticut and leaving behind everything I hold dear would be a good idea?
In the last four days, I've begun to feel like myself again. I feel like I slipped back into my own body and finally have control over my own decisions. It's a wonderful, glorious feeling. The main problem is that things are nearly unrecognizable. My life is unrecognizable. These aren't the things I wanted; this isn't the life I wanted. So the question is what to do now...? Do I continue on and make the best of this situation I somehow created for myself? Or, since I feel like my real self for the first time in who knows how long, do I try to backtrack and recreate the path I would have taken had I been sane when I left the trail?

I would have taken a year off. I would have stayed in Santa Cruz and gotten a ridiculous job I would have hated. Tech work, maybe. Santa Cruz Biotech, making antibodies. I would have made no money, had to start paying my loans back, lost my annuity, and been so poor I would have panicked about money all the time. I would have treated him better and held onto him and we would have done well together. After the year off, I would have re-applied to graduate schools, or maybe I would have deferred UCSF, and I would have started at UCSF this fall, doing rotations but knowing I'd join the Blackburn lab. Maybe it's too much to pretend that he would be at Berkeley in physics; maybe he'd need a year off too. Maybe things wouldn't be okay between us. I think the main issue in this scenario is that I would have done what I WANTED instead of what I thought was GOOD for me. I shouldn't have come to grad school because I thought I was SUPPOSED to. Part of me wanted to, yes, and I do love Yale, but I think I really would have benefited from taking some time off to calm down and collect myself and be young and stupid. You can only cram so much young and stupid into your first year of graduate school. It's just too busy and requires just too much responsibility.

That's another thing. I'm worried I'm too much of a child. Is that why no one else loves me? I can't keep my apartment clean; I can't cook; I don't know a thing about my own car. I'm a child in a graduate student's body, and each is wondering how it got stuck with the other.

There's a huge artistic side to me, hiding just beneath the dorky exterior. Maybe I wasn't kidding when I joked about deferring grad school to live in a box in San Francisco and paint. Maybe I can't paint, but the sentiment might have been accurate. Knitting has been a huge outlet for me, a chance to make things and be creative. Emily told me last night that I was always knitting the most interesting things--wire heart boxes, super soft shawls with no pattern, slugs. It was, oddly enough, possibly the most meaningful compliment I've ever gotten. It was the kind of off-hand comment that hits some sort of internal target. I was astonished and very proud of myself. I AM creative, and I DO make neat things. I'd never thought about that before; I always considered myself bad with arts and crafts; I can't even draw a straight line, and I can't sew to save my life. But anyone can knit, and my mental creativity is enough to give me some sort of artistic outlet.

I know a lot of this doesn't really make sense. I know I'm sort of rambling. I just feel like (as usual) there are so many things going on inside my head all at once. He's a huge part of it, but there are other things too. My own identity and my role in the universe, to name a few. Could I really drop out and open a flower shop? Could I drop out and open a yarn store? I don't know the first thing about business, but I know that my obsessive nature would be perfect for running either kind of store. I'd learn everything about my products and would force them lovingly on customers. I'd be the kind of friendly interactive shopkeeper you find in small towns. Like Santa Cruz. Or even New Haven.
And in my spare time I'd read everything under the sun, and listen to NPR, and start writing the novel I've been wanting to work on since the fourth grade.

Or maybe I was supposed to do what Ann's doing, and get a Ph.D. in marine biology or oceanography and not genetics. I could have gone out on boats and learned to sail (better) and to dive and I would have had that job that makes people say, "Don't you wish you had her job?"

Does everyone feel like this?

Turns out I can't handle the internet. Yeah, it's like $200 to fly to San Jose right now, but it's about $600 to fly to San Jose and back again. And more than that to fly round trip to Reno. So maybe what the universe is saying... is that I should just buy a one-way ticket and go home....

I'm a wreck today. Some stuff (or rather, a thing) happened this week, and it shouldn't have thrown me off center but it did. I'm homesick and sad and lonely and I feel so, so, so stupid and guilty. I've messed up. I've messed everything up. I shouldn't have graduated early; I should have stayed in Santa Cruz for a fourth year. I shouldn't have moved to Connecticut. I don't belong here. I should be in Santa Cruz right now, living on loans and Ramen, taking electives and graduate seminars as a senior, writing a thesis that makes sense and spending free time--which I'd have tons of--on the beach, watching dolphins at sunset, with people I love.
I shouldn't be sitting at home alone in New Haven on a Saturday night, watching full disks of Gilmore Girls and crying into lukewarm tea because it's too cold (and dangerous) to go outside for a walk.

I'm wondering again if I should drop the whole ruse. What the hell am I doing here? Who am I kidding? What on earth would I do with a Ph.D.? Everything seems so pointless and exhausting. I miss fog. I miss my family. I miss my family pre-baby. I want to go back to fall quarter freshman year and do everything over again, the right way this time, and not end up alone and cold on the wrong side of the country.

Going home tomorrow afternoon. I've never in my life been so excited about going to Reno. I cannot WAIT to get on that plane tomorrow. Flying west! Into the setting sun! Toward the correct ocean, the correct coast, home. (At this point "home" is anything east of Utah, so I use the term lightly.) (Speaking of Utah, another one of my cousins is having a baby, and she's naming her after my grandma, the one who died two years ago. Everyone together now: "Awww!")

I'm gonna make a trip over to SF after Christmas and stay with a friend for two nights, then go down to Santa Cruz for less than 12 hours and get a ride back up to Reno with Ann to go SKIING OVER NEW YEAR'S!!! Yay!!! I could not possibly be more excited about this series of events. Unless it involves continuous chocolate and a marriage proposal and the promise that I don't have to come back to New Haven afterward.

Again, in true Christmas spirit, I give you... the meme!
( Sing about me! )

Today was my last Santa Cruz Farmer's Market experience. I'm really going to miss Wednesdays in Santa Cruz.

I rode my bike downtown (no way I was going to try to park downtown on Farmer's Market day... I'm not so crazy about my new car that I'd spend an hour driving around looking for parking). It's a gorgeous day, but not too hot. I bought all the things I love most at the FM--blueberries, raspberries, an avocado, squeaky cheese, expensive specialty cheddar cheese... And then I bought a peach, and sat on the grass in front of the church across the street from the market, and ate it in the shade. It dripped all over me and made my hand all sticky and tasted fantastic. Then I ate squeaky cheese and blueberries and realized the two really don't go together, and I watched all the random Santa Cruz people walk by with their organic freshly grown produce, and thought about how much I love this town, and about how amazing California is, despite being the most super expensive place I've ever been. While I was riding my bike home along Pacific, there was a guy playing an organ in front of one of the shops. How he got an organ downtown I don't know, but it was a really cool sound. A little farther down the road there was a guy playing the flute. Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz... what a perfect blend of absurdity and beauty.

I'm leaving this weekend. I'll probably take my computer offline tomorrow and pack it securely into my car. I don't know what I'll do for entertainment Friday, but I need to start getting things squared away in their travel positions, and it's important that the electronics be secure. I guess my point is, if you want to have any contact with me in the next several weeks, the cell phone is going to be the way to go, because who knows when I'll get a chance to check my email on the road, and I have to get internet set up in New Haven when I get there.