"I don't know that I think of it much as surviving, really."
That word had so many connotations attached to it -- tents and fires, extreme skills, extreme effort. She didn't really feel that she tried very hard at all. She just... Did what she did, on a daily basis. She tried not to put very much thought into the fact that it might not be easy, or that it wasn't ideal. Perhaps the word living was better.
Her words trailed off as she listened to him continue on. Balloons, art. Ellie felt... Happy? Was this happy? A kind of happy. There was something about the expression on Evan's face that made her think that his life before -- when he had been able to do the things that made him happy, that were his art -- must have been wonderful. She didn't know if she had made art with her research, or with how out of control her life had been outside of the lab; perhaps her art had been afterward, trying to fix things. Trying to save her grandmother.
I can still be happy, now. Something would occur to her eventually. If she wasn't happy already.
"I think I understand," she told him. "It was something personal to you. My father never talked about his writing with students -- he said that it was his life, not his work. And it's hard... It's hard, mixing the two. If you try it."
When Ellie talked about her studies, she never mentioned the effect they'd had on every other part of her life -- but even despite that, she wouldn't have had it any other way.
"Evan," she said after a moment, glancing casually up at him from the paragraph she'd just skimmed. "I think you're decent."