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cellokat9
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Name: Kim
Location: Cincinnati, United States
Gender: Female
Interests: cello, God, fencing, reading, myths,
and all my pals
Occupation: Student
Industry: I"m so industrious! everything
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  cellokat9
Member Since:
12/24/2004
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| Geology sometimes makes me really sad about eternity. The way individual events are trapped in stone. Ripples that frolicked on the riverbed for centuries, unsuspecting that one event would freeze them in their tracks, covering them with mud, perfectly preserving those parting lineations that were only a single step in the dance that had been forming and unforming and reforming them.
The transgressions and regressions. This place that was once a lovely shallow sea with flounder and starfish and sea horses, that basked in the shallow filtered sunlight; one day it looks up and the water doesn't quite reach as far up its face, but nevermind the day is beautiful and- One day it is just a beach, well that's not as nice as being underwater but the sand washes up and down, bringing in clam shells and driftwood so it's still extremely pleasant, mind you- But one time is going to be the last. The last storm that leaves a strewn blanket of crushed shells. The last wave that ever laps up quite that high. The last kiss of the sea. You never expect it to be the last. The sea is fickle and changes with the tides; surely it will come back. But soon that place is covered in soil and interested in how a meandering river brushes by. Eventually the place forgets that it ever was a sea.
I suppose one phone call is the last between you and that friend who drifted apart when she moved away. You weren't thinking that it would be the last at the time but, oh, time gets away from you and then you're busy and then it's been so long that it might be awkward. When was the last time you spoke? You can't remember.
When you are relaxing and happy spending time with a loved one and then they are taken from the world... You know one of those times was the last picture you took together, the last hug captured on film; how disturbing to run across it buried in the rock record of the eons past. Surely that was not the last time we hugged, that was only the last one that got preserved... But when was that final embrace before she sailed to another realm? It's something you can't quite remember. You attached no significance to it at the time. You didn't expect it to be the last one.
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| I disagreed entirely with their philosophy about life. This girl we met actually said, "We're at that stage in our lives where we've got nothing better to do than get fucked up. So we get fucked up! It's great!"
I.... couldn't even think of what to say to her. Sure, maybe you've got nothing better to do with your life, but I sure can think of stuff I'd rather be doing than smoking weed and getting drunk. And I wish I could tell her that there IS more she could be doing... and trust me, I'm not all about working and studying. But you don't need to be fucked up to have a good conversation, or have a good time.
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| I'm worried because
I've been practicing letting go of things.
My lab? My precious lab, the only place I felt at home the entirety of sophomore year? My place of solace, the people who saved my life?
In truth, it was already taken from me. What with moving to a new building, never seeing sherif anymore, and with the constant uncertainty and wariness I had to keep towards Avery, and even towards Ben at the end there....
yes, in truth, that was already mostly gone.
Maybe that's why I decided to stop holding so tightly to it,
maybe that's why I pried my own hand open and pulled away--
out into the unknown, adrift in a sea, plunging into cold and heartless waters.
Maybe that's why I haven't gone to say hi to the fourth floor.
I'm not looking back,
I'm not looking back,
I'm not turning back.
You know? I never went back into that room
seeing the red rose lying poignantly on the bed where she died,
knowing the last time I was in that room, I was sobbing my eyes out and kissing my grandmother goodbye forever.
I stood at the threshold, looking at that bed, the carefully laid rose,
I didn't want to lift my foot
and step into the certainty of having said goodbye.
The house is sold now,
ransacked top to bottom in a cleansing process I didn't participate in,
I let my mother carry that burden,
I didn't have courage enough.
And then I went to highlands
and I was so happy and confident.
I laughed at my past failures,
I extolled the wonders of marine science, of research,
I read an article about carbon sequestration and I wanted to take orgo again,
I was on fire for life.
I was determined to get a top grade,
I eagerly longed for the day I would start work in A. Marchetti's lab,
I glowed at the thought of growing more and more in knowledge,
I thought, I was on the right path.
Those shoes, I have walked thousands of miles in.
My mother bought them for me,
on a day, if I recall, that we weren't getting along too well.
She said, get in the car Kim,
and I feared a lecture.
Well, she did lecture me, but she found me the perfect shoes.
Black, comfortable, on sale, and Sketchers to boot.
I wore those shoes almost every day for more than three years.
I've always been so attached to my clothes,
the ones that hold memories for me;
these shoes have had holes in them for over a year now,
I've already had to replace the laces.
I couldn't let them go,
I loved them too much,
I loved both the shoes and what they represented.
But at Highlands, I was so high on life.
I thought, nothing can stop or hurt me now;
I don't need to keep holding on to these shoes.
After sitting in this room for a week, they are probably moldy,
and I don't have room in my suitcase.
And so I kept the pretty laces,
and into the trash they went.
Good bye, shoes. I am ready for something new.
Well.
Here I am, back in Chapel Hill,
back with my face turned to a wall.
Did I say Philadelphia was the place of my nightmares?
The memories of last summer are even worse.
I wish I had known then,
that it was "perfectly possible to work for 10 hours a day, cry for 7 and sleep for 6."
I couldn't work or study for misery,
I don't know if I have ever felt more lost or alone.
So helpless and abjectly lonely.
Gabriel, that room at my Grandmother's house....
that's where my mom fed me soup
when I had my wisdom teeth out,
when my molars were full of cotton and my mouth could not feel or function,
when I bled into my throat for days,
when I couldn't stay awake because my pain medication overpowered me.
I was lying in that room when I felt violently ill in the middle of the night,
and Gram heard me throwing up,
she was weaker than she let on, and fighting that cancer so hard,
she really deserved a good night's sleep;
but she came to me and asked if I was alright,
brought me a cool washcloth,
and was so nice and sweet about everything.
She changed and washed the sheets the next day,
I felt ashamed,
shouldn't I, the young college kid, be the one helping you?
Gabriel, that was the room where I stayed up all night talking to you on skype with my iphone,
where I puzzled over and over the costs and benefits of having a boyfriend,
where I wrote that impassioned plea to you,
"I pledge all of my love to help you conquer any fears of scars that won't heal, of broken things that can't be fixed, of asymptotes that can't be crossed"....
I don't know why saying good-bye to those shoes I loved so dearly,
should help me say goodbye to that room--
I wanted to forget all the fights,
forget all the sadness.
I wanted to let go and face forwards.
Gabriel, it only worked for a short while.
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| we learned in sociology how our stories of ourselves are our definitions of our "selves". But when one 'line', or front, (backed up by a story) proves false, we need another socially acceptable way to explain it away.
I would be interested to read a study about people who have recently lost their jobs--- i think it would be very applicable to me. When one's central sense of self proves to be an obvious, irruffilable failure. It's embarassing, right? That you can't explain it? That you can't fix it or say it isn't real?
How do we deal with that?
how do we re-define our Self without a _fill_in_the_blank? Job, wife, GPA, whatever it was that defined you.
It's been a hard year. I realized this talking to Kati just now. 2010 starts with me sobbing in a Philadelphia Airport; has a middle section with my best friend breaking up with me and telling me he didn't want to date me which coincided nicely with my mother deciding I was an unfit daughter and throwing me out of the house; and later my true love told me he didn't love me anymore; and then my Grandmother, the only person who I felt stuck by me and supported me through all of it, died. On Thanksgiving Day. words can't express the sadness I feel just from typing that.
anyways. Along the way I also got a C in Analytical, dropped Ana lab, dropped Orgo I, and decided I couldn't be a chem minor.
Well in all of these ways I somehow lost a part of who I was. Who I thought of myself as, and who I presented myself as. The person that I tried to be and that others expected me to be.
So it got me thinking. I feel so much happier and non-depressed now. I feel like this semester, I really got it all together.
It's such a turnaround! How did it happen?
I think it's because I 'got back on the horse' so to speak. I picked new things to focus on. I couldn't have mcg, so instead I went out dancing with Miya, in ridiculous clothes, in boots that were laughable, in costume, in brazenness. So then I realized that other boys talked to me, flirted with me, were interested in me, and asked me out on a date. And I went on a date. Was I over gabriel? no. I went anyways because it was better than not going. And I learned so much from that.
I gave up on a chemistry minor. But I didn't think it was because I wasn't smart enough. I decided to get a Bio minor instead. I did better in those classes in the first place. So I took 504 and I aced it because I wanted to work hard and do well at something again.
"When there's nothing left to burn, you have to set your self on fire."
Well it helps that things with my family actually got better with a sad event happening. And that my boyfriend and I decided to try again-- that was a really nice thing. But it didn't have to happen that way. After staying up a whole night, and driving and listening to music the entire next day, I reached an epiphany. While I'm glad mc and I worked out, it could have just as easily not worked out, and I would still be an okay person. A person who is okay with myself.
And as for my family? I found a close enough network of good friends that even if they had continued to reject me, I would have been able to be okay with myself.
Funnily enough, this whole thing makes me feel much more equipped to take on the future.
When the worst-case scenario has already happened, you know that you can handle it if or when it happens again.
Breaking up with Gabriel used to be my worst fear. Being a failure at school was next. It never had occurred to me to make 'rejection by my family' on a list of things to fear before, but I bet it would have scared me a ton just a couple years ago.
But I've faced my worst fear. I've faced worse than my worst fear. And you know? I'm still perfectly okay.... just a little more guarded, a little less breakable, and a lot more independent.
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| There is something sad
in the swishing of the sea-grass
in the heavy heads of wheat being blown westward.
(there is) something melancholy
in the grey gulls gyrating in the sky
in the wandering albatross,
in the tossing of pebbles on the beach,
over and over till they are smooth as glass.
Something there is dreadful, fearful,
in the chalk of the cliffs,
in the mounds and mounds of skeletons,
in the tiny circles,
the broken rings.
The iron-grey of the salted sea,
the silent rise of white-tipped waves,
the ache of motion towards the land,
striving to swallow it up.
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