Reports from the front line

Lab is a lot better these days -- by which I mean I'm barely in lab 5 hours each day (as of Tuesday), and most of those hours, I'm just reading papers and protocols, tinkering a very little here and there with worms for practice, or working on the Frank essay. I think I can live like this, or at least its a nice lull before injections might pick up the pace again. Overall, I don't expect any more days like the ones in June.

The personalities thing is easing up, too. Now that I'm not working under Antonio, I just enjoy the modest benefits of his respect/humor without feeling any pressure to meet his expectations.

Learning to inject should be time consuming and, at least for the first part, will likely involve many hours of working under Abraham's supervision. Yesterday, I think I managed to communicate that his over-man-splaining came across as hella condescending (in a slightly gentler way). He seems to have heard that part but also to have assumed having had that talk means we are now great buddies. A little exasperating, and a little hard still to dodge personal life details/TMI (I cannot remember a time in my life when I have been so keenly sensitive about TMI, and there has been a lot of TMI in my life!!), but I am on guard, and I don't think it'll get as bad as it was before.

Wan plays classical music loudly, and that also helps.

Tuesday, our (MSTP) class had drinks with Mike and Markus. After I dropped an implication re:the two lab factions (really just Antonio vs everyone else), Mike lavished Dave with highest praise, assuring me that he (Dave) should not be judged according to any in-house squabbles. It seems Mike would be very pleased to see me join the Matus lab. I'm not sure what to do with this. I might take up Markus' offer for coffee at some point next week and see if I can't figure out a nice way to ask about it.

I was originally going to send this to Chad, but I don't think he would care, especially. For the first time in a week or so, I slept soundly last night, and all I can remember of my dreams is an interlude where Chad's parents went to my home in LA in a fit of rage to tell my mother what a horrible girlfriend I was. I don't think there is the slightest truth in it, but it does make me remember our earlier conversation, re: what he can or cannot handle hearing.

I've given it a little thought just now, and as I mentioned to him then, so I still think it's true.... That was really selfish. And what, then, am I just. Should I just avoid confiding in him if there is a chance it may cause him anxiety? And then the question is, what wouldn't cause him anxiety?

It's a conversation that we should come back to in the future. When is a good time? I should be prudent about this. I think it comes down to each of us managing our own feelings better; some measure of emotional independence is healthy, surely. --

When he said it, when I absorbed it, when he asked me if I thought it was selfish, I felt that heavy, sinking feeling that has only come over me when I question our future. (Like wires tied to shallow stakes giving way one by one.) These are things, I think, that will take time and healing.