As We Are

Inquisitive, I am, amazingly, both a scientist and an artist. Being two things in one, however, is not very easy for me to live up to. Unfortunately, I find myself splitting my time and efforts up into the works of two different kinds of people. When I’m a scientist, I have to defend myself the whole time like I’m getting a Ph.D. When I’m an artist, I have to find symbolism in my own imagination. Such a conflict is quite a mental challenge to me as if bigots are always claiming my name to fame trying to prove that they are the ones really writing and creating, not really me at all ever.

I do certainly enjoy observing nature, but I also deeply cherish creating art. As a result, deciding upon both a college major and a lifetime career has been tough to me. What a challenge a biology degree was! Even so, maybe I should have double-majored in biology and music, but, then, what about visual art? A third major would have been in order for that, I think. Just fitting in all of my science classes to my curriculum was challenging enough as it was already. Plus, my behavior study bent compelled me to add in some psychology classes, too.

Unfortunately, I found myself, still in college and, later, out of college, wanting to understand the meaning behind insanity. From studying like a book worm for many years, I had been using my mind more than my heart for so long that I had become accustomed to delving into my own subconscious mind. As soon as I had set foot in a psychiatrist’s office complaining about not fitting in, I quickly had begun figuring out how to feel nervously hopeless. All I had to do to fit into my doctor’s office, I immediately realized, was to keep putting myself down.

I learned a lot from such negativity. Not only did I figure out how to stop visiting that first psychiatrist of mine any longer, but also the upper and downer drug combinations that my later doctors made me keep taking were so sharply draining of my breath and energy that I actually figured out how to stop taking any more. When my last psychiatrist gave me the newest, in terms of his instructions to me, “prescription psychiatric strong tranquilizer” on the market that day, I actually started drawing pictures again, after having abstained from creating art voluntarily ever since fourth grade, the year in which I had started wearing eyeglasses.

After all those years of brain-grinding, eye-squinting scientific focus, soon, as I continued drawing more pictures, I stopped wearing any more eyeglasses or contact lenses. What a relief it was to finally drop such a heavy burden off my shoulders! Committing to natural, or unaided, eyesight was quite an easy one-step, no-more-glasses formula for me to understand but, unfortunately, also an extremely challenging to me escape from my own insanity. As soon as I had thrown away my spectacles for good, I had just then, in a storm of blurry vision, begun an ever-evolving spiritual, mental, and physical journey of self-improving my own trust in myself and faith in humanity. In my newfound personal self-improvement journey, my immediate goal all the while has been never to go back to a psychiatrist. Furthermore, my ultimate goal has been to discover the meaning of love.

One morning, when I was still on that newest kind of strong psychiatric tranquilizer and no longer wearing any more glasses or contacts, I was still in bed in a mental home room, which I was sharing with a nice, handsome, young man, when I felt inspired to compose my own original song off the top of my head singing a cappella into my audio-cassette mini recorder, which I had kept with me in my physical journey as well all the way from my far-off family home, which feels to me to still be right there in front of me. All of a sudden, I had started singing my own melody and some lyrics both of which I had never even thought of nor heard before, either, still laying under my sheets and blanket in an old mansion’s cross-alley multi-unit side-wing bedroom cot that I had never even seen before. At the very same time, my roommate, from my memories, was still asleep, as far as I could tell, in the cot on the other side of the room. In just the time it takes to listen to the song, less than three minutes, I was done composing the song feeling no need at all to edit the song whatsoever.

Without ever telling anyone about my songwriting venture, I mailed the song, which I had titled, As We Are, to Hilltop Records, which then professionally produced the song. Soon, I moved into my own apartment down the road just a few blocks. While living in my new apartment, I soon, without, again, ever telling anyone, completely stopped opening at all ever again my tranquilizer pill bottle.

Soon, walking on the sidewalk in front of my apartment complex, I asked out, without, unusually to me, any shyness or embarrassment on my part whatsoever, a certain nice, young, handsome man, walking on the same sidewalk towards me, whom I had just then seen for the first time in my life. Right away, the man and I started having a love affair together. Eventually, the man’s smoking habit had become more than I could handle. When the man and I broke up, I soon hopped on a train heading south eventually ending up in another one of my own apartments in another city a few hours south of my last departure.

After another broken love affair with another nice, handsome, young man in my new city, I am still searching for more understandings of love.