Treatment Records

Evening.  Day 66 on Lexapro.  Mood: 5.  Warm, damp, they pause Contemplating the state of them And of things  And of rivers and of wind and of psyche The shimmering fish leaps, breaking the membrane  It quivers, thickly joyous, penetrated Virgin droplets fall from above  They watch, they feel, they sigh, Continuing on  Unsure footprints mark their passage  Today was an okay day. I woke up at 1:16pm, a bless'd just  twelve hours of sweet, dream-filled rest that I want to get again and again and again. After laying in bed for a couple hours, I talked to my mom for about 45 minutes, listening to her relay the saga of the last five, six days of her life - a cousin is battling breast cancer, and my mom has somehow become the person in the family that cares for those that are ill, makes sure that their medical stuff is all in order, and she had to make an emergency trip to visit. My relationship with my mother is odd, at least from...

Evening. This post is technically still late, but whatever. No one's keeping score.  Day...65? I think that it's 65. It should be. If it's not, oh well; no one's keeping score.  Mood: 3 - 7. I'm not a big fan of wide-range days like this.  I spent an hour shooting the breeze with a friend from the other side of the country around 2am this morning, while I was still in the lab. Even though he and I have been in more or less constant contact via Facebook since about September 2014, this was the first voice call that we've had, and it felt good to put a voice to the personality that I've come to know and dearly love. Eventually, I'm going to have to give him an anonym, something dank and memey. Much of the call was silence, with me working on my bees and him playing Overwatch, but I greatly enjoyed having company in my quiet lab.  For some reason, I decided that it'd be a good idea to get some studying done after I finally finished pinning arou...

Yes, this post is late.  Day 64.  Mood: ~3.5.  I spent approximately twelve hours in my lab, starting to work at 4pm 28 Apr and leaving around 4am 29 Apr. I told myself that it was because I wanted to finish processing specimens before the weekend, and that's what I told Favorite Person and Curly, who both inquired. In truth, though, I needed a long distraction from the mounting sense of being a failure. You see, from an early age, much of my sense of self-worth was based on my academic performance, and my involvement with things. I had praise for my intelligence heaped on heavily from the beginning, and that praise somehow eventually generated extremely high standards set for myself, standards that I've never been able to meet.  Then, I befriend Favorite Person, who I watch meet and exceed the bar I set for myself, achieving what I expect of myself but am never able to accomplish. I'm always happy for her successes, because that's what friends do, but watchi...

Evening. I don't know why I bother with a formal greeting when there's no one to offend.  Day 63 on Lexapro. Mood: a very watery 3.  The feeling that my head is full of fog continues today, which was detrimental to my ability to get work done. It took almost eight hours to get about 120 specimens pinned today, when it should have taken three at the absolute most. There are easily another hundred specimens left to process, and I can't take that long on them tomorrow. All of these bees, and leps, and flies need to be mounted before I leave my lab for the weekend; otherwise, I'll start getting backed up, and that thought stresses me out quite a bit.  Something I've noticed today is that the thought of eating is slightly distressing, and that eating makes me gag a tiny bit. Those, combined with the fact that ingesting anything - eggs, veggie sandwich, cookies - makes me feel absolutely disgusting is concerning to say the least, but I still believe that it'...

Evening.  Day 62 on Lexapro.  Mood: 5ish. I guess.  I have really been unable to focus today; my mind feels like it's full of dandelion fluff and cattail fuzz. A lot of potential productivity, both in class and outside, was inaccessible as a result. Today was largely spent looking at specimens and trying to think of something productive to write. Or trying to find the motivation to do what I need to do, like call airlines to confirm seat assignments. Or email people to confirm classes to enroll in.  My brain just feels like it's made of smoke and kitten fur.  In other news, I feel like my terrible eating habits are just getting worse, oscillating between periods where I eat little to nothing at all and periods where I grossly overeat. It's getting to the point again that it's hard to tell when I'm hungry, or when I've had enough to eat, and I always, always  feel like I've consumed too much. Sometimes, it feels like a severe lack of control over ...

Meh. Evening or whatever.  Day 61 on Lexapro.  Mood: 5, +/- 0.5.  Today, I spent an hour and a half training one of my team members for the pollinator inventory on the fine art of bee pinning. He's an enthusiastic learner, picking up and improving rapidly. Since I'd completely forgotten that I said that I'd teach him, and thus had no specimens in the lab that were unmounted, we went out to the Japanese garden on campus to collect a few eastern carpenter bees and honey bees, two species that are extraordinarily common and easy to work with. At the end of my little lesson/workshop/thing, he'd pinned a total of nine bees, including handwritten location tags. Surprising me more than a little, he asked me to "grade" his work - overall, I'd have to give him an A.  The sense of satisfaction I had at the end, once he'd left the lab, reminded me of the love of teaching I've always had, the burning need to share the information that I've accumula...

Evening. Or morning, I don't know what's the appropriate greeting after midnight.  Day 60 on escitalopram.  Mood: 5.  I spent five hours total pinning and labeling yesterday's specimens. It's tedious work, sure, but it's work that I'll be paid for. We don't have nearly enough insect pins in lab, but that's kind of not my problem, not really - if we run out, it's not on my shoulders. Pro to being the undergrad in the lab, I suppose.  Speaking of yesterday, I'm still a sniffle-y, sneeze-y mess. I truly regret not taking allergy meds before going out for field work, because I coughed and sneezed so much yesterday that I literally hurt if I breathe too deeply today. Hopefully I'll be better tomorrow.  Favorite Person has deemed me a superb Googler, and as such brings any questions that require searching to me. Questions like the age of a TA we both have, which I found, and then some. I think that I had entirely too much fun digging up s...

Evening. I'm very tired, and very full of food.  Day 59 on Lexapro.  Mood: 5.5 - 7. Today wasn't half bad. I spent ten hours doing field work today. It was pleasant out - the sun was shining, there was a light breeze, it wasn't too hot or too cold. There were things to see, things to catch, plants whose names I needed to learn. I had people to share my knowledge of insects with.  I felt light when I was out there. Almost elated...today felt like a brief reset.  I'm exhausted, and there's little else to say about today.  Until then.  I can't believe my eyes,  It's a world without sex Everyone here just wears full-length pants  And loose-fitting turtlenecks  Men and women wave to each other  At a respectable distance Without the thrill of boning, What is life?  We must speak to the council of Dick Elders tonight... 23 Apr 2017

Happy Earth Day.  Day 58 on Lexapro. I'm extremely tired, and I don't forsee that changing.  Mood: 2 - 5.  I think that I'll add a descriptive component to my representation of my mood, because a number alone doesn't give enough information. They'll likely make more sense to me than to anyone else, but that's fine.  Like fire and acid and seismic forces in membranous crystal, hung upon silken thread above the sighing void;  and  The nameless being looks about in terror, suddenly no longer able to make sense of the patterns whose meaning came so easily; and  Slowly, with both resignation and determination, layer after layer peel away, until the core lay bare. Today, I marched for science. I didn't have a witty sign, or any sign, but I showed up in support. While there, I chatted at length with a geophysics professor, about my motivations for marching, my distaste for the underabundance of attention pair to invertebrates, and about my re...

What will it be, what will it be?  The earth and sky and sea seemed to hum this query.  What will it be?  The Broken wanders aimlessly across the countryside, dried forbs crunching underfoot, polluting with darkness. Existence is pain; there are options, options, for relief. Animal, vegetable, mineral; the landscape pulses, whispering, half song, half threat.  What will it be? What will it be?  Blotted by vapour, the sun casts a sallow light. The Broken does not recognize this, mired in despair, plodding to a destination unknown and unattainable. Goal unreachable, forward motion continues, for what else is there but to keep going? There is no choice. Tissue sloughs into earth, unnoticed, as footprints extend in a growing line to the proximally distant nothing. Gnarling, blackened flesh withers, the Broken trudges on. Aeons pass. A bleached scaffold lies in the sun and dust, preceded by a long and winding line. There was no terminus.  What wi...

Hello, nonexistent readership.  Day 57 on Lexapro.  Mood: 3.5 - 5. I feel drained.  The single crappiest thing about having this blog now is the fact that Favorite Person follows it, meaning that there are things that I can't openly muse about. I should have went with my first mind, because telling her that this space exists was a huge mistake on my part, and has done me no favors. There's no point in having a journal blog if I feel compelled to self-censor. [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTE...