home in the Kitchen

Why do I want to study this?  Why do I want to go there?  Why do I think I deserve this?

Why do I do anything anymore?

I have theories and semi-logical explanations; I just don't know how to put them into words.  How do I explain to someone that this is what I want?

And what I want most is to get out of here.  Doesn't this sound familiar?  Amelia's griping for change yet again.  Because my life is a cycle and things come and go; people come and go; emotions reach their peak.  And I can't handle this anymore... again.

I like the idea of closing myself off but that won't fix things - that's assuming I even know how to do that.  There's something beautiful about silence once you've realized the sound of anyone's voice might just drive you into the ground with their hollowed out emptiness.  It's the beginning of focused focus, chewing on a piece of dried mango whilst thinking about why do I want to study this? why do I want to go there? why do I think I deserve this?  I'd like to think I'm capable, despite what you or she or her sister or he or he or she or my father thinks.  I'd like to think this way, so I'm waiting for someone to show me I'm not wrong for thinking this way.  But sometimes we've already unraveled, and we don't realize we've really been trying to reassemble our pieces... until someone reaffirms all the reasons why we started unraveling in the first place... yet again. This is what I had been waiting for. Too passive to stand up for yourself; too scared to be a presence; too defeated to bother with explanations no one will listen to.

Kitchen is a little French place hidden by Foster's.  Ventured in for dinner with the fam after my dad got some sort of grant or award at work.  Maybe one of these days, that'll be me, too.

Rich and creamy and guilt ridden chicken pate - it's the equivalent of the way I eat rice with a bunch of little Asian fermented/salted/cured/pickled side dishes.

Smoked trout - salty salty salty, but I'm finding I prefer less and less cooked fish and dreaming more and more of plates of raw salmon and tuna.

Duck confit - there's never an argument against duck.

Mussels - after piling up the empty shells, use as makeshift spoons to drink up the soupy sauce.

Soft shell crab and asparagus - like rare delicacies in my  life whenever I see either ingredient on a menu.  Like avocado, it makes or breaks the decision.

So why do I want this?  Because if I can't be a good friend, and if I don't have a decent personality, even if I am not the prettiest Duke student on paper, maybe I can still be your best graduate student. Maybe you represent everyone and everything I've failed, and if I can't fix things there, I can at least make you proud.  Because I know our relationship will not be turned toxic by something I do, and mistakes can be corrected as easily as redo-ing an experiment the next morning after a good night's sleep, undisturbed by thoughts of worthlessness. And we will only talk numbers and ideas and grand plans. I need you to pluck me out of  here, give me an opportunity to start again (blank canvas, clean slate, all of the cliche metaphors) this time without letting myself be vulnerable to another person just to unwittingly force him/her to strike me down. There is no place for that in science, no room for that at a lab bench.  That is why I want this.

Applications galore.