Category Archives: Personal

Transition States

Posted on by

In chemistry, a transition state is a highly unstable intermediate in a reaction.  Because it is so unstable, it only exists for a fleeting moment (if at all) and cannot be observed by any traditional means.  The reaction will either “take”, and new products will be formed, or the transition state will devolve back to the reactants.  On an energy diagram, the transition state is located at the point of maximum energy:

(It’s been some months since I took orgo, so I may be a little rusty in my chemistry, but you get the general idea.)

Anyway, in more colloquial usage, transition simply means movement or passage from one state or position to another.  In many situations, though, I feel like transitioning from one position to another involves something much like a transition state, where you still have bonds to your old position but are forming new ones.  However, people are not chemical species, and this transition state can last a long time.

I recently lost a good friend of mine due to divergent morals and pathways.  The ways that we chose to take simply weren’t compatible.  And this has happened more and more as I have grown older.  Some of the people I was good friends with freshman year have since found different groups to hang out with.  Almost all of my middle and high school friends have stayed in Arizona, so it’s become more difficult to keep up with them.  But the worst thing of all, the very worst feeling, is when I meet someone that I really like, but due to various reasons, I have to let them go.

This is hard because feelings for someone don’t just end overnight.  Even though I understand that our friendship is now over, I can’t stop myself from hoping that some way, somehow, they’ll find their way back to me and everything will be just like it used to be.  I found a poem I wrote five years ago, about one of my very first such lost friendships:

Sitting frozen in time

Hands shaking, poised as

If for an awkward, eyes-

redly-rimmed picture…I wait:

The computer hums and my

breath betrays me

Refresh the e-mails one last time

And one more, one more:

Your words lost in eternity

my heart trapped behind such a screen

At such moments I’m in a state of high energy, since I am beginning to form new friendships and relationships at the same time as I still have feelings for my old friends, the friends that I no longer have.  It is stressful and confusing and, unfortunately, lasts for far too long.
However, I take comfort in remembering that the universe always tends towards states of lower energy, and even humans are not above basic laws of physics (although we like to think we are.)  I know that even though I may never forget those who are no longer a part of my life, that doesn’t mean my life has to end, and as I grow and change, so will my circle of friends and acquaintances.  Thank goodness minds and hearts are fluid.

The Way Out

Posted on by

I’ve been feeling really bitter lately.

I’ve been feeling this way ever since I visited Arizona and saw all the wonderful things my friends have been up to. I saw my boyfriend excelling in summer school, I saw one of my best friends on her way to the study-abroad program of her life, and of course, every single one of my friends had stellar GPAs.

Yes, it seems like everyone else is doing something great and worthwhile with their summer, except me. And I can’t tell you how sad and pathetic that makes me feel.

But there’s another emotion in there that I wasn’t expecting. Anger. I’m angry! I am actually angry at my circumstances, full of energy for the first time in years, and ready to go and do and learn. That’s how I know I’m getting better.

I will be completely frank with you. Sophomore year, for me, was a bust. My grades were dismal, my health even worse. Unfortunately I wasn’t sick with anything awe-inspiring and likely to garner sympathy and understanding. I was simply depressed.

Ah, depression. Something I have far too much experience with, both in myself and in others, and something that 90% of this blog is about. I’ve had to tell my boyfriend this, I’ve had to tell my parents, I even had to tell Dean Hutch and my major advisor, that depression is a real thing, and no, I’m not taking these pills for fun, and no, I am not doing this for attention, and no, I am not lazy, I literally, physically cannot get out of bed.

One time I screamed and dropped something when someone startled me, and when they started laughing, I burst into tears. Another time, when a friend of mine briefly lost his temper, I spent the next three hours huddled in my bed, shaking. I slept all day and took my meals upstairs so I wouldn’t have to socialize. And then, sometime around my twentieth birthday, I realized this isn’t normal. Or healthy. I guess I’d kind of just been waiting for things to get better, but my GPA was in danger and my life was on the line and nothing had gotten any better at all. So I went to the doctor, like I should have done last August.

It took a few weeks for the new drugs to kick in enough that I had the energy to pay attention in class. It took even longer for my mood to level out sufficiently enough for me to stop crying in public.

And tonight, a full two months after I began taking the new medicine, I was faced with a simply awful situation, one that would normally have made me sad for a week. But tonight I became angry instead. Angry at the unfairness of the situation. Angry at the person who caused it. I had stopped feeling helpless and started feeling righteous.

3-chloro-N-tert-butyl-β-ketoamphetamine (bupropion for short) is the fourth most commonly prescribed antidepressant in the United States. Opponents of antidepressants will say that they provide a “false happiness” or “chemical high” and don’t fix the underlying problem, to which I have two rebuttals:

  • Depression is a chemical illness. You wouldn’t say a person with Addison’s had “false hormones”. That makes about as much sense as calling someone with well-controlled depression “falsely happy”; i.e. none.
  • Why don’t you go tell someone who has no energy to move or even eat that “it’s all in your head! You just need some counseling!” and tell me how well that works out for you. Antidepressants get you out of bed. They make you able to eat, bathe, and work. They get you out of that dark scary place where even the basics of living are pointless and too difficult. Counseling is like the icing on a cupcake. It’s nice to have and all, but antidepressants make you able to go to counseling.

Having the capacity for anger and the ability to aspire to anything beyond simply surviving is new to me and quite frankly I don’t know what to do with this newfound energy. I’ve thrown myself into writing, crafting, learning biochem, and working online. I am learning to eat better and take care of my body and especially to be more understanding and polite towards my friends. You could describe me during my months-long illness with a lot of words and one of them would most definitely be needy.

Every day now, when I wake up, I tell myself that I am smart and good and getting stronger every day. I printed out a list of my accomplishments and put it on my nightstand so I can look at it when I’m feeling sad. I know that I had a bad year last year but I also know that things will get better, and they already are.

You know what I did this summer? I got my dreams back.

And I really don’t think that’s pathetic at all.

Of Unrequited Love

Posted on by

Being nineteen and in possession of a functioning heart and hormones, I have been in unrequited love many, many times.  In fact, I might dare to say that I am constantly in unrequited love.  Or – let me rephrase that – I constantly care more about some person, whether that be romantically or platonically, than they care about me.  When I was in middle school, my parents assured me that it was just my body trying to get used to the new feelings and new capacities that come with puberty.  When I was in high school, I assumed that I was just being immature, or perhaps that I was too ugly for people to care much about me.

But now I’m in college.  My second year of college, and I still continuously grow attached to certain people and have to fight that attachment back with tooth and claw, because it couldn’t be more obvious that they don’t care at all about me.  I figure that this part of my personality, for better or worse, is here to stay.

Like almost every other little girl in America, I was raised on Disney movies.  The traditional Disney movies, where the girl was beautiful and white and thin, and where she always got her man.  As I grew older, romantic comedies worked the same way.  Every heartbreak, every convoluted love story, was always resolved in 120 minutes.  Heck, even the classic literature I loved so much – Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre – always ended up with the happy couple together.  I wanted to tell someone Reader, I married him.  

I still feel like a whiny teenage girl, typing all this out.  It needs to come out, though.  It needs to come out, because I’ve finally realized what the upside to all this is, the upside to being completely and hopelessly in love with someone who has no idea you exist.  The upside is this: selflessness.

Selflessness.  Wow, that’s an important lesson to learn in today’s society.  I still feel like I’m an important person in the world … that if I want or need something badly enough, it will simply come to me.  Is that because I was raised an only child in a first-world country?  Maybe, but I think it’s more visceral than that.  I think everyone, on some level, thinks that they are important and that their fairytale ending is coming.  Even J. Alfred Prufrock, the whiniest teenage girl in recent literature, writes: “I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be …” to which my English professor rightly counters: “Who compared you to Hamlet, if not yourself?”

There’s also a sort of magic about unrequited love.  I think people get too focused on the depressing parts of it – the pining away, the vales of tears, the broken hearts, etc. etc. ad infinitum.  There are good parts, too.  Loving someone, caring about them very much, can get you up on a difficult morning.  It makes your day a little brighter when you see them.  Especially when they are happy.  Even if it’s not with you.  This might sound a little creepy, but I never feel quite as alone on Saturday night (the most difficult night of the week) knowing that someone else is out there, someone breathing quietly as they sleep, someone being happy or sad, someone living.  

I think I was born, figuratively speaking, with my heart on the outside of my chest.  It’s been a difficult life in some ways, what with me always running after people who never really acknowledge my existence.  At the same time, however, I’ve always been grateful that I am capable of caring about someone else to such an extent, perhaps more than I care about myself.  In the course of my love for someone, I stop desperately running after them at the exact moment when I realize, “Requited love would be nice, but it isn’t necessary for me to be happy.  It isn’t necessary for them to be happy, either.”

Disney movies and the media led me astray from the day I was born, making me believe that unrequited love is pitiable (and that “unrequited love” only refers to romance.)  In reality, unrequited love is one of the best things you can have.  It’s painful and not for the faint of heart – but by its very nature, it is selfless.  It teaches courage and patience like nothing else I’ve ever encountered.  Please don’t be afraid to love someone who doesn’t love you back.  One should never be afraid to take part in something so beautiful.

A Love Story

Posted on by

This is a story about a boy and a girl who met on the Internet.  They were both nineteen; the girl had just finished her first year of college with less than perfect grades, and was browsing Tumblr one day in search of interesting scientific facts.  Meanwhile, the boy, while planning to leave within two months for the Navy, had posted an excerpt from The Hot Zone, a nonfiction book about a very special virus.

The girl found the post.  She hadn’t realized she missed the essence of BCB so much.  The beauty and intricacy had been lost in mounds of chemistry and calculus.  She shut down the computer and picked up her own copy of The Hot Zone, but not before she bookmarked the boy’s Tumblr for later.

This girl was a poet.  At least, she had once thought of herself as one.  She hadn’t written poetry for a very long time, though, and the part of her brain which dealt with creative writing was slowly starting to wither away.  She couldn’t imagine what would be worth writing about anymore, but when the boy started to post his own poetry, she scrolled through a few pieces and suddenly, impulsively, pulled out a pen.

He was so different from her, she thought.  He had his entire life planned out (so it seemed.)  He was a better poet than she was, a better student, and he was entering the armed forces, which made him the first person she had ever known to do that.  She felt awkward, talking to him – awkward and sad.  They lived only fifteen minutes apart, but it might as well have been light years.

One day, he made a post about not having enough money to go to college and become a viral pathologist like he’d always dreamed.  He wrote about UTMB, his dream school, and how he’d always had to work hard.  He wrote about his love for Ebola and the other Filoviridae.  She was amazed – she couldn’t believe anyone else could feel that way about Ebola, much less the other Filoviridae, Lassa and Marburg.

It was scary, how much their stories fit together.  Her family wasn’t a rich one.  They had pooled their meager resources, along with significant government assistance, to send her to her dream school.  And writing to him, all the passion came back.  She remembered why she had sacrificed so much and fought for so long to get to where she was.  She began to carry herself with pride, to hold her head up again.

She no longer thought her academic career was over.

This is a love story, although it is not about a love between a boy and a girl.  This is not even about friendship in the traditional sense, since for all I know this boy and girl may never meet.  It isn’t necessary that they meet, for the good has already been done.

This, dear reader, is a story about the love of a student for the subject they were meant to follow.  At times we all get weak and lose our way.  Some of us, unfortunately, may never regain the courage to continue our journey to its bittersweet end.  Some of us are lucky, though, and meet another apprentice in the same rigorous discipline, someone who steadies our load and gives us safety, if only for a moment.

This is for you, BC.  Thank you for giving me back my reason to keep going.

Basketball Saved My Life (No Really, It Did.)

Posted on by

When I was in elementary school, I took dance classes.  I must have taken them for five or six years before I decided to drop them.  I can remember standing in front of the wall-to-floor mirror in the studio in my black leotard and tights (it was a jazz class.)  I had begun to develop earlier than most of my classmates, drawing taunts and sidewise glances from every corner.

(I guess now would be a good time to mention that I, like many other people, hear comments that are meant to be asides, but unlike many other people, I remember them.  So I clearly remember being measured for a costume one day and my hips being measured at 40 inches.  Forty inches? whispered another girl, whose slender prepubescent hips seemed to mock mine.)

I quit dance just in time for P.E. classes in middle school, which were another form of torture.  I dreaded being pushed out on the court and field.  The only thing I excelled at was weight lifting – I could bench more weight than any other girl in my class (70 pounds!)  The pretty, popular girls were the ones who could play with the boys, the ones who joined the cheer squad, the ones who weren’t afraid to wear Spankies and shorts.

(Later on in high school I assisted the middle school volleyball team despite having little experience in volleyball.  I was demonstrating a serve one day when the coach decided to work on my technique, and, exasperated, said something along the lines of “You’ve got those big hips, now use them!”  I quit the job.)

As I began high school, I had pretty much resigned myself to my fate.  I did well in school, despite having few friends, and I thought I was content to reign supreme in academics.  Until my dad begged me to join a sport.  You lead a sedentary life, he said.  It was true.  I didn’t walk or ride a bike.  I had no interest in my dad’s active lifestyle.  I preferred to stay home on the Internet, but his words conjured up an image of a 300-pound Amber being ostracized in her freshman year of college, so I agreed to join a varsity team.

Since the only sport I even remotely knew how to play was basketball, that’s what I joined.

The other girls who came to tryouts had all had experience in elementary and middle school.  They wore basketball shorts and slim-cut T-shirts, while I had come to tryouts in a yoga shirt and my school uniform skort.  I felt hopelessly depressed and idiotic.

I collapsed during my first set of suicides.  I lay there trying to convince my lungs to keep working while the coaches fussed over me and the other girls, I was sure, gossiped about my soft and unathletic physique.  That’s it, I thought.  I have failed tryouts and now I am destined for a life of sadness and pain.  

But I made it onto the team, because it was a small school and they needed people on the bench.  So I returned to that gym on Thursday, and every Monday and Thursday after that.

I can’t remember what we were doing when it happened.  It was some sort of drill, perhaps passing or lay-ups or whatnot, and I, as usual, was the worst out of all the girls.  We formed two lines waiting for our turn, and as I set off on my run, I clearly heard the girl behind me say to her friend, “She’s so bad.”

I had two options at that time: to admit that the girl was right and to quit the team forever, or to take horrific, savage umbrage at her remark and do everything in my power to prove her wrong.  For the first time in my life, I chose the second option.

The next three seasons were full of triumph and pain.  I got my first black eye.  I scored six points against the top-ranking team in the league.  I fell in love with a young man from the local Jewish high school, and when he unwisely discarded my affections I took great pleasure in fouling the girls on their basketball team.  One year we ranked fourth in the league.  I traveled to the ghetto and the res’ and the most exclusive neighborhoods in Scottsdale, gradually gaining confidence (and losing a little bit of weight, which wasn’t a bad thing either.)

Basketball was the first thing I had come across in which I was not automatically the best. Now that I am at Rice, there are many other things which I have not mastered and probably never will master.  But thanks to that one annoying girl who happened to be in line behind me, every time I see people pity me for my poor chemistry grade or hear someone invite everyone else in the room except me out for dinner, I only smile.  I invite myself out to dinner.  I throw myself on that chemistry so that no one might ever have cause to pity me again.

You see, in the grand scheme of things, you only have two options: to admit that you are not the best and give up, or to fight your way, tooth and claw, onward.

I am eternally glad that I chose the second option.

 

In Which America Becomes Even Fatter and More Sad

Posted on by

According to the Star-Telegram, one-third of all American adults are obese.  In about 15 years, that number will rise to 42%.

That’s really, really scary, especially in conjunction with another statistic: more than one in every ten Americans takes an antidepressant.

We’re getting fat.  Fat and sad.  Which is understandable.

I am inundated, every day, with healthy tips and tricks, workout motivations, too-perfect bodies, and it makes me hate myself.  Why?  Because I am normal.  My BMI is 21.  I’m not an athlete, but for a biochem major, perhaps that is to be expected.

What worries me about the increase in overweight and obese adults and teenagers is that very soon I expect to see a corresponding rise in eating disorders, low self-esteem, and yes, depression.

Here’s one reason: eating disorders don’t necessarily make you skinny.  Look, I know it’s a shock.  But many young people suffer from bulimia and BDD (body dysmorphic disorder – basically the binging without the purging of bulimia) and neither of those disorders automatically make you thin.  Even anorexics may be puffed up with edema and gas retention to the point of looking to be a normal weight.  The point is: you cannot judge the health of a person based on their appearance alone.

I’m going to relate to you a very common pathway towards BDD, obesity, and depression – one I fight every day, incidentally.  A young woman sees workout tips or skinny models or belittling media.  She goes on a strict diet-and-exercise regime, which, because she is only human, only lasts a few weeks.  She sees her failure, is depressed, and spends a night with Ben, Jerry, and Dr. Pepper.  The next day she looks in the mirror, thinks “God, I look disgusting,” and the whole cycle begins again.

I wish the media would put more of an emphasis on the fact that obesity, while a disease, is not a sin.  There is absolutely no reason to feel depressed about yourself, even if you are so large you cannot get up to go to the bathroom.  You are still alive and that means the fight is not over.  No obesity is irreversible.

We need a better support network in this society.  We need to spread a message of unconditional love, a message which has been sadly lacking in recent years, as evidenced by the weight and antidepressant statistics.

Better yet, we need the media to stop being so two-faced.  Stop showing us airbrushed models and then turning around and belittling us for being fat, media.  Good God, aren’t there enough problems in this country without you throwing this extra straw on our humped backs?

The Survivor

Posted on by

Dear world,

My name is Amber and I’m a freshman at Rice, who has graciously allowed me to host my website here – providing yet another distraction from my upcoming Math 102 midterm.  Oh, I’m being silly.

The title “Glass Half Fuller” comes from a combination of two things: the common saying “the optimist sees the glass as half full,” and the fullerene molecule, discovered at Rice in 1985.  Fullerene is most well known as a “buckyball” (C60) but can also assume myriad other shapes, including the carbon nanotube, which has immediate implications for cancer diagnosis and therapy.

I am currently pursuing a major in biochemistry and cell biology.  This year, I have shifted my focus from practical medicine to medical research, but we will see what the next year or so brings.

I have made several informal blogs in the past that have quickly been found by people who would deem their content inappropriate.  I have since learned the danger of creating personal blogs on the Internet, and I hope that this wordpress will survive longer, if only because I do not plan to discuss sensitive material here.