Hell isn't even a lover and their knife between the sheets.

Utter misery is a thief in the night of joy. It is the stalking vine drawn up what it falls against. It has eyes for only those who have no eyes for it. It is opportunistic; unerringly cruel; a cannibal.

Poison is the price one pays for forgetting: this world will fuck and bury you on a whim.

I'd come in that tuesday with no expectations in mind. I'd had a good 4th of July weekend, felt refreshed, and looked forward to starting things back up after so many delays.

That made the knife go in easier.

I told my advisor I didn't have 'net access at home. He told me he'd sent an email expressing concern about my continued problems in organizing my project. We couldn't keep having these weekly crises come up. It might be a good idea, he concluded, if after my first series of project I think of something less 'hands-on', intensive, organization demanding.

I short-circuited inside. Shocked. Physically, mentally, emotionally.

That past friday, anyone who could have helped me move new monkeys into my experiment room were gone. The building manager had decided against anyone moving anything. My colleague and I had planned this transition day weeks ago. Yes, I had been too caught up in doing stats that week to remember until thursday. Even so, J. helps me move animals and doesn't mind short-notice. Noone had told me people suddenly were out of town. I talked with my immediate supervisor, made a decision, and waited until that same tuesday to move new animals for my experiment.

I think it was the e-mail I sent him asking for help that day that fucked me. Details are unimportant. Suffice it to say: I should shut the fuck up about how I got to point X, and just ask for help with point X.

I was the walking dead for the rest of the day. Training Ni in doing behavioral coding was painful. Sitting in my office and mentally smacking myself, repeatedly, with a crowbar was better. Somehow, sometime, I got a hold of my senses and decided to make a damage control note to myself. I met with Dr. C way later that day, explained what'd happened, how I'd asked my immediate supervisor and others for organizational advice, and how I'd be using these new techniques to make sure I wouldn't fuck up again.

He was much more mellow and non-chalant about it. All he'd suggested was that a different type of experiment might be better suited to my personality, that I was doing the most time-intensive, organizationally difficult experiment in the lab. In truth, he said, nothing bad had happened; the only person who was inconvenienced was me...but he understood that I would have taken what he and his email said badly.

Badly does not begin to describe. I'd gone past my usual cloak of fear, skipped the realm of mind-swallowing terror, and finally landed somewhere in "is he going to kick me out of the lab?" That was how I took the email and what he said in the morning: you fucked up; you're on thin ice.

The rest of the week was me trying to pick up the mental and emotional pieces. It wasn't until thursday or friday that I began feeling right. I remember vividly what the lab meeting this past thursday was like. I sat there listening to interesting but over-my-head details about X, Y, and Z experiments others in the lab were doing. I was numb to hearing, but I could still do it.

From there, I've gotten better, slightly worse, then ok and back to worse again. Mostly it's due to these constant little fuck ups that happen. For example, I was feeling good today, was going to go in and turn my weekend blood samples into another local lab for analysis...and then I find a note on my door telling me about these samples. My immediate supervisor of course told my advisor about it.

Can one, just one, of my 'put it of 'til later' moments not come back to rip and maul my ass?

This entire day was fucked from then on. I didn't think leaving blood sitting in a fridge for an extra day would be a problem. But I learned that wasn't the case. It seems like my supervisors wrote it off as ignorance and no harm done, but that doesn't help my situation. After last week I am extremely, exceptionally sensitive to things like this.

I feel like I keep fucking up and digging a deeper and deeper hole. Small things, the big thing on tuesday and what happened at the beginning of this experiment business. It all frustrates and upsets me. I try like hell to keep everything together, learn from my mistakes or learn this or that exception/regulation/technique, but somehow I put down the wrong date on this form; say something slightly wrong.

It's like being under a microscope. I think through this and that at the lab, while organizing something, at home, almost anywhere nowadays.

And just the week after this one is possibly the end of the 2nd experiment. I just began the thing, but I need to do new chemical tests, arrange new things, and figure out how to organize another experiment.

If ever there was a general situation that forces me to be flexible and plan ahead, it's this one.

It hurts. I don't want pity because it hurts, I'm just being honest: it hurts.

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