I like to pride myself on the fact that I try to be as honest as possible - with myself and others. At times, I am not able to be as honest with myself, though, and thus, it strains my relations with others at those times. However, I usually, fairly quickly, will realize the truth (as much as there ever is "truth"). That realization often happens after I take some of my California medication - marijuana. And look, marijuana, (or ganja or ganj as I like to call it), is obviously beneficial to me as a way to medicate my mental illness - my codependency/love addiction as well as my depression/anxiety issues - but I believe full-heartily that marijuana needs to be as legal as alcohol or tobacco. I won't go into that here, though, since that's not the point of this post.
The point of this post is to explain what it feels like to lose control of some part of your mental capacities - such as your emotions and then your thoughts that feed back into your emotions - and all the hormones that play out inbetween. It's not abstract - thoughts and feelings have physical components. [Even tears are a mechanism by which our bodies rid themselves of excess Prolactin, a hormone specifically found in tears from emotional stress as opposed to tears from onion oils, for example. Prolactin is a hormone we make either in or as a response to emotional stress - not sure of the cause and effect relationship there. Women make much more than men since it's necessary for mammary gland production of milk (lactation - essentially, it means "pro-lactation"). Hence, this provides a good explanation for why women cry more than men. Fascinating shit but that's not the point of this post, either! (I wonder if I naturally make more prolactin than others? I sure do cry a lot! I suppose that means I must.)] Our bodies then respond to these components and can either squash them out or let them amplify. I think the illness is when this response is deregulated to an extreme - either everything gets squashed or everything gets amplified. According to the theory, codependents live in the extremes - they must learn how to navigate moderation. I call it mental illness because it makes me feel ill. Let me explain.
Yesterday was the culmination of several days, if not weeks, of feeling stressed, lonely, cold, disoriented and angry. Sadness throughout. I'm stressed because of work, lonely because I'm in a new place all by myself, but only temporarily so I don't feel a pressing desire to make new friends that I'll probably just as quickly unmake as soon as I leave (I don't do long distance relationships well, and if I do them it's because I've had that relationship for a significant period of time before the distance). In any case, I'm not someone that's big on the idea of "temporary" (unless it's something unpleasant, but then I just don't want it at all - not even temporarily!) That, again, is probably entwined in my codependency issues - fear of abandonment. "Temporary" literally means that something is here now, but will be gone later - most definitely. Yeah, that doesn't feel good to me at all. So I feel like why bother? Why bother try hard at something that's surely only temporary? Also, it takes me a long time to make good friends. I need to know someone fairly well before I think we're good friends. (which is part of my dating issue - no one will just get to know you first anymore...they all want to have sex before you even know if you want to be with that person for any length of time - before you know if they're even someone you like as a friend! So dating is like friending but with sex which makes it horrific for someone like me who has codependency issues and for whom sex is intricately linked to a whole bunch of other emotions as well as the physical. I always say, if there's love, the sex is great no matter what, but if there isn't love, the sex is just work and not worth it. If the sex is great, then I start to feel like it's love before it could possibly be. And then it all unravels from there. 'Cause yeah, sex can feel good if someone is acting like they're really into you - even if they don't actually love you or know enough about you to love you. That's just so dangerous for me. I now know that and will not do online dating anymore for that reason. I find that mostly people on the online dating sites are into more casual, just sexual type of dating relationships. They say they'd be into more, possibly, if things felt like that, but it never happens with me because of my issues that I just laid out above. So I always strike out with online dating. (Plus, to be honest, I hate having to reject people - almost as much as I hate being rejected! - and getting emails from people that I know instantaneously I'd never be physically attracted to even if their personalities were God-like perfect for me - puts me in a very uncomfortable position of either having to ignore them, tell them I'm not interested, or start a friendly, yet misleading, conversation with them. I hate it and I don't need to do it.))
Oh man, was that a tangent or what?! I'll finish the thought - I'm cold because it's cold in New England in February, I'm disoriented because I'm far from home and in a place I haven't really been in for very long before, and the anger - well, that's deep. My anger is so deep, I don't even know where it all comes from - it may be leftover from a previous life, to be honest. The reason is that I look at pictures of me from my childhood and I'm frowning in a lot of them. It's unfortunate because I was really cute, but then I have this pout or frown, which isn't so cute. (Well, it's still kinda cute.) What's wrong? I want to ask my childhood self. Why are you so angry? Or sad? What's going on?
I remember happy times and there are pictures of me smiling, too, but I don't think other people have as many angry-looking pictures of themselves from childhood. Maybe they just don't keep those photos - that is a possibility. In any case, I know some of why I might've been angry - my Dad was pretty angry when I was growing up. He would come home from work angry and anything less than perfect would cause him to blow his top and he'd yell at us, we'd probably yell back and maybe we'd get spanked or otherwise in trouble somehow. It wasn't the safest space - but when my mother came home, which was usually a little later, she would make up for him. She'd come up to my room and hug me, kiss me, tell me she loves me and that Dad loves me, he's just.... yadda yadda yadda. Some excuse. That was the pattern. And that is how you create a codependent. Although, I'm sure my issues with depression - which I distinctly remember started around the age of 7 - also contributed to the problem. In fact, I often don't know which came first - my depression or the roots of my codependency?
Since childhood, my anger has both been suppressed as well as grown even greater. I was so angry - so INFURIATED, in fact - when my sister and nephew died. I cannot possibly explain that anger. It's a nebulous anger because it has no real target - who can I be angry at that my sister and nephew died? Am I angry at them for walking on the train tracks? Well, a little, but that was their fatal mistake - how can I be angry at them for a mistake that they had to pay for with their lives? Honestly, I was angry at whoever/whatever I thought God might be (even though, at the time, I was a staunch atheist!) - I was so angry, I cursed God out in my journal. I had to turn the page so I couldn't see things I had written before the worse day of my life. I am still angry about this, to be honest. I still feel robbed. Why would you give me someone to love, then take them away from me forever?? Not only that - but I was a child. I was mean to my sister growing up. My brother (who is only 14 months older than me and we have always been pretty close, certainly closer than either of us were with our older sister, who was an additional 3 years older than him) and I called her "grody Jodi" - you know, using 'grody' for 'gross'. Sadly, I still hear myself saying that word out loud (grody) - what's wrong with me? And every time I say it, I mentally flog myself. Is that my own self-imposed torture for penance? Is it really penance if I keep doing it?
Both the hardest and best parts of the story is how in the last year of my sister's life - and really, only in the last few months - we all came together as a family to welcome her baby. I managed to say some really loving things to her and when I was in Spain for 3 weeks in August of 1992 - only 3+ months before they died - I was so homesick and had the first major depressive episode of my life (I was hoping I was dying when I got my period two weeks early - brought on by massive emotional stress!), that I wrote everyone I loved a letter professing my love for them. I have since come to believe that true purpose of that trip was meant for me to write those letters. I think I may have even found the one I wrote to myself (yep) in a box somewhere when my family moved across the country a few years back - it was so funny to read me tell myself never to take anything or anyone for granted and I even wrote down all the food I missed like pancakes and hamburgers and what not! The point is - I got to tell my sister how much I loved her and missed her and wanted her to know all of those things. I don't know where that letter is - but I know she got it and I think I had seen it again at some point when we had to pack up their apartment after their death. Plus, I told her a few more times how much I thought she was a great mother and that I loved her. I remember distinctly going around for a second set of hugs goodbye the last time we saw them when we dropped them off in Syracuse on our way back from Poughkeepsie that Sunday before Thanksgiving in 1992. They died three days later. I mean, first I was like, again? Then I was like, sure, why not. (regarding the second time through with the hugs and love yous and goodbyes).
Both the hardest and best parts of the story is how in the last year of my sister's life - and really, only in the last few months - we all came together as a family to welcome her baby. I managed to say some really loving things to her and when I was in Spain for 3 weeks in August of 1992 - only 3+ months before they died - I was so homesick and had the first major depressive episode of my life (I was hoping I was dying when I got my period two weeks early - brought on by massive emotional stress!), that I wrote everyone I loved a letter professing my love for them. I have since come to believe that true purpose of that trip was meant for me to write those letters. I think I may have even found the one I wrote to myself (yep) in a box somewhere when my family moved across the country a few years back - it was so funny to read me tell myself never to take anything or anyone for granted and I even wrote down all the food I missed like pancakes and hamburgers and what not! The point is - I got to tell my sister how much I loved her and missed her and wanted her to know all of those things. I don't know where that letter is - but I know she got it and I think I had seen it again at some point when we had to pack up their apartment after their death. Plus, I told her a few more times how much I thought she was a great mother and that I loved her. I remember distinctly going around for a second set of hugs goodbye the last time we saw them when we dropped them off in Syracuse on our way back from Poughkeepsie that Sunday before Thanksgiving in 1992. They died three days later. I mean, first I was like, again? Then I was like, sure, why not. (regarding the second time through with the hugs and love yous and goodbyes).
But I still haven't really gotten over that anger. Since then, though, other things haven't really gone well for me. A couple of years later, one of my best friends was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease and I freaked out. I told her not to die and she said not to worry - there was a 75% cure rate, she said. Unfortunately, she was in the other 25%. Actually, I'm not even sure if that's accurate - they fried her lungs (with radiation), is how I heard it. She was waiting for a lung transplant and died on March 22nd, 1996. My birthday is the 25th. My girlfriend at the time threw me a surprise birthday party that Saturday, the 24th. (I might have the days off by +/- 1 day, but it's approximate enough). I'm sure one can imagine how well that party went. Yeah, I remember something about being in the hallway of my dorm, crying and not having any fun at all, really. I know Abby would've said to me - Jen, have some fun! Don't worry about me, I'm fine! We'll see each other again, don't worry! I'm sure she would've said that cause I remember one time in high school after my sister died I had called her up all sad and crying and she said that she was sure my sister would want me to be happy. I said I wasn't so sure! hahaha! (I say that because Jodi always wanted more attention than she got. She would've wanted me to remember her, to think about her...to bring attention to the fact that she's gone, maybe. But maybe she gave all that up when she died - that need for attention. In fact, I'm sure she did. But at the time, not entirely sure what may or may not happen after death, I mostly still believed the null hypothesis - that there's 'nothing past this'. So I didn't have a belief in which to place her existence - all I thought I could really be sure of was no existence at all, and thus everything that she was when she was alive, I believed, was everything that she'd ever be.)
The next part of my anger is more shameful to me. I feel like the above stories of people that I love dying before their time and thus, leaving me feeling abandoned, might be a relatively acceptable anger. However, the next part seems less acceptable. This part is regarding my anger that I cannot seem to have a sustainable, healthy, romantic love relationship with another person - or that they have all been such utter failures of relationships so far. Or maybe, it's that perception of them that confounds the anger. But I'm definitely angry about it - and not only that, but also that it seems relatively specific to me. People say, oh it's not you! But that's bullshit. In science, we find patterns and base our truths on them and their reproducibility. Therefore, if something is a pattern, it's usually telling you something important - some "truth" - and thus, what you do is look at the common denominators in the pattern. Well, I am the common denominator in all of my relationships.
Granted, there are other commonalities, but clearly I am the most profound commonality! One cannot deny my participation in these relationships. So I'm angry and ashamed of: 1) the fact that all my relationships have been bad (with parts of them not being so bad...just the ends are always bad. Maybe I've improved with how to deal with the ends, but they're still really painful and I feel really crazy at the end of a relationship. Sincerely crazy - like, sometimes I honestly question whether or not it would be better for me to just check myself in somewhere while I get over the end of the relationship. And yes, I mean a mental ward.) 2) the fact that I'm angry about it. Again, without a target...maybe just the universe? Well, maybe it's me. But I also feel like the victim of something. What? Why do I feel like a victim? Like feeling sorry for myself. Ok, I know. I feel like the victim of whatever it is that caused my codependency, which I was. But now I'm an adult. I need to get over that somehow and push through - change the codependency behaviors. The question I have is - will that change my feelings of anger? Probably not right away, I suppose. I probably would need to see some results before I stopped feeling angry. I'm not sure, though. I just know that's how it works for me - I need results to feel confident that things are different or better somehow. And by results I mean a healthy relationship. But I'm not sure if that's possible without dampening the anger quite a bit. Well, I could probably do that with less stress keeping me from being my better self. (Ok, I know there's always going to be stress, but I'm not a pro at this yet. I can only ward off a certain amount before it overrides my abilities. Maybe someday I'll be more like a Buddhist monk, but right now I'm still closer to being a firecracker.) So yeah, I'm angry and ashamed of both what angers me here as well as the anger, itself. I hope that admitting this will help me work it out. Sometimes I have the high hopes that it helps others reading my blog work through it, as well. But that is both out-of-my-hands and not crucial to me in order for me to post it. It is whatever it is to whoever reads this. I post it for me, though.
I know that I tell these stories over and over again, The question is, when will they stop feeling so relevant to my current state of being?
I screwed up yesterday. My brain left me - that's how it feels. Not completely, I kept trying to figure out how to make it healthy, how to justify my feelings. I got pretty far in my self-justification, too. But the bottom line was the same. I argued with my best friend - someone I've mentioned on here as a person I've felt much love for, in more than one way. [I know - we all have our toughest conversations/biggest arguments with people we care about the most.] The problem is that I was having what I call a "CoDA slip-up". OR just being "CoDA" - code word for codependent. The first part is that I've put her as my "higher power" - which I knew I was doing when I couldn't figure out any of her faults. I honestly couldn't figure out how she's imperfect - even in her imperfection, she seems to do it the way you're supposed to do it! Maybe it's because she's relatively healthy - healthier than I am. But I don't know how to relate to that - and I so want to! - so I guess I just put her as my "higher power", which is, of course, never fair. And always results in the proverbial "fall from grace" when they inevitably show less-than-God-like abilities! ('Cause she's not GOD! She's not better than me! And she knows this...or I think she does. Of course, that might be my assumption because, of course, God would never say s/he's better than anyone else! At least, what I imagine my "higher power" to be would never even think that. That's because my "higher power" is the best me I could be - that's my belief. Not just me, either, but all of us. Read my other posts on my theory of everything to see what I feel about what a "higher power" or God is.)
Anyway, I've been super-duper down this week. Last weekend I had a very bizarre night (which I'm still working on the story to post) and met this guy - a very strange man. Let's just put it that way and honestly, I don't know why I thought it would be ok to try to be his friend because when I first heard him talking I didn't like him one bit because he was arguing with this lady at her store in front of all of us customers as if it was in private. He was yelling at her, in fact, and not letting it go when she would ask him to stop. I almost said something, but didn't cause he's a big black man with barely any teeth except for a couple of big chompers on the side of his mouth (and because it's not my place to say anything.) Anyway, I was just gonna buy my items and leave. But that'll all come out in my post about that night. The issue is that we ended up hanging out that night, then he wanted to hang out again and we exchanged phone numbers. That exchange of phone numbers was the mistake. He's been blowing up my phone with texts and phone calls wanting to get together ever since. The issue is that he has no money so I have to pay for everything (I took him out to dinner on Monday to make up for "flaking" on Sunday although I didn't technically "flake" - just told him I didn't feel like hanging out and he got all upset. Then I felt like I was being "west coast" by saying I might be able to hang out then saying yeah, I'll call you later about hanging out, then saying I don't feel like hanging out.) I don't even know him that well - he's not like my best buddy or anything! But, he's triggering all of my CoDA issues with boundaries. My boundaries were crossed so much this week with him that I think it pushed me into behaving that way with my real best friend. Well, I don't mean to imply that I had no part in doing it - that it was all his fault! I mean that I think his behavior and the fact that I haven't gone to a meeting in over a month contributed to me "falling off the wagon", so to speak. It's also confounded with all the other emotions I've been having, as described above. SO... it was a type of "perfect storm."
We argued because I wanted more attention from her and she's been working like a horse - sounds like more than I have been, even. And she's helping me by taking care of my cats. But I still felt like she could make some sort of time to contact me, if not by phone (which I'm not a big phone talker, either), by text or something. She doesn't get to read her emails that often and apparently she hasn't even been able to go on facebook much, either. So...I've felt out-of-the-loop and my paranoia that she will eventually figure something out about me that she doesn't like - such as, I considered, the fact that the last time we hung out I cried like a baby because of work stress and obviously taking in what my boss's boss said about me too personally. Stuff that seems trivial in comparison to what she does - try to convince people to give money to help starving children in Africa! I mean, I cannot possibly feel like I deserve to feel badly about anything when I compare myself to their situation! I have food - have always had food, even in my most trying times when I was pretty broke, I still could ask my parents to help me so I could get food. Same with shelter and medical care. I'm ok and will probably always be ok - able to fulfill those basic needs. So complaining to her feels shameful to me because I really have nothing to complain about like those children do - or even my friend. She's had a hard life, herself. So I wondered if that just turned her way off from me. And my mind stirs in my head like a rat in a cage - or a mouse, rather.
Here's a quick side story: I worked with mice throughout graduate school. At first it was exciting - I like dissecting and still find it amazing that every single animal's insides look the same! I mean, they're all tucked in there in the same exact manner! We studied the small intestine and would have to dissect it out after the mouse was dead (kind of a critical aspect to all of this - will come back to that) - and it's so fascinating that this long tube that is approximately 4 times the length of our bodies, is wrapped up and stuffed (looks that way) into our abdomens in the same exact way for each of us! (unless, of course, you have some mutation in certain Left-Right Asymmetry related genes). So dissecting them was always pretty cool to me, but the part between picking them up out of their cage (living) and dissecting them (dead) eventually caught up to me on an emotional/existential/spiritual level. Essentially, by the end of the time I worked with mice (which I had to do some at the start of my previous postdoc position, as well), my blood pressure would rise, palms sweat, and I would tear up, if not actually cry every single time I had to "sacrifice" a mouse. And I'd be apologizing profusely the whole time - to the mouse, to God, to my sister, to everyone/anyone/the universe. I'm so sorry, so so sorry. [I've really become such a fucking cry baby! Who am I kidding...I've always been one.] Ok, but that's not even the story I meant to write. The story is that my grad school lab usually had a lab tech who was the "mouse lady" - or if it was a guy, I suppose it would be the "mouse guy" or something. So one of the mouse ladies that we had became a friend (actually, both mouse ladies became friends with me but I became better friends with the second one, but that's still beside the point). Anyway, it was Liz, the first mouse lady. She told us the story of this one mouse that she was kinda fascinated by because it was constantly running in circles in the cage. Like seriously neurotic! She would watch it and I think she found it interesting because it clearly demonstrates the inhumanity of the whole thing - we're causing these mice to go insane in those cages! I mean, wouldn't you? They have brains, they are somewhere in the range of ~70% identical to us in DNA sequence - they certainly have some emotional and mental capacity, and yet all they know is the inside of this translucent, white cage. Look, I'm a scientist who has primarily focused on studying cancer or cancer-like phenomena, so I understand the need for model organisms to study because we cannot, if not for moral/ethical reasons, practically perform similar experiments on humans. Even studying human cells ex vivo is limited. So I understand the necessity and all the arguments for why we use mice - they are an excellent model for most diseases. That all being said...it takes a certain kind of person to be able to dissociate from their humanity enough to "sac" a mouse. I don't judge them - it's a very hard thing to do and being good at it most likely comes at a cost. My good friend - the second "mouse lady" - was good at it. She could easily disconnect herself from any feelings of moral/emotional dilemmas she might otherwise have. On the other hand, she also stopped believing in love a long time ago and is in a relationship that has been unhealthy in the past but stayed in it primarily due to inertia [her words]. So maybe that's the cost? (or maybe it was the cost of something that happened prior but also helps her to be able to "sac" mice without a second thought. Or maybe she's just that way - nothing happened to cause her to be that way.) I guess I see it as a cost. She doesn't necessarily see it that way. We talked about how Indians still have arranged marriages and don't necessarily get married because of some deep "love" but it still often works out just fine for them. So it's also a cultural thing - this idea of being "in love". I don't know.
The point of that side story is that I feel like that mouse having a neurotic break-down in its cage. My mind is running in circles inside the cage that is my head. I have very little contact with the outside-of-my-head world right now - merely contact for food, and work-related stuff. I need to make more of an effort to make other contact - to get out of my head. I need to go to a CoDA meeting. I cannot afford any more excuses (the main excuse has been that the one meeting I think I can get to is on Sunday mornings at 10am and I keep sleeping right through it!) - obviously, that's an extremely lame excuse! Especially seeing as my lack of self-care in this arena has caused me to behave badly and hurt someone I care very deeply for. Obviously, it's not that simple - I have to go and watch myself better. Do the work. But going always reminds me of the work and that I'm not the only one struggling with it.
I screwed up yesterday. My brain left me - that's how it feels. Not completely, I kept trying to figure out how to make it healthy, how to justify my feelings. I got pretty far in my self-justification, too. But the bottom line was the same. I argued with my best friend - someone I've mentioned on here as a person I've felt much love for, in more than one way. [I know - we all have our toughest conversations/biggest arguments with people we care about the most.] The problem is that I was having what I call a "CoDA slip-up". OR just being "CoDA" - code word for codependent. The first part is that I've put her as my "higher power" - which I knew I was doing when I couldn't figure out any of her faults. I honestly couldn't figure out how she's imperfect - even in her imperfection, she seems to do it the way you're supposed to do it! Maybe it's because she's relatively healthy - healthier than I am. But I don't know how to relate to that - and I so want to! - so I guess I just put her as my "higher power", which is, of course, never fair. And always results in the proverbial "fall from grace" when they inevitably show less-than-God-like abilities! ('Cause she's not GOD! She's not better than me! And she knows this...or I think she does. Of course, that might be my assumption because, of course, God would never say s/he's better than anyone else! At least, what I imagine my "higher power" to be would never even think that. That's because my "higher power" is the best me I could be - that's my belief. Not just me, either, but all of us. Read my other posts on my theory of everything to see what I feel about what a "higher power" or God is.)
Anyway, I've been super-duper down this week. Last weekend I had a very bizarre night (which I'm still working on the story to post) and met this guy - a very strange man. Let's just put it that way and honestly, I don't know why I thought it would be ok to try to be his friend because when I first heard him talking I didn't like him one bit because he was arguing with this lady at her store in front of all of us customers as if it was in private. He was yelling at her, in fact, and not letting it go when she would ask him to stop. I almost said something, but didn't cause he's a big black man with barely any teeth except for a couple of big chompers on the side of his mouth (and because it's not my place to say anything.) Anyway, I was just gonna buy my items and leave. But that'll all come out in my post about that night. The issue is that we ended up hanging out that night, then he wanted to hang out again and we exchanged phone numbers. That exchange of phone numbers was the mistake. He's been blowing up my phone with texts and phone calls wanting to get together ever since. The issue is that he has no money so I have to pay for everything (I took him out to dinner on Monday to make up for "flaking" on Sunday although I didn't technically "flake" - just told him I didn't feel like hanging out and he got all upset. Then I felt like I was being "west coast" by saying I might be able to hang out then saying yeah, I'll call you later about hanging out, then saying I don't feel like hanging out.) I don't even know him that well - he's not like my best buddy or anything! But, he's triggering all of my CoDA issues with boundaries. My boundaries were crossed so much this week with him that I think it pushed me into behaving that way with my real best friend. Well, I don't mean to imply that I had no part in doing it - that it was all his fault! I mean that I think his behavior and the fact that I haven't gone to a meeting in over a month contributed to me "falling off the wagon", so to speak. It's also confounded with all the other emotions I've been having, as described above. SO... it was a type of "perfect storm."
We argued because I wanted more attention from her and she's been working like a horse - sounds like more than I have been, even. And she's helping me by taking care of my cats. But I still felt like she could make some sort of time to contact me, if not by phone (which I'm not a big phone talker, either), by text or something. She doesn't get to read her emails that often and apparently she hasn't even been able to go on facebook much, either. So...I've felt out-of-the-loop and my paranoia that she will eventually figure something out about me that she doesn't like - such as, I considered, the fact that the last time we hung out I cried like a baby because of work stress and obviously taking in what my boss's boss said about me too personally. Stuff that seems trivial in comparison to what she does - try to convince people to give money to help starving children in Africa! I mean, I cannot possibly feel like I deserve to feel badly about anything when I compare myself to their situation! I have food - have always had food, even in my most trying times when I was pretty broke, I still could ask my parents to help me so I could get food. Same with shelter and medical care. I'm ok and will probably always be ok - able to fulfill those basic needs. So complaining to her feels shameful to me because I really have nothing to complain about like those children do - or even my friend. She's had a hard life, herself. So I wondered if that just turned her way off from me. And my mind stirs in my head like a rat in a cage - or a mouse, rather.
Here's a quick side story: I worked with mice throughout graduate school. At first it was exciting - I like dissecting and still find it amazing that every single animal's insides look the same! I mean, they're all tucked in there in the same exact manner! We studied the small intestine and would have to dissect it out after the mouse was dead (kind of a critical aspect to all of this - will come back to that) - and it's so fascinating that this long tube that is approximately 4 times the length of our bodies, is wrapped up and stuffed (looks that way) into our abdomens in the same exact way for each of us! (unless, of course, you have some mutation in certain Left-Right Asymmetry related genes). So dissecting them was always pretty cool to me, but the part between picking them up out of their cage (living) and dissecting them (dead) eventually caught up to me on an emotional/existential/spiritual level. Essentially, by the end of the time I worked with mice (which I had to do some at the start of my previous postdoc position, as well), my blood pressure would rise, palms sweat, and I would tear up, if not actually cry every single time I had to "sacrifice" a mouse. And I'd be apologizing profusely the whole time - to the mouse, to God, to my sister, to everyone/anyone/the universe. I'm so sorry, so so sorry. [I've really become such a fucking cry baby! Who am I kidding...I've always been one.] Ok, but that's not even the story I meant to write. The story is that my grad school lab usually had a lab tech who was the "mouse lady" - or if it was a guy, I suppose it would be the "mouse guy" or something. So one of the mouse ladies that we had became a friend (actually, both mouse ladies became friends with me but I became better friends with the second one, but that's still beside the point). Anyway, it was Liz, the first mouse lady. She told us the story of this one mouse that she was kinda fascinated by because it was constantly running in circles in the cage. Like seriously neurotic! She would watch it and I think she found it interesting because it clearly demonstrates the inhumanity of the whole thing - we're causing these mice to go insane in those cages! I mean, wouldn't you? They have brains, they are somewhere in the range of ~70% identical to us in DNA sequence - they certainly have some emotional and mental capacity, and yet all they know is the inside of this translucent, white cage. Look, I'm a scientist who has primarily focused on studying cancer or cancer-like phenomena, so I understand the need for model organisms to study because we cannot, if not for moral/ethical reasons, practically perform similar experiments on humans. Even studying human cells ex vivo is limited. So I understand the necessity and all the arguments for why we use mice - they are an excellent model for most diseases. That all being said...it takes a certain kind of person to be able to dissociate from their humanity enough to "sac" a mouse. I don't judge them - it's a very hard thing to do and being good at it most likely comes at a cost. My good friend - the second "mouse lady" - was good at it. She could easily disconnect herself from any feelings of moral/emotional dilemmas she might otherwise have. On the other hand, she also stopped believing in love a long time ago and is in a relationship that has been unhealthy in the past but stayed in it primarily due to inertia [her words]. So maybe that's the cost? (or maybe it was the cost of something that happened prior but also helps her to be able to "sac" mice without a second thought. Or maybe she's just that way - nothing happened to cause her to be that way.) I guess I see it as a cost. She doesn't necessarily see it that way. We talked about how Indians still have arranged marriages and don't necessarily get married because of some deep "love" but it still often works out just fine for them. So it's also a cultural thing - this idea of being "in love". I don't know.
The point of that side story is that I feel like that mouse having a neurotic break-down in its cage. My mind is running in circles inside the cage that is my head. I have very little contact with the outside-of-my-head world right now - merely contact for food, and work-related stuff. I need to make more of an effort to make other contact - to get out of my head. I need to go to a CoDA meeting. I cannot afford any more excuses (the main excuse has been that the one meeting I think I can get to is on Sunday mornings at 10am and I keep sleeping right through it!) - obviously, that's an extremely lame excuse! Especially seeing as my lack of self-care in this arena has caused me to behave badly and hurt someone I care very deeply for. Obviously, it's not that simple - I have to go and watch myself better. Do the work. But going always reminds me of the work and that I'm not the only one struggling with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment