It's been 26 hours since I've gotten any sleep yet I feel amazing. When life is golden, nothing could break that stride. The forward momentum is reliable enough to get you to where your sights are determined to go. And my feet are moving. They're pushing. They're stomping out a path for any willing enough to follow me in my march towards the girlish dreams I dared to think.
It's crazy, bewildering, breathlessly fucking consuming the way it feels to realize those impossible visions I dreamed up as a little girl in a sad place are not just pipe dreams. I grew up long before I was grown in the grayest of two bedroom homes that didn't allow dreams to be drawn up in color. Dad's utilitarian PVC pipe was enough to purge me of most my fantastical ideas. In secret, I dreamed of being a scientist in a white lab coat gazing beyond the known world through my telescope or a marine biologist sinking into the watery deep to discover beast unseen. I wanted to be a writer, creator of minds and circumstance. I wanted train as a teacher, who's guiding hands molded the minds of the succeeding generations. I wanted to be so many things I never thought possible.
But it is possible. I've grown above myself to see that I have the drive, the ambition to do all these things. Before it felt like what I wanted lay at the far reaches of every corner of this galaxy. Working towards one meant getting further and further from another. A horrible case of not being able able to eat some of that fucking cake clutched in bloody fist. I feel amazing because everything in my life right now is pulling all those distant aims closer so they are surrounding me. Just within sight if not reach. It's the feeling of knowing you're on the right track.
I got the job in the microbio lab! This will be a gold star on my resume for both grad school and MSF. From here all I have to do, minimally, is get my masters and I'll be able to teach at a community college. Advancing to a PhD and it's publish or parish. I could write papers or non-fiction like my hero Carl Sagan (Dragons of Edan, one of my favorite suggested reads). I'm already a clinical laboratory scientist; instead of using a telescope to see the macro universe my microscope is instrumental in viewing the microcosm. Finally, with a more extensive knowledge base in microbiology I could join the team of medical professionals and bring relief to a plagued world. Now, that last one is a dream for sure.
Still, I'm not there yet. I still have a ways to go but I can see it on the horizon. As long as I keep my strides long and my pace steady I'll make it there before sundown.
The Skinny
- Jie Hua
- Detroit, Mi
- I'm in the process. I'd like to expand on that, but it's in the process. I go about my business under the guidance of gut-feelings and universal street signs. I see myself as a very quiet person. Not because I have little to say, only that my abundant thoughts know not where to start. As a child I fantasized about looking through a telescope to give me truth about the world. It amuses me now that what I am doing is looking down a microscope in an effort to reevaluate my holistic position. I am a loner, a drifter, a dreamer.
