I used to work in a psychiatric genetics lab, and sometimes we'd have clinicians in our lab meetings, describing what it was like to be depressed, to be a binge eater. I had a friend in the lab, and we would give ourselves faux-appalled looks, because, who hasn't eaten an entire bag of cheetos in one sitting, or woke up one morning and just pulled the covers back over your head, deciding that the world just isn't worth it today.
The distinction of course, is that these blips do not disrupt our daily life. They are not harmful to us or to those around us. They do not prevent us from holding a job, from functioning day to day. But it always gave us something to think about. That we were maybe always on the edge, one step away from, well, something.
Today, this is how I feel about anxiety.
I get anxious, I get overwhelmed. It's not bad enough that I've never gotten out of bed. It doesn't prevent me from feeding Lena, getting her to school. It doesn't affect me showing up in lab, it doesn't affect me getting any work done. But...it's there. And I can't ignore in completely, and it does not go away.
I don't really know how to describe it. Maybe it's like a college dorm roommate, this anxiety. We're living in close quarters. She has a different agenda than I do. She sometimes thinks the way I do something is silly, and in these moments she likes to stand over my shoulder and hiss, no, don't dirty so many dishes! Don't pick up the phone, it might be toxic! Why are you going to bed so early, get more work done!
I'm figuring out little ways to deal with this. Sometimes I remind myself, you don't have to get things done in the most efficient way, you just have to get it done.
I tell myself when I'm looking at a mounding pile of dinner dishes. This roommate of mine, anxiety, says almost comically, --you can't do this all--, and my eyes widen, my heart starts to beat a little bit faster, Lena-bless-her-heart needs me to come to the bathroom and wipe my bum, mom! and I know I'm about to freeze, to give up, to be overwhelmed, and I just have to put one foot in front of the other.
Anne Lamott echos this sentiment in Bird by Bird. She shares the story of her brother procrastinating on a school project about birds, and she says that he is crying at the kitchen table, surrounded by books on birds, asking their father how on earth this is going to get done, and their father replies, bird by bird.
And this is my mantra. Dish by dish. Day by day. Book by book. Dyeterm sequencing reaction by dyeterm sequencing reaction.
The funny thing is, and this is something that is so hard to explain to people unfamiliar with anxiety, or depression, or whatever, is that I make it through, dish by dish, and the kitchen is clean again. It always is. I always do it. It always ends up ok, and yet, every time it does I am so surprised by it. These things, getting done, this never ceases to amaze me.
My body can't seem to remember that, so it's something I have to relearn, reteach myself every time. Dish by dish. Day by day. Bird by bird.
(Every now and then I want to throw my hands up and say, fuck you dishes! fuck you birds! but I feel like that's a good sign too. It's better than just wanting to crawl back in bed and giving up on everything. I'm not quite ready to give up yet.)
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Monday, June 10, 2013
that thing we do
Grad school.
Let me set the stage for you: It's the first day of my second week, and I'm already crying in the car on the way home. This is going to be so much fun.
Here's the conversation I heard that caused me to have an emotional breakdown:
postdoc: Hey what time are you going to be here until?
undergrad: Probably 7:30.
**a side note, this is somewhat exaggerated for comic relief, because I did not actually have an emotional breakdown in lab, and I'm not this emotionally unstable most of the time, but here you have it.
me on the other side of the lab bench: ...
There were about 800 thoughts running through my head after this. Because *I* can't stay until 7:30. I have no idea what you would do in lab at 7:30. I assume the same things you do from the hours of 9 to 5? Is there something special that happens after 5 in lab? Do elves come out and whisper sweet nothings at the PCR machines? Do the techs turn into pumpkins? Whatever happens...I will never know.
And here comes this recurring theme that apparently is the story of my life: giving myself a hard time for things beyond my control. Do they have graduate program for that because if they do I would totally win.
As much as I would love to put my head down, do my work, be so secure with myself that I don't give a shit what anyone says/thinks about me...the reality is that's not me. And that's also something I need to stop fighting. I can't give myself a hard time for giving myself a hard time. I can't beat myself up for caring what other people think about me. The only think I can do is to try to remind myself that it doesn't matter as much as I think it does.
I started out not knowing whether or not to bring up that I have a kid. It didn't come up in interviews, because in the question of "why do you want to go to graduate school" the fact that I have a kid has absolutely zero relevance. But who I am as a person, and who I am as a scientist? Having a kid has 100 percent abso-fucking-lutely relevance on who I am. Why do I keep fighting that? I'm going to stop fighting that. So much so that I am going to start walking around with a sign on my head that says 'emotionally unstable single parent' because that's who I am, dammit, and it might help people deal with me.
It leads me to this funny thing that I never imagined I'd have to deal with, which is 'coming out' as a single parent. When you meet a twenty-five year old that's still wearing a uniform of chacos, skirts with elastic waists and t-shirts, your first thought is not immediately, "this person had a child". and then upon finding out that said person does have a child, your subsequent thought is not "this person is a single parent." Our society is many things, hetero-normative, democratic, fairly misogynistic, to say a few, and in academia, if you are a woman who has a kid, you are over 30 and married. (If this is not the majority, feel free to correct me. I just took an informal tally in my head to get those demographics.) I'm not out to "subvert the dominant paradigm" or anything, much to the chagrin of my high school self, but here I am. (Also high school self would never have picked this particular dominant paradigm to subvert.)
You know what I do between the hours of 5 and 7:30? I drive home, I pick up Lena, I talk to her teachers, and I talk to other parents. I make dinner, I do the dishes, I get Lena in the bath, I wash Lena, I tell Lena to floss her teeth, I help Lena brush her teeth because mommy-cannot-afford-any-more-cavities, I get Lena into bed, and I read to her for about twenty minutes before it's time for bed. Here's the million dollar question. Why do I not count this as doing something productive? Why do I not give myself credit for this? Why can I not cut myself one iota of slack, because this is work too? This is not trivial. This deserves just as much credit as setting up a PCR reaction at seven in the evening.
I'm reading this book, sort of, it's called The Price of Motherhood: Why the most important job in the world is still the least valued, and I sit there and nod my head and hmm and haww at the world and how society devalues mothers/parenting, and this is bad that other people do this how can we change that, and then I realize that I am doing this to myself. I am devaluing arguably the most important part of my life---for what, one more experiment squeezed into the day?
REVELATION.
I emailed my dad right after the 7:30 conversation was overheard, saying, holyshit I'm out of my league I should have gone to a 'soft' school like UNC ha! I can't be here until 7:30 omgi'mgoingtodie. (I think I literally ended this email with the really mature phrase of 'not ok. i'm not ok.') and my dad emails back this, because he figured all this out a while ago, that it's really all about doing the best with what you have, and the things that you tend to think are important aren't necessarily the things that are most important in the long run:
I hate to break the news, but News Flash, you will get a Ph.D. and it's pretty unlikely it will be nobel laureate work. I'm not knocking you, I'm just looking at the statistics. So work hard, focus on the science, because it is cool, and try to remember that you and Lena trump the world because you're two of the three most awesome girls I know.
Pops
omg my dad doesn't think I can win the Nobel Prize. What's up with that?? Supportive parents. I can't imagine what it's like to have some of those.
Let me set the stage for you: It's the first day of my second week, and I'm already crying in the car on the way home. This is going to be so much fun.
Here's the conversation I heard that caused me to have an emotional breakdown:
postdoc: Hey what time are you going to be here until?
undergrad: Probably 7:30.
**a side note, this is somewhat exaggerated for comic relief, because I did not actually have an emotional breakdown in lab, and I'm not this emotionally unstable most of the time, but here you have it.
me on the other side of the lab bench: ...
There were about 800 thoughts running through my head after this. Because *I* can't stay until 7:30. I have no idea what you would do in lab at 7:30. I assume the same things you do from the hours of 9 to 5? Is there something special that happens after 5 in lab? Do elves come out and whisper sweet nothings at the PCR machines? Do the techs turn into pumpkins? Whatever happens...I will never know.
And here comes this recurring theme that apparently is the story of my life: giving myself a hard time for things beyond my control. Do they have graduate program for that because if they do I would totally win.
As much as I would love to put my head down, do my work, be so secure with myself that I don't give a shit what anyone says/thinks about me...the reality is that's not me. And that's also something I need to stop fighting. I can't give myself a hard time for giving myself a hard time. I can't beat myself up for caring what other people think about me. The only think I can do is to try to remind myself that it doesn't matter as much as I think it does.
I started out not knowing whether or not to bring up that I have a kid. It didn't come up in interviews, because in the question of "why do you want to go to graduate school" the fact that I have a kid has absolutely zero relevance. But who I am as a person, and who I am as a scientist? Having a kid has 100 percent abso-fucking-lutely relevance on who I am. Why do I keep fighting that? I'm going to stop fighting that. So much so that I am going to start walking around with a sign on my head that says 'emotionally unstable single parent' because that's who I am, dammit, and it might help people deal with me.
It leads me to this funny thing that I never imagined I'd have to deal with, which is 'coming out' as a single parent. When you meet a twenty-five year old that's still wearing a uniform of chacos, skirts with elastic waists and t-shirts, your first thought is not immediately, "this person had a child". and then upon finding out that said person does have a child, your subsequent thought is not "this person is a single parent." Our society is many things, hetero-normative, democratic, fairly misogynistic, to say a few, and in academia, if you are a woman who has a kid, you are over 30 and married. (If this is not the majority, feel free to correct me. I just took an informal tally in my head to get those demographics.) I'm not out to "subvert the dominant paradigm" or anything, much to the chagrin of my high school self, but here I am. (Also high school self would never have picked this particular dominant paradigm to subvert.)
You know what I do between the hours of 5 and 7:30? I drive home, I pick up Lena, I talk to her teachers, and I talk to other parents. I make dinner, I do the dishes, I get Lena in the bath, I wash Lena, I tell Lena to floss her teeth, I help Lena brush her teeth because mommy-cannot-afford-any-more-cavities, I get Lena into bed, and I read to her for about twenty minutes before it's time for bed. Here's the million dollar question. Why do I not count this as doing something productive? Why do I not give myself credit for this? Why can I not cut myself one iota of slack, because this is work too? This is not trivial. This deserves just as much credit as setting up a PCR reaction at seven in the evening.
I'm reading this book, sort of, it's called The Price of Motherhood: Why the most important job in the world is still the least valued, and I sit there and nod my head and hmm and haww at the world and how society devalues mothers/parenting, and this is bad that other people do this how can we change that, and then I realize that I am doing this to myself. I am devaluing arguably the most important part of my life---for what, one more experiment squeezed into the day?
REVELATION.
I emailed my dad right after the 7:30 conversation was overheard, saying, holyshit I'm out of my league I should have gone to a 'soft' school like UNC ha! I can't be here until 7:30 omgi'mgoingtodie. (I think I literally ended this email with the really mature phrase of 'not ok. i'm not ok.') and my dad emails back this, because he figured all this out a while ago, that it's really all about doing the best with what you have, and the things that you tend to think are important aren't necessarily the things that are most important in the long run:
I hate to break the news, but News Flash, you will get a Ph.D. and it's pretty unlikely it will be nobel laureate work. I'm not knocking you, I'm just looking at the statistics. So work hard, focus on the science, because it is cool, and try to remember that you and Lena trump the world because you're two of the three most awesome girls I know.
Pops
omg my dad doesn't think I can win the Nobel Prize. What's up with that?? Supportive parents. I can't imagine what it's like to have some of those.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
fave hikes: cabelands
Sometimes I am full of really good ideas. Like the time that I decided to quit my super cushy tech job and go to grad school, which is resulting in "the summer of being totally broke", which, as much as I would like it to mean that L and I stay inside and get our money's worth out of my parent's netflix subscription...means that we're turning to the great outdoors.
Which leads me to my not-sarcastic-good idea!
L and I are going to do all the trails in the triangle this summer! And then I'm going to blog about them.
So, first up, the Cabelands trail at the Eno.
The funny story is this is not the hike I wanted to do. I wanted to do the portion of the Mountians-to-Sea trail (MST) that Aspen showed us, which is right next to the beginning of the Cabelands trail, but is significantly less traveled, but L wanted to do Cabelands, so what the heck.
L is a rocking hiker. I can't wait until she can carry a pack. The problem is, she's about 5 times faster than I am, so I can't even use her as an excuse to walk slowly. And I'm a slow hiker. I'd like to claim something like stamina, or whatever, but really I'm just slow. What's the rush? Next time we'll take L's friends, who have 3 year old little siblings. That's about my pace on these hikes.
Cabelands was a perfect almost-an-hour hike for us. I would have liked to have added the quarry trail (next time!) but we weren't prepared for swimming anyway, and the Eno was a'raging today. We started at 9:30, and by 10:30 we were hot and sticky. So maybe my hiking-tour-of-the-Piedmont through the summer isn't the best idea? but we'll try.
We grabbed a map of all the eno trails on the way out. Project time!, if I get my shit together.
Other little things:
+Started grad school last week. Woo. It's up and down. I'm excited about everything, I'm depressed at how little I know, and then I see a band on a gel and I'm like LIFE IS SO GREAT. It is an adventure.
+I finally washed my Chacos in the washing machine, and holy shit, that is a life-changing experience. they are so fresh and so clean-clean, and now I don't need to worry about stinking out everyone when I wear them in public. The WASHING machine, who knew? (I know, you did, so don't say you told me so, please.) (Also way better than the idea of sticking my Toms in the -80 at work to kill bacteria. See 'cushy tech job', above.) So now the chacos are getting washed every two weeks with the towels, and little by little my life is getting slightly less stinky. Ain't nobody got time for that.
Which leads me to my not-sarcastic-good idea!
L and I are going to do all the trails in the triangle this summer! And then I'm going to blog about them.
So, first up, the Cabelands trail at the Eno.
 |
| L wouldn't take a picture with me, but she consented to take a picture of me. it was slightly too much to ask to get the whole sign. |
The funny story is this is not the hike I wanted to do. I wanted to do the portion of the Mountians-to-Sea trail (MST) that Aspen showed us, which is right next to the beginning of the Cabelands trail, but is significantly less traveled, but L wanted to do Cabelands, so what the heck.
 |
| I feel like I should be able to caption this, "new growth forest" or something. |
I love that we live so close to a place like this.
.jpeg) |
| a brief respite. |
The Eno was raging this morning, after the tropical storm of Thursday and Friday. We didn't make it to the Quarry, which is attached to this trail. Maybe another time this summer.
.jpeg) |
| can you spot her between the mountain laurel? |
Cabelands was a perfect almost-an-hour hike for us. I would have liked to have added the quarry trail (next time!) but we weren't prepared for swimming anyway, and the Eno was a'raging today. We started at 9:30, and by 10:30 we were hot and sticky. So maybe my hiking-tour-of-the-Piedmont through the summer isn't the best idea? but we'll try.
We grabbed a map of all the eno trails on the way out. Project time!, if I get my shit together.
Other little things:
+Started grad school last week. Woo. It's up and down. I'm excited about everything, I'm depressed at how little I know, and then I see a band on a gel and I'm like LIFE IS SO GREAT. It is an adventure.
+I finally washed my Chacos in the washing machine, and holy shit, that is a life-changing experience. they are so fresh and so clean-clean, and now I don't need to worry about stinking out everyone when I wear them in public. The WASHING machine, who knew? (I know, you did, so don't say you told me so, please.) (Also way better than the idea of sticking my Toms in the -80 at work to kill bacteria. See 'cushy tech job', above.) So now the chacos are getting washed every two weeks with the towels, and little by little my life is getting slightly less stinky. Ain't nobody got time for that.
.jpeg) |
| update: project time! |
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