Where was I going all those years ago when life stretched out vast and unknown? Before it bent sharply and everything would never be the same. I sat in session looking back. I could see those long summer days dreaming. Life could be anything I wanted it to be. Well, within reason, I guess. Considering I had finances and the ability to go in whatever direction I wanted. I know looking back it was before Cornell came into the picture. I remember clearly the afternoon I spent with an FBI profiler. His name is lost somewhere in the haze, but I can visualize him. I met him because that is what I knew I wanted to do. I’m guessing he was a friend of someone we knew (don’t think the FBI sends out behavioral analysis agents to visit with dreaming kids). I had applied to schools with neuroscience and psych programs. He made it very clear to me the direction I had to go, and what I needed to do. It became so clear where I wanted to end up. A couple weeks later the acceptance letter from Cornell came. I was accepted into their fine arts program. Life had changed course. There was no use even considering declining. The family was thrilled, and I was even a bit stunned. I did not even remotely think I had a chance, even with my father’s ability to lean on admissions (though to this day he swears he did not). Those long dreamy days of summer became long working and studying days. My admission was contingent on a number of summer classes before that coming fall semester. But I can still remember what I wanted, and is wasn’t sculpting and drawing. Doesn’t really much matter anymore, that is long past. Though it is what we were talking about today, and it was really remarkable how detailed the memory of that time was. I don’t really remember things anymore. It just seems everything runs together in one long sentence. The only punctuation various awful interruptions. It was nice to linger on a happy moment. Beatrice asked me what my fantasy might be if this farm was not the life I was leading. I really don’t like to think of fantasies, and often won’t even travel down that path. All of this started when I made a comment about platelets, immune mediated thrombocytopenia. One of our friends had this same nasty flu and his platelet count tanked. Since she had been sick I figured I’d mention it. She said I would have been a good doctor. I doubt that, had been my reply. I wasn’t much for math and science, my brain didn’t work like that. Though it is like a sponge, all the work we do with the vets it just sticks. Don’t ask me why. My mind just grabs onto the information and stores it. Between that and reading endlessly, it is what makes my mind work in that way, it isn’t because I started out that way. none of that made any sense to me, chemistry and physics were like a foreign language, but I could look at a painting and tell you the artist by looking at the technique. Don’t know where that came from. It just was. I had a good friend in college that took first year art history with me. We’d sit in a dark room looking at slide after slide while the prof was talking about the art. It was dark, the chairs were more comfortable than most movie theaters and I was usually hung over. So I’d be half asleep and he’d be writing as fast as humanly possible before the slide changed. When we had our tests I knew the art because it just stuck in my brain, it wasn’t by wrote, it just was absorbed by watching. Used to piss him off to no end, especially when I could not come close to explaining how I did that. But if you stuck me in a chemistry class I was lost. I knew what I could and couldn’t do. I watched my poor housemate claw her way thru organic chem. It was heart wrenching. Cornell used org chem to weed out the ones that wouldn’t make it thru med or vet school, and it was brutal. I couldn’t stomach even watching her go thru it, never mind even consider trying it. I’m sure now it might be different. I think in a different way than I did back then. Though I have to say the trileptal really does dumb you down. Seems a given after seeing two different neurologists and they both said that it was a side effect. Pretty sad. I thought about that driving home from session. Even if I wanted to go back to school, how the hell was it going to be enjoyable if I can’t recall information. It would make studying difficult, and would make tests a nightmare. I can usually find it eventually, it just takes concentrating really hard and scanning my head for the right piece of information. Often what I am trying to find comes up days or weeks later. Needless to say thinking about school was interesting. I have this strange thought sometimes that I need to return to Cornell just to prove to myself I can do it. It comes and goes, often years apart. Normally being triggered off by something going on up there, or returning to the vet school with a horse. The hardest was returning up there for homecoming. My father was getting some award. I brought my partner along for moral support. It was a strange experience walking around that campus again. I showed her the buildings and explained what was where. Standing in the middle of that quad was almost more than I could deal with. It is indeed tainted for me. I doubt I could return and do well. There is much love lost.
So I guess it answers some questions about where I was headed, and where I never got to. The path that was left untaken in a life that was never lived. I wish I could hit rewind and queue it up to that afternoon so many years ago. Turn left instead of right. What might have been? My guess is I’d probably have had problems. I doubt my genetic code would have lay dormant just because I chose a different path. It may have been kept at bay if I wasn’t so over faced right from the minute I left home. It may well have taken a bit longer, but my life would have shifted. There is so much there that was sitting un-dealt with. There was nothing perfect. The traumas were still all there from years gone by. though there were many that had not even happened yet. It is impossible to know what might have been. Makes it pointless to even ask the question What if? That is a useless and painful exercise in futility. I’d rather chose a way going forward to find a path that has meaning for me. I know what Beatrice was exploring, and that is fine. 2013 may well be a year when major life changes may need to occur. Will I be ready? even more important, what do I want if this is no longer our life? Important things to ponder, one could even say critical ideas to explore before the SHTF.
I will have to find some time to sit and think about all this.