Little Jane: A Retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

In Dedication to My Wonderful Sister on such a Delightful Occasion

            “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

I can still hear her voice. It resonates over the caterwauling of the wind and the scraping of branches against the windowpane. Its euphony dispels the dull greyness as she transports us to another world. A world far away from the small blue and freezing bedroom. A world where ladies wear beautiful silk gowns and men named Mr. Darcy change to please his beloved Elizabeth. A world filled with excitement, life, and possibility. It was in this world that I first encountered Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I was only eight years old.

            Let me assure you, however, that I was not reading the book myself – I was not that much of a nerd, at least not yet -. In actuality, I did not even know that it was a book, a famous one at that, nor that my sister was reading it in high school at that time. I just thought it was another one of the various stories that she had created.

~

Their beautiful white gowns shone in the sun as they stood side by side. Miles of fabric and patterned white silk trailed behind both of them. Both held an assortment of white flowers with blue and pink specks and daffodils scattered amongst them. Their bonnets trimmed with white lace turned to face one another. They smiled at each other secretly and then turned to face forward again. They slipped their right hands in the left arm of an imaginary Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy. At the end of the story, Jane and Elizabeth were finally marrying the man of their dreams.

During the ceremony, I was satisfied that both couples got married, but I was still left wondering what would happen next. When my sister told me that she did not know, this baffled me. How did she not know what happened?

~

            She had told me so many other stories before. We had lived in the American colonies, where we were running away from a wicked brother. I can still remember the scratchy upholstery against my skin as I wore the blue dress that she had designed for that story. Or how I wrinkled my nose as she powdered my face to hide my freckles. – For as she pointedly explained, ladies needed to have fair complexions. – I can still remember trudging through the snow, my purple boots barely visible. We had been pioneering through new territory, searching for an abandoned barn and recording its foreign inhabitants. We made shelter out of discarded branches, snow, and the hidden red and yellow leaves between two trees. As the sun would begin to fade, we would return home to enjoy the warmth of hot chocolate and the delicious snack of graham crackers with icing. So when she told me that she had a new story, I believed that this was no exception. Jane and Elizabeth were just another one of my sister’s various creations.

~

Toward the beginning, Jane and Mr. Bingley are in love, but Mrs. Bennett wants the relationship to deepen more rapidly. Despite the rain and mud, Jane is sent to call upon the Bingleys on horse-back as she now must stay for supper. Yet the plan back-fires (or is furthered in the eyes of Mrs. Bennett) when Jane ends up falling ill and must remain at the Bingleys’ residency for a fortnight. Elizabeth walks on foot with inches of petticoat deep in mud for three or four miles to visit her sister. Once there, “Elizabeth would not quit her at all till late in the evening, when she had the comfort of seeing [Jane] asleep.” This continued until Jane gathered enough strength to travel home.

~

Not many sixteen-year olds would want to spend their winter break playing dress-up with their younger siblings. Not many would want to help their younger siblings with listening to problems or make them feel better during difficult times. I had always wanted to grow up and be like her, something that my friends used to tease me for constantly. I wanted to be strong and independent. I wanted to go to the Peace Corps for two and a half years. I wanted to be in the Marching 110 like her, be a trombone like her, and be extremely intelligent like her. I don’t mean to say that my sister was perfect or that our relationship was flawless. There were definitely times when I annoyed her and times when we fought. Yet we never have stopped being there for one another. She never stopped playing with me, picking on me, and helping me with problems. And she always mesmerized me with her stories.

~

            Jane and Mr. Bingley were no longer together. She had just had a letter from Miss Bingley explaining that her brother is partial to Miss Darcy. In speaking to Elizabeth, Jane remains strong, pitying her mother on the broken prospects of a marriage more than herself.

            She explains, “He may live in my memory as the most amiable man of my acquaintance, but that is all. I have nothing either to hope or fear, and nothing to reproach him with. Thank God! I have not that pain. A little time therefore. I shall certainly try to get better.”

            Still despite this apparent strength, Elizabeth understands how much Jane is hurting. She remains there for her sister, defending her against Mr. Darcy and always trying to mend Jane’s broken heart.

~

            I was quickly given the role of Elizabeth – though I had more in common with Jane as she was quiet, shy and meek –, and  my sister constantly prompted me on what to say. Meanwhile, she not only played the role of Jane but narrated and mimicked the rest of the Bennets and beaus. Her imitation of the mother’s shrill nagging made me howl, and I giggled at the incredibly stupid younger sisters. Along with Elizabeth, I judged Mr. Darcy’s initial behavior and was awed at the possibility that he could be something other than a pompous ass. I cried when Mr. Bingley left Jane and later came back to her.

            It was days later on Christmas that I finally connected the dots. Unwrapping her present from our parents, my sister pulled out six VHS tapes, the box set to the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. Her eyes widened, and her face lit up with excitement. She begged our parents to begin the series later that day. At this time, I still had no idea that the story my sister had told me had any correlation with the movie or book version of Pride and Prejudice.

~

            Elizabeth and Darcy are both at Rosings, Darcy’s aunt’s lodgings, after months of Jane and Bingley not seeing each other. Darcy comes to call on Elizabeth, walking into the room in a hurriedly fashion and pacing up and down.

He bursts in an agitated manner, “In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”

“In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however unequally they may be returned.”

“And this is all the reply which I am to have the honour of expecting! I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so little endeavor at civility, I am thus rejected.”

“[And] I might as well enquire, why, with so evident a design of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason and even against your character?  . . . do you think that any consideration would tempt me to accept the man, who has been the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most beloved sister?”

 I could never forget that argument. It was this debate that made me want to be Elizabeth, the assertive and outgoing character that remained true to her sister through everything and was not afraid to speak her mind. It was these qualities that I wanted to replicate in my sister. It was also at that moment that I understood the story that my sister had shared was from the movie, which was based on the book Pride and Prejudice.

~

            Sometimes siblings fabricate truths or sometimes they leave out details, which was easily what my sister did. She may have easily forgotten to tell me that the story was based on a book. Either way, it didn’t really matter. She had introduced a world of imagination through storytelling, and she had brought me to one of the greatest influences in my life: Jane Austen. By the time we had finished the fourth episode and were on the fifth, I was again hooked on the story line. For a couple months, to which I now feel bad for my dad, we watched those episodes each weekend. Eventually either we became tired of the movie or my dad had had enough of hearing Mrs. Bennet’s shriek that we stopped.

From the time my sister gave me my first copy of Pride and Prejudice to now when I reread Persuasion, her words continue to enchant and ground me even after all of the other classics I have enjoyed.  Whenever I sit down with her novels, I am reminded of the time when I first heard her words.

Abstract of the Future

My dearest reader,

If you have continued reading this blog by this point, I genuinely applaud you and am extremely thankful. If you have just begun reading this blog, please keep going. In the future there will be more exciting and interesting posts.

Speaking of the future . . .

Three weeks - almost a month - ago I finished my non-fiction creative writing class, and so the blog assignment was officially done. (Haha, I guess that was really more about the past.) But . . . despite all of the stress that this sometimes added, I am continuing! :) Yay! :)

In the future, I plan on alternating posts on fiction/literature/creative writing pieces and some really interesting and cool things that are happening in the scientific community and maybe blending those subjects together.  Also there may be some other changes going on the blog in the next couple weeks as I experiment what works and doesn't. Please be patient and let me know if there is any subject that you would like to read more about! :)

Thank you!

Yours always,

Elinor James 


CAUTION: THIS BLOG CONTAINS SOME EXTREMELY INTERESTING CONTENT! BE CAREFUL UPON READING!

Caution: Fiction

The Gray Wall

            A cool breeze gently rustled her tattered brown skirts as Annabelle settled upon the hard wooden bench. She watched as the station boy deposited her portmanteau onto the wooden platform and disappeared amongst the crowd. Men in top hats and overcoats strolled past her, avoiding her gaze. Little children dressed in their Sunday best stopped and gawked at her frayed white linen shirt and wrinkled red coat until their mothers would shoo them away. Annabelle, however, never wavered. She remained sitting and kept her head raised. Under her straw brim hat, her hazel eyes lingered on the ruin beyond the tracks.

Crumbling stones lay beside the battered gray wall; holes from bombs punctured through it. Once it had been the pride of Charlottesville, protection for their beautiful city. It had been created to keep out the Indians and wild-men in the rolling hills of Northern Virginia. It was supposed to protect them from anything.

            But it had not. The war had ravaged through the small town of Charlottesville and left behind its marks. The wall was a prime example of this. Like the rest of the town, it showed the marks of aggression. It reflected the hardship of a lost war, martial law and the ever increasing poverty of its people. It mirrored the decay of the South.

            To Annabelle, life had always been like this. The wall had always been decrepit. The town had always been suffering from the presence of the ambitious and greedy Northerners or carpetbaggers. Her mama, papa and two younger sisters, Lily and Rose Anne, had always been working in the tobacco fields. She had always been helping Mama mending clothes, or the young’uns scrape for food.  Although never discussed, the war had always been lost. The absence of a brother and uncle had always been due to northern aggression. The North had always been the blame.

            A low Yankee voice disrupted her stillness. “Annabelle, I did not know if I would find you here.”
            She craned her neck to see her handsome young gentleman approach. Seeing him in his dark brown overcoat and trousers made her heart beat faster. She smiled.

            “Dylan, I thank th’ Lord that ye survived the night despite ‘em burning crosses.”

            Dylan grimaced, and his face darkened. “As much as they would like, I refuse to give way. I still want to help this town modernize. Even if I am forced to do it from a distance.”

            Annabelle silently nodded. She knew that he did not want to leave this town. Before Dylan, she would never have understood that. She had always believed any Northerner “modernizing” the South meant taking advantage of the South’s misfortunes. But Dylan was not this way. With his youthful good looks and bright ideas, he had marched into Charlottesville two years ago, determined to help the town. He had set about helping the children gain a better education, the farmers grow their crops more efficiently and rebuilding the town’s streets and railroad systems.

            It was in that time she had first met and fallen for him. She remembered looking into his clear blue eyes framed against his black hair as he conversed with her father. She had just stood there and absently nodded, not understanding anything he said. She had only known that she was supposed to stay away from the “likes of him.” That Northerners were never to be trusted.

            Time had told differently, however. Every week over those two years he had come to her plantation. At first she would remain in the distance, silently observing. Eventually she had gained enough confidence to address him, even without her father. As she had rambled, he had listened. His eyes had held her hazel ones. He even had smiled. He had given her time. Before him, she had never known a gentleman that would do that. She had never known someone so caring. 

            “Annabelle, are you alright?” She felt his hand against her back. She winced away in pain.

            “I’ll be fine again, soon. Thank ye,” she whispered in her delicate drawl. She forcefully smiled.

            A look of concern flickered across his face. His eyes searched hers. “Yes, it looks like your bruises are healing.” He gently brushed an auburn curl from her eyes, avoiding contact with her purple and blue skin. He took her hand in his and pressed it against his lips.

“I am so sorry, Annabelle. I blame myself entirely for what happened. I never thought my help could bring so much opposition and hatred. I never thought it would injure another, especially you. I still do not know how they found out about us . . .” He squeezed her hands. “I promise, though, that I will never let it happen to you, again.”

            “You cannot blame yourself, Dylan.” Truthfully, how was he to blame? He had just been trying to help. It was not his fault that others had not wanted his assistance. It was not his fault that the Klan had come after them, because he was a Northerner and she was courting an “outsider.” Despite the threats and burning crosses, they had thought that it would subside. Neither of them had predicted this outcome.

            Annabelle shook her head. Tears pricked from her eyes. She had tried to stay strong for too long. “Dylan, ye saved me life. I shudder to think what may have happened if ye had not been passing . . .” her voice faded.

 Images of that night flashed in front of her. She saw the burning flames and their terrifying expressions in white hoods. She felt their rough hands against her, violently pushing her to the ground. She felt their legs trampling upon her. Harsh words echoed in her ear, whispering that she was betraying her ancestors. She sensed their hatred and disgust.

            Suddenly she felt Dylan’s protective arm wrap around her and envelope her. She rested her head against his shoulder. His warmth comforted her.

            “It will be alright. Everything will be fine. Soon we will be far away from here. Soon you will be safe,” he whispered in her ear.

            She closed her eyes. His words soothed her. He was right. Only leaving Charlottesville ensured her a life. Soon she would not have to worry about anything, especially the Klan. She would be safe. She would have monetary security, enough to send some to Papa and Mama. Most importantly, she would have Dylan. She would have someone who had given up his dreams for her. She would have someone who loved her and would always care for her. She would have the chance to spend her life with that.

            As she heard the whistle of the train, she pulled away from him. She smiled. “You are right. This train is our calling from God. Everything shall be fine now.”

            She smoothed her dress and adjusted her ring. With his help, she rose from the bench. She raised her head and confidently glided toward the train. She ignored the stares from the other passengers. She did not care what they thought; they did not understand her situation.

            Dylan quickly boarded the train in front of her. Her heart began to race as he held out his hand. She looked around at the station. This was it. This was the moment when she should feel the most excited and liberated, but all she felt was uneasiness.

In the distance she saw the rolling hills of her home, illuminated with the bright orange and yellow leaves. Soon her family would begin harvesting. She could imagine Papa in his dirty breeches and ragged mud-colored shirt bending over the plants. Sweat would be dripping from his brim, and by the end of the day, he would be out of breathe. Only with extra pairs of hands would they meet their quota for that fall. In the evening, she would help Mama mend the clothes, turning her gowns into smaller dresses for Lily and Rose Anne. As Mama would sternly lecture the girls on the proper technique of sewing, she would watch as Lily would quietly pester Rose Anne.  In the other room, she would hear the loud voices of Papa and Dylan conversing on new farmer techniques.

Her heart glowed at the thought. As much as her family needed her, she needed her family’s love. Plus as much as Dylan wanted to help the town, it needed him. Without him, the town would continue suffering. It would continue to deal with the conquest of the Northerners and opposition of the Southerners. The town would try to rebuild but remain broken. The wall would remain a ruin.

Annabelle’s eyes widened as she turned back to Dylan. She shook her head and walked away from the train. Despite the Klan, she would never be able to leave her home. With Dylan behind her, she watched as the train pulled away from the station, and her chance for complete safety disappeared. Rather behind it, the gray wall remained.

Science in Progress Final Draft

The Love of Mitochondria

His dark brown eyes look into my own of a lighter hue.

Light bounces in, and its signal is accepted by photoreceptors. This will be sent to the brain to be processed.

He touches my hand.

Receptors send a signal through the peripheral nervous system. An electrochemical signal responds, stimulating cardiac muscles. Shorter repolarization of action potentials produce premature heart palpitations.

My heart beats rapidly.  

Simultaneously an electrical signal is sent through the nervous system in the form of action potentials into the T-tubule of muscle cells. This promotes the release of calcium into the sarcomere of a muscle. Actin and myosin can now interact with one another, producing a muscle contraction.

My hand reaches for his.

ATP floods into the sacromere and binds to the myosin head. It frees itself from the actin filament. The muscle relaxes.

My hand relaxes in his.

The yellow, brown and orange sand "steps" lies beneath our feet, the massive open expanse of eroded sandstone above our heads. Our mouths gape at the breathtaking view: miles upon miles of green trees planted in the mist of brown and sandy ridges. The grey clouds cover what could have been a blue sky. After a couple of miles of hiking in Hocking Hills, foraging our own path through the cold mud and slightly frozen ground, awkwardly walking in a single file, refusing to take his hand for support, slipping down the hill and being covered in mud, silently running out of things to say, we have made it . . . Old Man's Cave. . . He is holding my hand. . . . We have survived.

Our first date.

~

Companionship has been ingrained into our brain by society and religion. We need love to live as 1 Corinithians 13:2 says, “if I . . . understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” There has always been a need for a union of two.  It was only through marriage of Adam and Eve that God created us in his image. We need another individual to live with, understand, sympathize with, cherish, and love until our dying days. We need someone to be with us through sickness and through health. We need someone to bring out the best in us. We need someone to make us complete.

~

Compatibility was not what I had at all thought about when I came to college. I was too busy, too focused on my goal to get a double major, do well in school. I needed to focus on my studies; I did not need a guy to be a distraction. And while I did sincerely believe in Christianity, I was sick of the idea of relationships . .  . women being submissive? Eve always getting the blame for the fall of mankind? Really? Didn’t they both eat the apple? Did they not both fall? Were they not both tempted? I went to bible study but kept my tongue when relationship issues sprang up or a guy went about submission of women. That was the last thing I needed – a guy telling me what to do.

That is not what I found with Tyler. We both lived on the second floor of Perkins that year; both were biology students and Christians. He was a part of the group of friends that I began hanging out with. He was the brother of a fellow trombone in the Marching 110. We met in Shively when I had been looking for a place to seat and eat after band practice – both Sarah and Sara, who I usually ate with, had meetings that day – and he offered me a chair. Soon we began studying together for the exams.

Over winter break, he started sending me texts. Before, I received the normal group text, “Hey, dinner in 10 minutes? Meet in the lobby,” but now it was the genuine, “How’s your break going?” or the more intimate, “Do you like Mannheim Steamroller? I could get tickets for us to go? . . .You could call it an early Christmas present.” Unfortunately, that never happened – I had to leave to play in the New Orleans Bowl.

I still remember the evening in December when the lunar eclipse happened. We had been talking about it for days and developed this plan that we were both going to watch it at the same time. So around 2 am, I stealthily snuck out of my room and down the stairs, grabbed my phone and camera, and made my way outside. The snow was wet and cold against my fleece pjs until came up with the brilliant idea to sit upon another winter coat. There I talked to Tyler on the phone for about an hour while watching the lunar eclipse. Most of the time it was silence or non-sense talking or giggling or shivering. And while Columbus had been cloudy that night and he really did not see anything, still we shared that experience together.

~

Humans seek each other for stability. We follow the elements that make us. Unless the element is an unreactive, very stable noble gas, such as Neon or Argon, most elements can only find stability in another. They react so that they become more stable, more complete.

Biology furthers this need for relationships in the idea of procreation. A life form must be able to grow, metabolize, respond to stimuli, adapt and reproduce. – It was one of the reasons why it was so controversial whether a virus is living or nonliving; it does reproduce but relies on the host to be able to do that. – It is the idea of reproduction and diversifying the gene pool for better survival that underlies attraction. We are attracted to a person that will better pass on your genes and through pheromones, we find this compatible individual. It was also this idea that led my Evolution professor to conclude that the lack of pheromones, covered by deodorants and perfumes led to the higher rates of divorce and break-up.

~

Tyler and I would grin and roll our eyes at each other when our professor would go on with this theory of attraction or his insistent belief that individuals should not shave, wear deodorants or really anything that civilization had forced upon us. Not wear deodorant? Not bathe? Eek! Not shave my legs . . . .okay, that is all good for winter months, but even then . . . it becomes too prickly and dry. Ugh.

Three months had passed since our first date and five since that lunar eclipse. We could now laugh at the awkwardness of that day in February. The day that he had brought me a huge velveteen Valentine’s heart filled with at least 50 Hershey chocolates. I shyly had blushed and given him his birthday gift – it fell on Valentine’s Day – of books from his favorite mystery author Agatha Christie. Then as if nothing had happened, we had gone back to doing homework. We were both logical and should not let emotion be shown. We kept with our normal routine; Ashley, the girl who had a huge crush on Tyler and followed him around like a puppy dog, still came over to study and Tyler still walked her back to her dorm around midnight. Or how on that day, I had broken down crying to Sarah, wondering that because Tyler walked Ashley home every single night, he must like her and how he could give me chocolate. (I swear I am not that stupid.) Or how that day, Sarah consequentially yelled at him, and he came clamoring over to my room with the confused “What did I do” expression. Or how that day finally ended at 1 am with,

“Well, do we want to be more than friends? Would you like to go on a date with me?”

Our friendship grew. We were there for each other. In texting he was the first person I talked to in the morning and last person that I wished good night. I was the first person he would text to let me know about good or bad news. I was the first person that he would come to bounce an idea off on school, or a dilemma. He was my best friend.

It was a symbiotic relationship.

~

Mitochondria have two membranes surrounding its matrix and its own set of DNA - which is believed to be passed down from our mother's mitochondria in the egg. Theoretically, this is all because the mitochondria once existed as bacteria and were engulfed by the larger eukaryote. In exchange for protection, it broke down pyruvate into ATP, which the cell could use as energy to maintain itself and our body. Our muscles could use that to contract and move. Our heart can use that energy to beat. As basic as water and food are to us, we need our mitochondria to break down that food into energy. We need that energy in order to live.

We need our symbiotic relationships.

~

We need love. 1 Corinthians 13 dictates that “Love is patient; love is kind . . .  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Song of Solomon 8:6-7 states that “love is strong as death . . . Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.” No matter how frustrated I could get with Tyler’s obliviousness, I still loved him. No matter how much I frustrated him with my long “soliloques,” he must have still cared for me.

~

I still had not told Tyler that I loved him. A year had passed since we had first started dating. I had been thinking about saying it for about three or four months, but I was not sure how to do it. I wasn’t even sure how he would react. Was he supposed to say it first? Was this how a guy felt on asking out a girl? The anxiousness of rejection but hope for acceptance? All I knew was that I wanted it to be special. Maybe when we were walking in Hocking Hills? Maybe a night at Emeritus Park? Under the cherry blossoms during April? Sure I could wait another two months . .

 Instead, it had just slipped out. We were cuddling on my paisley teal and white bedspread, watching a movie, but I could not remember the movie at all. I usually fell asleep, especially if it was that horrible movie “SSSSSSS” or “Snakes on a Plane.” I would let Tyler pick and tried to stay awake, but normally fell asleep. Anyway, all I remember is waking up. The movie had already ended, and he was snoozing beside me. I then ruined it with, whispering in his ear, “I love you.”

“What?” He opened eyes, but I am still not sure if he heard it.

I looked at the bed spread. “Nothing.”

“Love never ends.” (1 Corinthians 13:7)

~

But we did love each other, I think. We endured the good and bad times together. He hugged me during the liver failure and later death of my aunt during finals week of Winter Quarter freshman year. He offered his shoulder when I heard the news of my grandma's death finals week of that Spring Quarter. I helped him with problems of dealing with an insecure ex-girlfriend. I was there for him when he was anxious about grad school, his majors, his indecision for a Double Major in Math, a minor in Chemistry, or his frustration in not having work summer of Sophomore/Junior Year. We were there for one another as two individuals in love or in symbiosis.

~

            In an ideal world, mitochondria generates energy. Our cells work. Our body is maintained. Yet our life is not perfect. We age. Our mitochondria generate reactive oxygen species, or oxygen radicals through the pumping of hydrogen in Complex I and III of the Electron Transport Chain. If not removed, these build up in the cells. They act as a toxin and promote decline in cellular function. As our cells degrade, our bodies break down. We age.

~

The words reverberate as we sit on the teal bedspread a couple of feet away from one another.

I have known for a month that they are coming. Maybe longer. The busy schedules, the lack of communication, the infrequent texts, the distance in living, the fact that he goes out to lunch more with his other friends than tries to find time to spend with me, the fact that I am way too busy with school, work or band to care, the fact that he is drinking more than I would like, the fact that I am angry with him and will not share why, the fact that we are changing . . . growing . . . All of this acts as ligands, or signals. My receptors should have accepted them and prepared.

"I just don't think this is working out."

~

 Instead, I imagine that this was probably something that hydrogen would say when leaving its NADH in the mitochondria. It flits away across the inner mitochondrial membrane. It probably had a jolly time with NAD, but it has to leave. It needs to cross the membrane to create the proton gradient to force ATP to be made.

I wonder what if the cell had said that to the mitochondria. Would we still be living? Would we be as big or complex? But what if it had been a faulty mitochondria? Overloaded with too much food to generate ATP? What if it produced too many ROS? Was I a faulty mitochondria? Had I let too much work and school overload me, not providing enough for this relationship? Had I provided too much? Too much that the cell was overwhelmed? That had the body aged too quickly? Degraded too soon?

~

I walk him out of the front door, down the grey/white stairs and to his car. We hug. The  freezer soon finds me: strawberry ice cream, peanut butter, chocolate. My roommate Siri turns on the light. I see the disgusting concoction. I see her worried eyes. I am sad. I am anger. . . . I am . . .  relieved?

~

            It is times like these that it is hard to have faith. Some days I felt lost or confused about where I was going. Would I be able to call Tyler a friend?  As Christians, we are called to love everyone, including friends or acquaintances or ex-boyfriends. We must love those that we are still trying to not to be angry at, forget and forgive. Yet it is times like these that we must love. We must have faith.

As much as 1 Corinthians 13 dictates about the consistency of love, it also states, “For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” It shows that we do not know what will happen. It shows that each experience has a purpose that we may not understand, but we must have faith. It gives the power and strength to be independent. The faith to accept whatever your life will. That maybe you will find someone and maybe not.

~

Science also offers strength.

Hydrogen eventually diffuses out of the inner membrane space of the mitochondria and into the cell. Eventually it finds and binds to some other element, most likely oxygen. There it becomes more stable and remains with that element until eventually it will leave again and bind to something else again.

Or that maybe the mitochondria did not need the cell or the body . . . That it could have lived without the cell, it could have been independent and strong, remained single. In that case, would it not have been known as mitochondria . . . would it not be a microbe? A bacteria?

~

He sits down next to me in class. He asks nonchalantly about winter break, about all the months since October that I have not seen him. He laughs at some stupid joke or woe that I share about work. He shares his drama with his roommates in the apartment. I express my sympathy. We do not mention the _________. It does not exist. It did not happen; we were not in a relationship. Neither of us were in love. Neither of us were mitochondria, neither of us were hydrogen with oxygen or NADH.

No. We are bacteria. That are single-celled and independent. That just happen to live in symbiosis.

Science in Progress - Proposed Research

Preface: 

This work is not in its complete format, but just some prewriting/brainstorming for my final essay in this class. Overall, I want to look at relationships through a scientific and possibly religious lens, and below contains a selection of that. Enjoy and please let me know what you think and what I can do to improve this! Thanks! 

Caution: Below contains the information of controversial dangers: love and relationships. 

 

Hydrogen and Mitochondria 

His dark brown eyes look into my own of a lighter hue.
Light bounces in, and its signal is accepted by photoreceptors. This will be sent to the brain to be processed.
He touches my hand.
Receptors send a signal through the peripheral nervous system. An electrochemical signal responds, stimulating cardiac muscles. Shorter repolarization of action potentials cause the heart to contract more frequently, producing premature heart palpitations. Simultaneously an electrical signal is sent through the nervous system in the form of action potentials into the T-tubule of muscle cells. This promotes the release of calcium into the sacromere, which binds to the troponin on an actin filament. Actin binds to the myosin head and through a powerstroke, contracts. Over several sacromeres, the entire muscle contracts.
My hand reaches for his.
ATP floods into the sacromere and binds to the myosin head. It frees itself from the actin filament. The muscle relaxes.
My hand relaxes in his.
The yellow, brown and orange sand "steps" lies beneath our feet. The massive open expanse of eroded sandstone above our heads. Our mouths gape at the breathtaking view: miles upon miles of green trees planted in the mist of brown and sandy ridges. The grey clouds cover what could have been a blue sky. After a couple of miles of hiking in Hocking Hills, foraging our own path through the cold mud and slightly frozen ground, awkwardly walking in a single file, refusing to take his hand for support, slipping down the hill and being covered in mud, silently running out of things to say, we have made it . . . Old Man's Cave. . . He is holding my hand. . . . We have survived.

Our first date.

Companionship has been ingrained into our brain by society and religion. Since the beginning of civilization, marriage has been an upheld institution. But even before that in Genesis, there has been a need for a union of two. It was only through marriage of two individuals that God created us in his image. Since the days of Eden, we have needed another individual to live with, understand, sympathize with, cherish, and love until our dying days. We need someone to be with us through sickness and through health. We need someone to bring out the best in us. We need someone to make us complete.

 I want to say that T and I had that perfect compatibility. We both needed companionship and both enjoyed the company of each other. Both biology nerds - I mean, majors - we could revel in the biology jokes or nerdy pick-up lines like, "If I were an enzyme, I would be DNA helicase so that I could unzip your genes" . . . haha, it is funny, right? Anyway, we would laugh at that.

We could complain in the hardships of our anatomy lab, dissecting the pig that he had named after the king in One Thousand and One Nights. We studied physiology, evolution and chemistry together. We suffered through organic chemistry together, through the good and bad days and exams. We borrowed each other's books: micro, cell bio, genetics, physics. We both discussed and agreed on religion together as he was Catholic and I Protestant.

We both supported one another. He hugged me during the liver failure and later death of my aunt during finals week of Winter Quarter freshman year. He let me cry on his shoulder when I heard the news of my grandma's death finals week of that Spring Quarter. I was there for him when he was anxious about grad school, his majors, his indecision for a Double Major in Math, a minor in Chemistry, or his frustration in not having work summer of Sophomore/Junior Year. We were there for each other. In texting he was the first person I talked to in the morning and last person that I wished good night. He was my best friend.

It was a symbiotic relationship.
   
Mitochondria have two membranes surrounding its matrix and its own set of DNA - which is believed to be passed down from our mother's mitochondria in the egg. In many aspects it acts like a bacteria or prokaryotic cell, existing in our own eukaryotic cells - a fancy name for complex cells with organelles, organization and which typically exist in multi-cellular organisms like us -. Theoretically, this is all because the mitochondria once existed as bacteria and were engulfed by the larger eukaryote. In exchange for protection, it broke down pyruvate into ATP, which the cell could use as energy to maintain itself. It converted pyruvate into acetyl CoA to be generated into the Citric Acid Cycle to make coenzymes. These coenzymes NADH and FADH2 supply the protons pumped through the inner membrane of the mitochondria and generate electrons through the Electron Transport Chain. This proton gradient forces the creation of ATP. Hence, it creates energy. As basic as water and food are to us, we need our mitochondria to break down that food into energy. We need that energy in order to live.

We need our symbiotic relationships.
 
 In an ideal world, mitochondria generates energy. Our cells work. Our body is maintained. Yet our life is not perfect. We age. Our mitochondria generate reactive oxygen species, or oxygen radicals through the pumping of hydrogen in Complex I and III of the Electron Transport Chain. If not removed, these build up in the cells. They act as a toxin and promote decline in cellular function. As our cells degrade, our bodies break down. We age.

The words echo through my head. I have known for a month that they are coming. Maybe longer. The busy schedules, the lack of communication, the infrequent texts, the distance in living, the fact that he goes out to lunch more with his other friends than tries to find time to spend with me, the fact that I am way to busy with school, work or band to care, the fact that he is drinking more than I would like, the fact that I am angry with him and will not share why, the fact that we are changing . . . growing . . . All of this acts as ligands, or signals. My receptors should have accepted them and prepared.

"I just don't think this is working out."

 Instead, I imagine that this was probably something that hydrogen would say when leaving its NADH in the mitochondria. It flits away across the inner mitochondrial membrane. It probably had a jolly time with NAD, but it has to leave. It needs to cross the membrane to create the proton gradient to force ATP to be made.

I wonder what if the cell had said that to the mitochondria. Would we still be living? Would we be as big or complex? But what if it had been a faulty mitochondria? Overloaded with too much food to generate ATP? What if it produced too many ROS?

Was I a faulty mitochondria? Had I let too much work and school overload me and make me a faulty mitochondria, not providing enough for this relationship? Had I provided too much? Too much that the cell was overwhelmed? That had the body age too quickly? Degrade too quickly?

Religion helps perpetuate the societal ideal for the perfect companion. It speaks against adultery. It mentions that the husband must love the wife and the wife the husband. It upholds the purity before marriage, that marriage is sacred. But it does not dictate on how to know how many people you will go through to find that "perfect someone?" It does not give a magical rule that you will "date seven people, marry, have two children, a dog . . .

And it is not supposed to. Rather it gives strength. It gives the power and strength to be independent. The faith to accept whatever your life will yield. That maybe you will find someone and maybe not. Maybe you will be the ideal mitochondria, or maybe hydrogen . . . 

Hydrogen eventually diffuses out of the inner membrane space of the mitochondria and into the cell. Eventually it finds and binds to some other element, most likely oxygen. There it becomes more stable and remains with that element until eventually it will leave again and bind to something else again.

Or maybe a faulty mitochondria . . .

But maybe the mitochondria did not need the cell or the body . . . Could it have lived without the cell? Could it have been independent and strong, remained single? In that case, would it not have been known as mitochondria . . . would it not be a microbe? A bacteria?

 He sits down next to me in class. He asks nonchalantly about winter break, about all the weeks that I have not seen him. He laughs at some stupid joke or woe that I share about work. He shares his drama with his roommates in the apartment. I express my sympathy. We do not mention the _________. It does not exist. It did not happen; we were not in a relationship. Neither of us were mitochondria, neither of us were hydrogen with oxygen or NADH. No. We are bacteria. That are single-celled and independent.

That just happen to live in symbiosis.

****Note: Since this is a work in progress and just a flushing out of ideas, I apologize for any choppiness. Please let me know what I can do to improve it!!! : ) Let me know if there is any scientific terms I need to clarify, or if this is just too much! Or there is something else you feel that I need to address! Thanks! Also note, I don't want this to be too depressing - T and I are really good friends.