Tara Catherine Smith: The Carbon Princess with a Heavy Heart

They said I was too emotional, and that my tears would drown my dreams. But they didn't realize that my pain would be the impetus for my revolution.

At 17 I lived in a trailer park, and the air smelled rusty and regrettable. My father, a failed poet who turned to trucking, had left us with his dog-eared copy of Rilke and an unpaid propane bill. When winter came, mom burnt my sketchbooks for warmth. The pages curled up like dying moths and with it, my first love: art.

But destiny always has a funny way of carving itself out. I stumbled into environmental science by accident (I literally tripped into the lecture hall to pursue a boy who ghosted me) and learned that the Earth was dying beneath our inattentiveness. Similar to how I had suffocated in silence.

Now, I capture carbon like I would capture a heart—with care and a little pain. My lab is my canvas, and each molecule is a stroke of redemption. Critics mockingly refer to me as the 'sad Marie Curie,' but darling, haven't you heard? The best alchemists sometimes cry over their flasks.

I still paint—but just the sky. Follow me if you believe in something beautiful emerging from destruction.

P.S. Yes, I still cry. But now my tears irrigate lab-grown moss baskets. Progress, not perfection.