For example, around forty-five minutes in, someone turned off the classroom lights to assist our Professor, so the images that she had prepared so carefully, and which appeared so crisp on her large Macbook would appear from the projector as vividly as hoped for. Something about the March light drifting through one remaining open window reminded me to a moment over a decade ago. Running around during recess with my two best friends--at the time, one still is, the other is lost somewhere in California far from me--playing "The Game." It was a creation of our own imaginations. I was raised the daughter of two intellectuals, who had very slight propensities for things more creative than cutting open the human body and extracting damaged goods. Very slight. Somehow this was greatly magnified in me. My entire world was fantastical when I was small. It still is, but I hide it a lot better, because I don't share these secrets with just anyone, and I don't have to, because as I let my imagination wander as I walk around my University's campus, I keep a distance from the secular world with noise-canceling headphones. What song will propel me deep into outer space when I walk around late at night, or into the fantastic on a bright spring day?
But "The Game" was a creation that I shared with two other people. We were fairies. It was that simple. But we created incredibly complicated stories and plots and imaginary characters (shared imaginary friends are somehow far less depressing in retrospection than the sole friend of a lonely child). I was the Purple one. I had control over living animals, and as we grew up and became smarter, my domain increased slightly to control more things, like plants. My primary mode of assisted locomotion was via Dragonfly, the favorite animal of my mother. We didn't keep pets. Of course, there was overlap between our powers. One of us was Blue, controlled water. One of us was Red, controlled fire. Our colors and our powers were as connected to who we were then as they are connected to whom we've since become.
The specific scene that caught up to me in-between throat clearings and continuous lecture was one day in early spring or late fall when we were all getting married to imaginary princes. We usually played closer to the fences on the far side of the field, or near the train tracks that were no longer used, and subsequently had become overgrown with oaks and pines--exciting Midwestern flora. That day we were dreaming closer to the kindergarten classrooms, in a large swath of wet green grass. I remember my friends, but it is hard to imagine them as they were then, and not as I see them now. Fully developed and no longer quite so good at dreaming. I can kind of remember what they sounded like. I know what I sounded like, thanks to home videos. High pitched versions of the vocal intonations that we would eventually get to. I also remember what the princes looked like, although they never did exist. They were amalgamations of archetypal princes from medieval stories with heavy Western biases that were popular during my childhood. Disney movies, EverAfter, the Cinderella movie featuring Brandy.
It was then that I closed my eyes and placed my head down on the desk in front of me. My left hand raised to caress the accessible patch of skin between my neck and shoulder. I didn't want to be in class. I would much rather be having an adventure somewhere. Science can become so dreary sometime. Why is it so factual? Or, at the very least, logical? Why was I a biology major? Didn't I realize that I didn't care about these types of things? Didn't I realize that I wanted to live out the dreams of a younger me? That if I couldn't make it to outer space, or couldn't live in a palace, or if I never became a respected warrior princess, than at least I could write about such things in amazing detail so that my dreams could sometimes be dreams of the worlds I'd never get to but if I could...
Life does that. I don't think anyone else realizes that as much as I do. Life is continuous. I can't forget that what I do today is influenced by what I did years ago. Everything. Melodramatic. That was me, a little fourth grader wanting to take acting lessons even though I was introverted to the point of being unable to introduce myself to new people. Now I act through interactions with specific people before meeting them; I speak sometimes as if reading straight from a script. Analytical. If I really wanted to, I could write in amazing detail about anything ever. Including a candy bar. Only A+ in my seventh grade class. To this day my best writing arises from creative non-fiction. Forlorn. Creative. Quiet. Superstitious. Hyperactive. Humorous. Non-realistic. Imaginative. Egocentric. Scared of losing friends.
I had thought myself sick the entire weekend. Starting on Thursday when I picked up my best friend (the Red one) from the train station, and lasting through the weekend, I'd wake up occasionally with a hangover, but every morning, a scratchy throat. The feeling usually dispersed by mid afternoon, but the next morning, there it was. Slight stuffy nose, nothing serious, but present. It was this week when I had tried so desperately to get this girl to like me, because I was rather serious about getting this girl to be my girlfriend.
I vaguely remember high school. It was in this time that I acquired my first boyfriend. In that time, I possessed the same traits I had as an eight year old and I still possess as a twenty-one year old, even if I try my very best to become socio-normative and ignore some of them. No one needs an imaginary when they are destined for medical school, right? In high school, I was still very much the ten year old playing mostly in my head during recess with a few select friends. My first boyfriend and I were relatively similar personality-wise, the products of individual homes that possessed some aggravating socio-economic and dysfunctional similarities. But we exchanged many amusing and deeply symbolic gifts while we dated for a year and a half. Our conversations were mostly non-realistic, humorous discussions of imagined, or hypothetical, situations.
So back to this girl. Last year, I had been hooking up with a ton of guys in a relatively small time frame, which I will refer to in retrospect as my Slutty period. Starting in the fall, however, I wanted to fix that. I wanted to date someone. My first attempt was a fail, because I was still concentrating on the type of person who facilitates mutual sluttiness more so than mutual respect. My second attempt was far more promising. I awoke slightly, remembering whom I used to be. No longer did I care foremost about my appearance during interactions. What else could I rely on? My creativity. Yes. My melodrama, as well, and my hyperactivity. Deep analysis was also required. What has made this person exist as they are and not otherwise, and why am I attracted to them?
But my second attempt, while satisfactorily creating another friend, was also a fail, due to red tape and other logistical issues. Time passed. Another beginning became apparent. It would have to be my final attempt, to close out my college career. I very much did not want to fail, based on the credentials of my target. It is very rare to find someone who is as quietly amusing as they are loudly attractive.
So I asked advice from friends. As soon as I discovered that she was single, which conflicted with prior information I had obtained, I green lit the project. How do you date someone in such a way as not to fail? I gave it my very all. People do not date at Colgate. I had only been on one in my entire career, and I am someone who many people find attractive and intriguing. I must confess, I am a horrible girlfriend. But still, one doesn't necessarily have to find that out ever, and they certainly cannot discover that until they attempt to date me at the very least. So I stopped thinking about what I couldn't do, because they are awkward and uneasy and traditionally not done at Colgate, and started thinking about what I would do for someone if they liked me as much as I liked them. Fear vanished. What couldn't I do? Could I make my friend cook for me? Could I create a themed invite for a party of 2? Could I make a cocktail and prepare it in a child's dinosaur sippy cup? Could our conversations be mostly about me? Yes. All these things could be physically done. What had stopped me before?
Was it the difference in gender? Was it desperation? Was it a deeper understanding of my target than I had attempted to achieve earlier, during my Slutty period? It was probably a mixture of all these things. But, these are egocentric assumptions. It very well might have been the person was incredibly inspiring. What won't you do for beautiful people? What won't you do for beautiful people who are also good people? What won't you do for beautiful people to convince them to kiss you?
In the end, it was a failure. But the fault didn't lie on the personality traits I had rediscovered and had culminated so creatively to make myself into literally, as I explained it to her in relationship to my pun-laden jokes, "the best stuff." No. It did not even lie on logistics, or my entire non-realistic perception of the world and how relationships should work (e.g. they should usually be intended to last longer than six weeks). No, the failure dealt with nonreciprocal attraction. Not logical attraction, because I am objectively beautiful, to her and many people. But rather, some weird physical attraction that makes people want to believe in human pheromones even though there is no objective evidence of the phenomenon.
So I told her I would want to kiss her. She should kiss me. Analytical. You can't decide whether or not you like someone until you kiss them. It's in songs. It's in scientific literature. It's logical. She agreed. We kissed. I kissed her again. Even a third time, but apparently, even though I was trying my very best to be a good kisser like I know I am, nothing changed the physical neutrality she felt for me. I questioned my very existence. I questioned it through the next day. I questioned it with my best friend, whose imagination and mine were molded together during forty-five minutes of recess everyday thirteen years ago. We imagined everything. I existed. But only sometimes, and not to this girl whom I had really wanted to be my girlfriend.
But the virus that had caused me to sniffle for the past three days existed to both of us, because we possessed similarly manipulated genomes. So as I sat in class, paying tentative attention to lecture, I regretted every throat clearing noise she made sitting right next to me.
But a curious thing happened. For weeks I had been trying to write. I couldn't. My speaking had also been severely impaired. Grammar, syntax, vocabulary--all severely reduced. This morning I woke up, and somehow, despite heartache, found a way to focus. I wanted to write. I wanted to communicate words. I wanted someone to understand me, because I understood things so clearly in my mind. But through my hands or my throat, I lost all my words. I got them back. The possibilities were endless. From blogs to final research papers. Academic writing, poetry, communicating with one's best friend. I got these things back. What did I write today? It wasn't terribly good, but it was something.
Patients still view doctors as professionals, but the public's admiration for the field is declining. In the mid-twentieth century, physicians were on par with Supreme Court Justices. Now the doctor represents an interchangeable source of medical advice, competing with the internet, advertisements, and the nightly news.And I didn't just want to write. I wanted to create music, I wanted to rap; I wanted to wire bend and create jewelry. I wanted everything that I loved when I was younger, but that was slowly dying in me as I became cramped and fearful of my future that sounded so very adult-like. I was forlorn, but out of this arose all my beautiful traits and I could finally put words to them and characterize them and chastise myself for losing them for so long. Creative. Analytical. Melodramatic. Non-realistic. Hyperactive. This is the mind not of someone who remains depressed as they remain engaged with the dullness of going through the motions of upper education. This is the mind of someone who has finally awoken from a long held, but slowly abating coma.
What won't you do for beautiful people?
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