#highfunctioningsociopath11

she's being honest when she says no.

cosima niehaus is aware that not everyone on the planet is straight. but she is.

cosima niehaus realizes she's queer when she's reading this back-copy of scientific american that she might possibly have a little bit more than admiration for rosalind franklin after all.

but whatever, right? cosima niehaus is gay.

it takes her a year to get that this is weird.

cosima niehaus has never had many friends. she doesn't lose any of them for being gay. maybe they're just as desperate as she is for some form of human contact. who knows, right?

she would have traded all of them to feel like she belonged in science again.

she realizes this is probably borderline unhealthy, but it's always been her one place. cosima niehaus is weird. cosima niehaus reads too much nonfiction and her fun facts are never that fun and she is way more confident than she should be.

but that was okay. cosima niehaus liked science. and science liked her.

science doesn't like cosima niehaus when she realizes she's queer.

science looks for cures to queerness. science looks for reasons for queerness. science calls queerness circumstantial. science says queerness exists only when convenient.

her reason says queerness will never be convenient.

but she knows that queer people exist. she exists.

but that's all she knows.

cosima niehaus knows that she is queer. she is real. and there has to be someone else like her.

there has to be another scientist like her.

cosima's always been more interested in the science than the scientists. she thinks this stems from that bad grade on her third-grade history test, but whatever.

that's how desperate cosima niehaus is.

she checks out twenty-seven biographies, two autobiographies, and five on "the unsung heroes of modern science."

it takes 138.25 pages to get what she's looking for.

it comes in the form of a throwaway comment about a male lover. cosima can feel the judgement radiating off those two words. (cosima has never cared less.)

she stacks the book at the end of her bed.

cosima's always been more interested in the science than the scientists. all she needed was that one line.

cosima niehaus has never believed in beginner’s luck, but she reads eleven more books without any kind of mention of anyone even a little bit like her.

still, she tells herself, one is better than nothing. one is okay.

(one isn’t enough.)

she reads all of the books. some she finishes. others she abandons the second she finds what she’s looking for. some have it. some don’t.

it really blows when they don’t.

but so many do.

bacon. da vinci. pearce. mead.

the list goes on.