Cookies and Chicken

I used to think that being happy would be selling out. That allowing myself to enjoy life would be betrayal to the mission of 'fixing the world'(!!!) which is always what I think I think I had set out to do. But you can't do that if you don't fix yourself first. At first I felt guilty, for actually going out to all of these "bourgie" bars and wearing skirts and heels at the request of my concerned gentleman friend (who only thought other people might think i wasn't a lady if i didn't). somewhere i felt the need to object on the basis that I was no object! And then I realized that strong women don't have to look a particular way to get respect, they just have to fucking earn it. Especially in a world of frat brothers, it takes real fucking courage - lemme tell ya something, to walk head up into the jaws of judgement and not give a fuck because if one of those assholes opens their mouth...well - that comes with the grace and skill to turn them down without making a scene, not to belittle them on the basis of "they don't care enough about the world they are helping to destroy, or the cultures they are mutilating just by their sheer use of the english language.." - not to say any of that when you think it so badly, and just to smile and let them try and court you, and be civil....fuck. a whole new dimension of fun. instead of sulking and internalizing what is wrong with the world, with the setting I find myself in - somehow in the past couple of months - most likely due to the hardships endured - i gained some bit of pride and some small semblance of dignity and i came back to tallahassee not giving a shit about a single god damn motherfucker who was gonna try and shut me the fuck up for speaking my  mind. in the meantime i made a lot of friends, and found out that you don't have to be depressed and withdrawn to get people to listen to you or take your critical standpoint seriously. in fact, if you have the proper confidence the right people might just try to set up dates for you to talk right under your feet and give you classrooms to teach in in the spring, and things might just start falling into place around you if you let go and give up on trying to accomplish or 'prove' anything. needless to say - i am not pursuing a career in science anymore, though i love it dearly. i can't justify dissecting behaviors and looking for treatments for nuances. i am not working towards a sterile world, and i honestly feel that that is where neuroscience may go if not reformed. instead i'm switching to social work, until the paradigm shifts and the community gets its priorities straight. i'd rather work directly with those experiencing hardship due to behavioral and environmental conditions (through which I can form my own hypotheses if want be) but in the meantime i'll be actually accomplishing whatever they NEED me to. it's a difference of needs and wants I think. hell, a nobel prize would be nice - but if it doesn't help anyone i don't NEED it. and if everyone keeps thinking that understanding neural plasticity means we can and should alter the minds of the diseased, well i don't NEED to be contributing to that field. i'll work right along with the mentally ill until people stop telling them they are sick and start listening and untangeling what we all need to take responsibility for, because no one "goes crazy" on their own...neuroses are a product of the environment like any other condition, basic human sanity exists in all of us, where it goes or what happens to it - sometimes things get tangeled up but identifying target genes and selecting for a cure gives too much control over personality differences that give color and creativity to the world...sterilizing those minds is not something i could ever follow - thus why i dropped out of the bio major. but i will have a minor in bio and anthro or philo (i'm not sure on the second minor yet...). and i'm in love. and i have no excuses or rational explanations for it. isn't that wonderful?