Being Geek Chic is a blog for stylish geeks, sophisticated nerds and people who enjoy the musings of a complete dork. Join us as we dream of driving the TARDIS, cuddle with our eBooks and test out an iPad sleeve. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi and a team of brilliant lady nerds. Meet the team.
Dear Doctor,
How much more does heartbreak hurt when you have two hearts? Is there double the ache of loneliness? Double the pain when you lose someone dear? Do both hearts beat twice as fast in the heat of rage? Or just one? Forgive me for being so forward, but I worry about those hearts. I do.
While I accepted long ago that you would not be picking me up in your magical blue box, I still see so much of myself in your life. And even though I live in a linear world where minutes move forward and never back, seconds can never be relived and days are crossed over with an X on the calendar only to be revisited in photographs and diary pages - I still know what it feels like to be transformed by time. To be caught up in the wrinkles it leaves on your heart. (Or hearts in your case.) To be overwhelmed with a sense of wonderment at what can be. To be consumed by the unknown because it’s so much more promising than the known.
We share something I so rarely find in others: an obsession with time.
Ever since I was a little girl, I have felt an intensely unhealthy awareness of time. I could feel days passing, my being evolving with each turn of the calendar month. I imagine that just as you left Gallifrey, only to be hurtled into an uncertain future, I too experience a pivotal juncture in life that put me in time’s sights.
I was 6 when my mom was diagnosed with blood cancer, disrupting any expectations of my experiencing a standard first grader’s life. To borrow from the world of aviation, this was my first lesson in crash landings. When illness captures a loved one, it also takes hold of a family and transports them to a life that feels so foreign, so far from reality, that it may as well be a planet far in the distance. My parents did something so wise then, though. They always tried to frame the experience as an adventure. It was easy to do at that age. Our maroon van our vessel and our coloring books our maps. All a grand distraction from the fact that my mom was shriveling up physically and emotionally to survive. If we kept busy enough, we may not see the alien in the hospital bed and still see our mother.
Time, of course, is ultimately what healed her. Surgical intervention and scientific discovery helped too, but that’s the dangerous part of getting too close to time. You begin to worship it. Like addicts trembling for another tick of the hour hand, we watched her suffer hoping time would not snap its lids shut and sever us from her forever. We fought to create joy in a place that was so filled with desperation and confusion and managed to win. But time didn’t let me pass so easily.
I know now that it did something terrifying to my psyche. It’s where our universes, our way of seeing existence, become so deeply enmeshed. By the age of 8, I was a prisoner to time.
I left high school in the 10th grade, so I could get a jump start on college.
Then finished college two years early to get ahead of my classmate’s on my career path.
Through each job, I’ve hustled for promotions and done more than was ever asked, skipping vacations and working from the beach.
In nearly 30 years, I have never read a book past page 100 if I didn’t absolutely love it. Or watch a TV show that didn’t grab me after the first season.
And I’m tired. Because I can’t take the watch off.
I do find respite in reality though. I know that someday time will release it’s dark spindly hold over my wrists and let me pass into the earth. But I don’t think time has the same plan for you. Time has bared its hands on your throat and I watch hoping it doesn’t harm your hearts. I get a lump in my throat just writing the words: but I don’t think time will ever let you go.
I don’t believe in fictional worlds. I choose instead to believe that you live in an alternate reality and humans just haven’t developed a mechanism for traveling there just yet. But your eyes give me hope, because in them I see patience. I see control. I may never know the unknown. Or experience the impossible. But I will watch you and hope that at the very least, you’ll let me peek at it a couple times.
With love, Liz
We’re enjoying 30 days of Doctor Who during the month of March on Being Geek Chic! Since the show is celebrating it’s 50th Anniversary and Series 7 is rebooting at the end of the month, it seemed like the perfect time to reflect on why we love the Doctor, wish we could apply for the job of Companion and create our own Sonic Screwdrivers. So while we can’t board the TARDIS, we can spend a ridiculous amount of time replicating Amelia Pond’s signature look. Tell your friends and stick around for more. Allonsy!
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