We're really testing my ability to call myself a homebody

Let me weave you a tale of me in mid-March: stressed. Very stressed. As always. It was marking time and I had a lot of lab reports to get through again, and I knew the last lab report, consisting of the two longest sections, was something I was going to have to mark next. I was juggling bridesmaids drama- namely that one of the bridesmaids was, if not definitively a piece of shit person, decidedly acting like one, and the other helpful bridesmaids and I were trying to put together a bachelorette party 3 weekends before the wedding in mid-April. I was going to the gym twice a week, which had a positive effect on my mental health that cannot be understated (and for 25% the price of therapy, too!), and was looking forward to my teaching duties being done early so I could start to get some real work done on my project. I was going to try Baby's First Apoptosis Assay once marking was really, truly done, get some positive controls for my CB1 western blots, find a way to isolate protein with a broken sonicator, finish my RNA experiments, and see about ordering a new cell line. 

I met with my supervisor on Wednesday, something akin to seeing Bigfoot in the woods, and taught all day on Thursday, something akin to having a hangnail that you just KNOW you can't trim until you get home even though it keeps getting caught on your sleeve. With a fellow graduate student and TA, I shared that I thought that the university would really try to wrap up the remaining two weeks of the semester before shutting down. There were only two weeks left. Only two other major institutions in the country had shut down at this point. I was silently mustering strength in the background to get through the next month of my life, which was going to be extremely busy and require delicate time management.

And then they brought the hammer down.

Classes- cancelled. Labs, including the one I taught- cancelled. In-person meetings cancelled. Suddenly we had to tell the PIs exactly when we'd be in the lab and for how long, and I was instructed to wear a mask when in the lab at all times- despite me only going in at 7pm or later and being completely alone the entire time. A week later I was advised by the same PIs to freeze my cells and not return to campus. I keep kicking myself for having left a bunch of stuff in my "office"- a charging cord, several types of tea, some snacks, a little cactus that is actually just a painted rock, a sense of normalcy- you know. But at the time I don't think anyone could have predicted just how long we'd be gone. I still haven't been back- that marks almost three full months out of the lab- the same amount of time I lost to the move to the new building last summer. Given how much more slowly we're going to have to proceed when we get back, I'm thinking it's safe to say I've now lost a lot more time than just three months.

The bachelorette party never happened. The wedding did. I attended it on zoom, something I cannot recommend against enough. There are few things more painful than watching one of your best friends get married over a low-quality web stream in which their other friends and relatives will not stop spamming the chat with smart ass comments and you can't hear any of the vows, but CAN clearly hear the officiant say "well, at least the people who really mattered were able to be here with you today." I imagine one of the things more painful is having to try and reschedule your wedding in the context of a major global pandemic, just to be clear. While I'll still be able to party it up in my bridesmaids dress I paid $100 extra to rush-order which is currently the most ironic thing that has ever happened to me, I'm still processing the pain of that experience in private, on my own time. I think a lot of us are doing that right now.

Oh, by the by- I'm engaged now too. Redbeard and I will someday get married- also someday we will live together BEFORE getting married, but of course the two-posts-ago-mentioned breaking of his leg delayed his program by a semester, so now we get to move in January during the same semester of my comprehensive exam, and before you say that we could just live with my parents for a semester, you haven't been living with my parents, which I would advise you to keep in mind. I would much rather throw away money on rent than listen to my parents talk for one more second about how rent is just throwing away money.

That's the kicker, too- I went to see Redbeard in person, so fortunately my engagement was not via low-quality web stream, but was instead by a high quality real life stream, with a ring gently nestled inside of a container of flyfishing flies, right between my favourites- the hoppers (which I used this weekend knowing full well it was way too early for fish to be interested in anything that juicy). However, my ever-paranoid mother has insisted upon my return both that I have to get tested (which will happen in about 24 hours and inevitably come back negative) and that I have to quarantine in my room for 14 days. Now I am about one week into that, and I feel as though my sister is about one more time preparing a meal for me away from just hugging me in full view of our parents so we can be quarantined together. It really is something to come home from getting engaged and not feeling a single human touch for two weeks. Probably also on that list of things more painful than attending your best friend's wedding over a low-quality web stream, along with having to live apart from your fiancee for another 6.5 months. This is despite the fact that neither Redbeard nor any of his outdoorsy friends he's been in contact with have reported having The Virus (and I know he would tell me if he was quarantining for that reason, if not because he knows I'd want to know, then because it would mean two weeks not being in the mountains and that would be quite difficult for him). Let me repeat: there is literally no basis to having me do this besides the fact that my mother does not see that she clearly has an anxiety disorder and needs to go to therapy so the rest of us can stop tiptoeing around her feelings lest we trigger another passive aggressive silent treatment.

And then comes the fun realization that this pandemic has fucked us all up, to the point that I'm almost certain I'm not the only one that can't watch movies anymore because any scene containing two or more people from different households in close proximity activates my fight-or-flight response and seems extremely unrealistic. We all took it as a given that it was safe to be social and enjoy the company of others, and that was ripped away, and we all know we can't move to some kind of online pod society where we never interact with others in person because humans are social creatures by nature and as such we now must find a way to end this situation such that we can like, hug each other again, or collectively we're going to lose it.

So for once I'm using some of the tags for this blog that I made when I was like, 13, and never bothered to change because I figured those were all the classifications I'd ever need, and then stopped using when I inevitably didn't need them anymore. Because you know what? This fully classifies as :(, dread and the like, low points, and sad stuff. Thanks, 13 year old me. I hope you all out there are okay.