the seventh circle

How come, on a mental vacation to the seventh circle of hell, it feels like everyone around you is aware that you are failing miserably at life. Everywhere you walk, sit, eat, meander about, minding your own business, the mundane and ordinary crap happening around you is somehow now, a direct attack at you being a bad person who could have made better choices. Your professor that may have looked at you for a brief second? Totally the stink eye because he knows you aren't paying attention. Didn't get waved at by a friend who is two miles away and on their cell phone? Certainly its nothing rational like they didn't see you, because they secretly have been hating your guts and are choosing this moment to let you know, by ignoring your wave. feel like a friendless loser yet? no? great! the surface has just been scratched.

While mentally traversing the sub-strata of hell, don't forget to take a pit stop on the tier where people are secretly grimacing at you in complete disgust as they smile and nod their head at some vacuous blase conversation the two of you have somehow had the misfortune of falling into - because really they are thinking who let this girl into grad school, why do her pants have a hole in the leg-- WHY DOES SHE KEEP DIGGING IN THE HOLE, a pity how she forgot to filter her secondary antibody, whole weeks worth of experiments down the tubes, god this girl is basket case, the circles under her eyes are terrifying.

All the while, I'm not only tapped into possibly the most poorly timed conversation of my life, reading between the lines of said conversation, but understanding that everyone in a 40 foot radius is aware that I am currently the mecca of all that is execrable. Being such, these people are finely tuned into the fact that I'm not enjoying this conversation, I'm faking my chipper disposition, know that I am now one less friend, and think its also atrocious that I won't stop digging at the hole in my jeans.

I think I really arrive at sheer inner pandemonium when I speak with my PI about my progress in lab (this is the true test of keeping calm on the surface as my insides feel like they could quite possibly succeed in pushing their way through the finer pores in my skin). I could fill entire books on what I perceive to be happening in his head, every blink, breath, throat clearing, 'umm' and 'err' is cataloged to be a secret sign as to how he really feels about my lab work. My streaming thoughts follow a repeating pattern of, 'oh shit does this man even like me? will there be slander on my rotation assesment, Balfour!? WILL THERE?!' Multi-tasking however, like I'm really good at, in that I actually suck at it, I'm also carrying out a scientific, knowledgeable, controlled, and intelligent conversation about the direction of my project. I place more meaningful context with this man's basic bodily functions then I think I ever did in the combined last three years that I was in a relationship. (mis)construing the spectrum of my PI's physical and verbal cues, add up to at best, please strongly consider a job in the secretarial world, preferably that of a lowly run legal office. And, lest it not be forgotten, that this takes place while I mentally fan myself from a lawn chair, sipping warm shit through a straw, in the seventh circle of hell.


What has catapulted me into this mood that would permanently scar small children? Well, nothing really, I was just you know, in a mood for like - oh 4 days. Yesterday however, in the words of the great sabominator, I changed my tampon and got over it.