March 7, 2010

• Last night (and by that I mean around noon a few hours before I woke up) I had a dream where, at one point, I was shivering uncontrollably and my mother started mixing sugar and water together and then trying to bake the little globs on a cookie sheet.  I assume they were to help me from shivering, but she was mixing them out of the ethidium bromide waste bucket in our lab and I was crying for her to stop touching it and that I didn't want the little sugar things but she wasn't listening.  Then my father said I should go to the dentist who happened to be one of my professors, only he was completely insane in my dream.  After the frightening dentist appointment (where the assistant was a small child dressed as a clown and everyone was okay with this) my father then suggested I go to the doctor and have them take a bone marrow sample from the back of my foot right above the heel.  He made it sound really painful and frightening so I ran away.  Somehow I met mreechan and we got into this really shitty rusty car and drove to a really old gas station to refuel.  We both went inside and I paid for the gas and got back in the car.  She came out with a bunch of candy, but for some reason I knew that she had stolen all of it and I was really disappointed and wanted her to take it all back but she had already opened it all.  And one of the candies looked like different flavors of PCR primers.  We drove for a while and somehow were back at the place where I started uncontrollably shivering and I screamed and then woke up.

  It wasn't an enjoyable dream.  The entire time I felt out of place and angry or frightened.  Honestly, that's the way I feel now during my waking hours anyway.  I guess it's starting to seep into my dreams.

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  This weekend has been terrible so far.  And maybe I'm just sensitive.  I know MY terrible is a lot less intense than a lot of people's terrible.  I guess what I mean to say is that from Thursday to today, I have been more unhappy than usual.

  On Thursday I ruined several samples (only my own, thankfully) of DNA and had to start over from the beginning of the experiment...which takes an additional 36 hours. 

  On Friday I had finished everything to be back at the point which I previously ruined.  I smiled to myself that I hadn't set myself back that far, but as I was measuring the samples I realized that they were ruined as well and I would have to start over again.  So much for learning lessons after the first mishap.  More than that I also realized that I wasn't able to do something that I expected to be able to do.  I know this sounds horrible and egotistical, but that's really never happened to me before.  I'm at the point in my life where my shortcomings are catching up with me.  The things I'm doing aren't easy anymore.  Biological work involves being very gentle and careful and not rushing through things and I'm just not used to it.  All my previous work has been with things that are inanimate and can be baked at 800 K before breaking down or even melting, things that can be thrown down a set of stairs and then centrifuged and still be intact, things that didn't require so much...finesse, I guess.  Failing twice in a row for very similar reasons each time just...it really made me feel completely inadequate and worthless.

  Also on Friday I had several talks with several different people that really highlighted the fact that I have no idea what I'm doing and probably won't for quite some time.  I shouldn't have listed biological laboratories as my choices.  I should have stuck with the materials science labs and the things with which I was previously familiar.  I can already tell that I'll be here for at least five years, maybe six, just because of all the "new" things I have to get into my head before I can really start thinking on my own with respect to my projects and research.  It's awful.  I feel like a child in a world full of stuffy, self important adults.  Maybe going to graduate school was a fool's errand.

  On Saturday everything went wrong.  I'm going to sum it up as me being extremely fed up with human contact.  I didn't want to see anyone, talk to anyone or be inconvenienced by anyone in any way.  I was much less tolerant than usual.  I just wanted to be out of the site of other humans as quickly as possible.  When I got home that night I really wished I had a cat to hold and snuggle and just hide away with somewhere were no one could talk to me or call me or message me.  And that made me resent my husband and his allergies to cats.  I can remember a moment last night where I just wished he would leave and I could be in the apartment all by myself.  I haven't felt like that in a long time.

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  Actually, I've been pretty frustrated with my husband in general lately, the smallest offense being that last night at the peak of my dislike for human contact he started playing L4D2 for the first time in a really long time.  And he has the Starcraft 2 beta to play!  I just went to bed.  I didn't even wait for him to say goodnight.  I couldn't stand being awake anymore.

  The main thing is the whole job situation which I've beaten to death on here.  I won't go into it further, but now my parents are calling me all the time telling me I have to do more to get him to keep working.  I can only say so many things and cry so many times before it's meaningless.  He's made up his mind and I can't change that.  I just...I never thought he would be this selfish.  I guess I expected that being married would mean we both made sacrifices for each other and for the betterment of our future together, but I guess he never really got that memo.  He keeps bringing up that I said I would be happy if he was my house husband and could cook and clean and take care of children, but that situation hinged on us having enough money and children to take care of.  Both of these criteria are not met at this time.  Well, regardless, I'm back on the pill and I won't have to worry about him quitting his job while I'm pregnant and we need money more than any other time.  Now if he quits we just won't be able to put anything into savings for a home, so I guess that isn't so bad. 

  But you know, the lack of money isn't really what bothers me the most.  It's his attitude about the whole situation.  Like yesterday I was commenting about a couple of places others had mentioned as good places for a computer science major to work and he told me not to talk about it on the weekend because it stresses him out.  I just looked at him in horror, thinking in my head, "What a piece of shit."  I mean, I was trying to help his sorry ass by asking other people and doing research into it.  Fuck.  I don't think that's how you are supposed to feel about your significant other, but it's a growing theme in my day to day thoughts now.  And you would think that hating your job would make you more receptive to others having bad days at their own jobs, but if I ever seem frustrated by my own work he gets pouty and disinterested.  It's like I can't have a bad day because he's too busy having his own bad day.  Whatever.

  I always imagined married couples being support systems for each other, working through the hard times together to make it to the better ones, comforting one another when things were going poorly.  I guess I imagined a lot of things going differently.  Why didn't I notice all this when we were still just dating?  I guess the warning signs were there, but I chose to ignore them.  I'm sure in the end I'll convince myself that all this is my own fault and that I shouldn't be so frustrated and disillusioned.  And then I'll suffer in silence as I go through the motions of being happy like I always do in situations like these.  Then one day I'll reach a breaking point and I honestly don't know what will happen.  Hopefully I'm wrong and I'll feel better soon.  Hopefully.

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  I thought my period starting would really make me feel a lot better about everything, but the slight happiness gained from not being pregnant at this inopportune time was quickly overshadowed by everything else.  I guess it was too much to ask that I be happy again just from one simple change in my reality.

  • 3:34 pm
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