I love science.
In theory.
Being able explain "everything" sounds nice, doesn't it? Wouldn't that finally elevate mankind to the God-status that we've already arrogantly granted ourselves?
Once you get into it, however, science is infuriating. Crossed-out numbers and tedium and a lot of dropped expletives and dropped beakers. Type-As with unusual social mannerisms obsessing over finding small things and smaller things and teenier tinier things that are so teeny and tiny that you can't tell where they are and how fast they're going at the same time. Then it turns out they actually might not even exist.
Reduce reduce reduce. Repeat repeat repeat. Fail fail fail.
Then, one day, mostly through luck and the unbreakable tenacity of scientific will, something coagulates the right way, or whatever, and there's a brief period of Mars-Rover-landing-type celebration. Maybe your PI buys your team pizza and gets sloppy drunk in front of you. You get rejected by 100 journals and one publishes you. Then you realize your study bred more questions than it answered and they're dividing and multiplying like a super-strain. The answers must be smaller. If there is truth, it must be infinitesimal.
Reduce reduce reduce. Repeat repeat repeat. Ad infinitum until you find something so small that it's infinitely vast.
Into the void we go again.
The only time God ever talked to me it was about science. Despite what they say, there is a realm where God and science coexist. I stumbled into it when I was 10. I was really into astronomy at the time, and one night was immersed in a kid's astronomy book called Galaxies, or something. Reading about the Universe (which, apparently, is a latte beige color), an eerie and ominous feeling came over me, like I had suddenly wandered into someplace I wasn't supposed to be. I came to know it as the feeling of "vastness," but at the time, I felt like a kid who went looking for the bathroom but stumbled into the teacher's lounge. It felt wrong. So I asked God if it was okay that I was there.
"Is this right? Are humans even supposed to know about things that are so....big?"
In a seizing and otherworldly voice that was not heard, but rather implanted into every neuron, "Why would they be there if not for you to discover them?"
"Wow, okay," thought 10-year-old me, and I went to sleep. Then I grew up to be an acceptably mediocre scientist.
Just in the way that science is seeing things happen that already happen, someday we will come to see what already is. What is indivisible and endless.
I think that God and science can't "co"exist, because they are the same thing, and they only exist to be discovered.
In times of heaviness, darkness, despondency,
I have clambered in a reverie toward the ocean
With the will to go under.
But at the brush of skin to swell, I realize it was not to drown,
But the primordial yearning to float, that brought me here
The desire to be
With endlessness above
Endlessness below
Endlessness on all sides
With my own body and spirit
Nothing else
Supported, enveloped
In the cosmic soup where all of life began.
And when I crawled ashore
It would be as if I was the first.
I can't figure out how to do the accent above the "e" in Beyonce, but I'm going to assume everyone knows who I'm talking about.
I'm sick of hearing about her. I'm sick of her like I'm sick of Gigi Hadid and Kylie Jenner's lips. Beyonce is a beautiful and talented woman. I enjoy working out to her music at the gym. A still shot from one of her music videos has been my Twitter background for like, 3 years. But she is not an idol to me. When she tells me, a fellow bitch, to bow down, I do not feel obligated to do it. I am not empowered by the propaganda. I am not empowered by her third-grade reading level lyrics. I am not empowered by her talk-singing about giving Jay Z a blowie in the back a limo. I am not empowered by her mugging a smartphone camera while pouring a college-tuition's worth of liquor into a hot tub. I am not empowered by her Met Gala dress that looked like she Silence-of-the-Lambsed a dress out of Becky's horribly diseased skin.
I do not find Beyonce empowering. But that is an opinion that I have. Saying that I am not empowered by Beyonce is not the same thing as saying that Beyonce is not empowering. If there's one thing that really has my buttcheeks clenching lately, it's people who state their opinions as facts. We need a LOT less of that and a F**KTON less of that on social media. If you find yourself empowered by Beyonce, then she is empowering. My opinion matters not, and I am not the audience she seeks to empower anyway. I'm just a Becky.
My name is Brett. I am a woman.
My dad named me Brett after Lady Brett Ashley, a character in The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, a novel that neither of us particularly enjoyed or even think much about, ever.
(I have no idea where my mom was during the naming process. I can totally see her handing me off to someone and being like "here you deal with this.")
Brett is a thoroughly modern girl. She is progressive, charming, charismatic, and beautiful--"damned good-looking," as Hemingway calls her. She is fiercely independent, brazenly sexual, and unabashedly promiscuous. She is often surrounded by a gaggle of men--straight ones, gay ones, old ones, young ones--and they all adore her. She wears pieces of men's clothing and wears her hair short and brushed back "like a boy."
In short, Brett, by name and by character, represents the "masculinization" of women in the 1920s.
By description alone, Brett sounds like the prototype of Bey before Bey was Bey. Modern women would worship Brett; she sounds like an anthropomorphic middle finger to patriarchy, doesn't she?
Well, yes and no. Ernest Hemingway was part of the OG American misogynists. A lot of early 20th century literature is a giant Boys' Club, and there are tones of misogyny everywhere. Hemingway's works in particular are "by men for men," and reading him kinds of makes me feel like I feel whenever I walk into the fight gym--my presence is tolerated, but not preferred.
Lady Brett, although she gets highest accolades from Hemingway through his protagonist, is a threat. She, being the sole female in the Boys' Club, is a major disruption. She "makes" all the men fall madly in love with her, effectively turning them against each other, and then friendzones the shit out of them. Brett invented the friend zone. And Hemingway probably felt about the friendzone how you might expect any modern fuckboy to feel about the friendzone.
Not to mention, Brett's confidence and independence are a farce. She can't go anywhere alone, and can't truly be validated unless he is surrounded by a group of adoring men. She tells Jake that she's utterly miserable, and Jake is kind of just like, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, while also wishing he could have sex with her.
Hemingway is pretty clear in his opinion of the defeminization and sexual liberation of women in the 20s. It's dangerous. It disrupts camaraderie. It leads to nothing but unhappiness for men and women. Bullfights are for boys, get on home sugartits.
My namesake and I are alike in a lot of ways, but different in many ways. I am also adamantly independent. I am also witty and intelligent. But I prefer to be alone. When it comes to my friendships, I prefer the company of powerful, independent females over simple "chaps." I respect men and don't manipulate them for my own pleasure. I find no fulfillment in frivolous, physical relationships, but I don't judge or reprimand women who do.
Brett Ashley was a warning from Hemingway of where women's liberation might take us. Brett Lalli is more telling of where women's liberation is actually going.
Be not afraid, simple chaps.
^ Quote from Jeremy Piven's character in The Family Man. Every time I think of it I LOL.
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I've reached a plateau.
And THANK GOD for that.
In almost any other ring of life a plateau might be considered a bad thing only because it is not a good thing. But I...no. I rejoice in this berth of flat land where I can enjoy the stunning vista of "meh" and just catch my breath for a while.
I've always been extraordinarily high-functioning, but for the first time I may actually be truly functional. Maybe admitting that will invite mortal peril, and admitting that that is still a real fear of mine speaks to the miles of vertical climb I still have to go.
It has been over a year since my last major depressive episode, which is over 365 consecutive days of NOT feeling devastatingly shitty. I will attribute that partially to a drastic change in environment and the total upheaval of everything that I once perceived as safe or comfortable.
That was the easy part. The difficult and frustrating part was the hours of therapy I can't afford, the drugs I don't believe in, and the self-help books I couldn't finish because no matter how they started they all seemed to end up at "Well...you just have to CHOOSE to be happy." Which would be a very offensive and frankly stupid thing to say to someone with any kind of perceptible illness. "You just have to CHOOSE to not have lupus." Erm, no though. No one gets to choose which genetic predispositions they may have, or the unfortunate circumstances that occur in life to fan the first spark of hellfire. It's just something that happens.
At some point you have to accept that the world is full of people who don't understand or think they understand because they have experienced some kind of acute sadness. I don't mean to undermine the very real and devastating grief that accompanies a broken heart or the loss of a loved one, but anyone who has been unfortunate enough to experience depression and grief can attest that they are two very distinct feelings. Because one is a powerfully bad feeling and one almost seems to be an equally powerful lack of any kind of feeling at all.
So on that level I have no choice but to believe that depression is some kind of overreactive mental defense mechanism against heightened emotional sensitivity. Your body can't possibly react to all the feels at once, so it packages them up and throws them into the creepy Sarlacc pit of your mind. And if you ask anyone with a depressive disorder what an episode feels like, they will probably describe something similar to peering into a Sarlacc pit and feeling an insurmountable urge to jump.
The eeriest part is that you can feel that there's something deeply beautiful and meaningful hiding out in that void. If I truly believed that I could survive the fall, I may jump in just out of curiosity, to see if my hunch is true and that depression is about something bigger than a dysfunctional coping mechanism or wonky brain chemistry...maybe something bigger than me....maybe something bigger than humans.
Maybe some day I'll have that kind of courage. For now I'd like to hang out on my plateau and enjoy the abundance of beautiful and meaningful things that are already here for me. They are everywhere, they are just a little hard to find if you don't know what you're looking for. It's kind of like finding shapes and figures in clouds.
I once had a vision in a meditation of being born in the ocean. I swam to land, climbed up through the trees, and floated up into the sky until I entered a colorful stratosphere, where I saw a human figure floating listlessly, covered in rock-like skin. I watched as its skin started to break and light poured out through the cracks. Then that figure was me. I clawed off my rock-skin and lifted off my rock helmet so I could see. And I saw.
The world was sad, so I became sad.
But the world was also beautiful, so I became beautiful.
I'm such a weak woman. I hate weak women, but I am one.
I like to do things that make me feel strong. Like read scientific articles and kickbox. I started training at a new MMA gym this past year. I could tell I was getting stronger. Maybe not stronger, maybe "less weak." But stronger wasn't the only thing I was getting. Engaging in a dude-dominated sport, I was also getting attention, mostly of the kind I did not want. A male teammate approached me and asked me if I wanted to go running with him and the team. What can I say, I wanted a team, I wanted to get faster, I wanted to get stronger. I wanted to get less weak.
But I am SUCH a weak woman.
There was no running. There was no team. There was an arrogant, shady dude who wanted to date me. It was apparent almost immediately that this was not someone I wanted to date. But as a weak woman, I made excuses. I wanted to give Shady Dude a chance, because he had an impressive pro record, and I was so desperate to get not weak.
But like I said....I am weak. I just am. I let it go on too long. I made too many excuses. I was afraid to break it off because Shady Dude was aggressive, violent, and volatile. I was afraid he would hurt me, literally physically hurt me, even though he swore he wouldn't. It would have been easy for him. The reality is that if a man, any man, wanted to hurt me, he could. Because I am such a fucking weak woman.
After being pursued to an uncomfortable extent, I gently let Shady Dude know he wasn't the one. Over text, obviously, because I am that weak. Just as I expected, he immediately went on the offense.
"Ok have a shitty life with ur acne *cry-laughing emoji*"
Went right for my balls. I made the classic weak woman mistake of confiding in the wrong person about my insecurities. I've been fighting the uppest of uphill battles with my complexion since I was 12 years old, and I've tried everything. I don't have acne anymore, but I still have small-scale sporadic breakouts mostly due to the insurmountable stress of being a full-time student on top of having a full-time job (and from my sparring headgear, because zits>brain damage). I'm really self-conscious about it, and it came up once in a conversation with Shady Dude after he commented on a particularly prominent stress-zit (which, for your own sake guys, YOU SHOULD NEVER EVER EVER EVER DO).
So some awful person who I rejected makes an immature and mostly untrue jab at something that has nothing to do with my worth as a human being, and what do I do? I freak the f**k out. Almost immediately, I stopped going to the gym in case Shady Dude was there. School got overwhelming and I didn't have time to train as much as I had before, but even when I did have time, I would make excuses not to go if I had a single blemish on my face (which I always did, because ~80 hours of work a week does not for glowing skin make).
I am yet another weak-ass woman who let some shitty dude get in her head. I quit an activity that I loved because of a mean comment someone made about my looks. I gave up my fight dreams because I was afraid a man might hurt me, and even more afraid a man might hurt my feels. I tried to freeze my gym membership and they wouldn't let me. I told them that someone there made me feel uncomfortable and unsafe and they still wouldn't let me.
I'm trying to be strong. I want to go back because I love fighting. I miss punching stuff. I bought new gloves that I'm really excited about and was getting super pumped to go back tomorrow. But on the eve of my triumphant return, I woke up with a spectacular smattering of fresh hell on my forehead, and that stupid weak woman inside of me is rearing her stupid ugly weak head.
I am weak. I would love to blame all the Shady Dudes of the world for doing this to me, but I have no one to blame but myself.
When I was 17, I didn't know anything about love except that I didn't have much of it.
"I think I'm vegetables," I declared to my best friend. "You might eat me because you think you should, or because I'm good for you, or because I'm the only thing around and you'll starve if you won't. But if a sugary, decadent cupcake flounces by, you are going to run away with the cupcake."
"You're not vegetables, Burt," she assured me, "You're like...you're like a big, juicy pineapple."
I considered this.
The circumstances of this next part of the story were a little bizarre, but you will just have to take my word that it happened exactly as I'm about to tell it. Somehow, my crush at the time came into possession of a whole, ripe, meaty pineapple. Seriously. And I had a front row seat to watch in awe and mild horror as he tore face-first into that fruit like a barbarian king. Sweet, sticky pineapple juice dripped from his face, fingers, shirt, and onto the floor, and he only came up once for air and to exclaim his undying love for pineapple. It was a little grotesque. I felt like I was seeing something I shouldn't see, like a lion shredding a wrecked zebra carcass, fresh blood steaming from its muzzle.
I considered this.
Some weeks later, I asked out said crush on a date. He said he would consider it.
Then he said no.
I guess he had had enough pineapple...
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