secure the grounds for the later parade

Yesterday, I decided to remain silent rather than complain incessantly, as I have been doing of late. You can thank me later.

Entropy has been triumphing over all else. I have realized that there is only so much structure you can impose on life, because it is, by nature, chaotic. There are some tough decisions ahead that need to be made regarding where I ought to impose structure and where I have to let things go.

Last night, people were wasting my time while I was trying to get out of work. RR, for example, felt the need to give me a lecture about the realities of my life. He has put my chances of achieving The Goal at 40%, which is an upgrade from six months ago, when he put it at 30%. Given this probability estimate, he questions why I am pursuing The Goal at all. A part of me wants to half-flippantly respond: "I got nowhere else to go!"

It's only half joking, because the other half is just that amount of desperation. Even though I logically know that everything is grey on most days, I want everything to be black and white. Something about being all or nothing appeals to me, and I have trouble letting go of it. I have trouble believing there is an option where the dream of The Goal never manifests in reality, and yet still, I go on and find an alternate source of satisfaction.

This is particularly ridiculous, because once I wanted to be the greatest. Once, I had an intensity and clearness of purpose that was very nearly frightnening. It started with a simple suggestion, the simple notion that perhaps I ought to spend the summer of my sophomore year working in a research lab. I seized on this notion with such ferocity that I unnerved the friend who had made the original suggestion. That very week, I marched into the office of an organic chemistry professor I'd never previously spoken to and pitched myself at him.

I was like that, back then. I would cut out my heart and shove it in your face to prove that I meant business. I told Professor S that I would work as many hours as he wanted, that I would work unpaid, that I had to work for him, because his was the research that interested me. If I had known even the slightest about organic chemistry and research, I would have known that this was not really a tough sell. Gee, this chick walks into my office, has decent grades, doesn't want to get paid, and will basically do whatever I tell her. Hmm, let me think. Fortunately, I was blissfully naive, and so I was equally, blissfully jubilant that he granted me a position.

That was the summer that I tore away from all the previously imposed constraints on my life, the summer that I was really born. I was not supposed to sign up for a summer of research, I had not previously established my independence, and this violent rending of all cords came with consequences. I spent that summer living in the slums of Allston, working for a children's toy catalog company, taking Physics on the polar opposite end of the city, barely making rent, and working in the lab for free. The apartment in Allston was robbed the first week I moved there. There were days I rode the T with my monthly pass just to get a breath of air-conditioning. There were weeks I spent living the cliche of eating Ramen noodles for lunch and dinner.

And it might have been the best summer of my life. I felt superhuman, I felt unstoppable. I had discovered grueling hours spent running columns in the lab, and somehow swooned and fallen hard. There were days I could barely breathe, and yet I did not need oxygen. I was propelled by something else entirely. This was it, this was the thing. Nothing else seemed reliable- people, love, family could let you down. This was entirely, untouchably mine.

Here's the thing. I do not work in the lab now. And I neither wish to work in the lab now, nor regret the events that took me away from that research. If I squared with that nineteen-year old version of me, she would have spit in my face at that admission. She would have asked with disdain, "What the hell happened to you?"

Sometimes I think I killed that girl, that she had to die in order for me to live. But lately, I have been thinking that I just put her to sleep for a while. Lately, I have been yearning for that intensity again, that myopic, ruthless determination. And that is why I cannot let go of The Goal. It is all so arrogant and self-involved and ridiculous, and yet, it is so much mine. How could I possibly give it up?