Saying I'm Sorry: Part IV (The Scientist)

Before I start this blog post, I'd just like to say a few words of gratitude to my far-flung audience. I never intended for this to be anything other than a personal growth and exploration journal, but the thousands of page views from all corners of the planet indicates I'm tapping into something else. I'll admit I was inspired to do a deeper dive into the mental health ramifications of Autism by one reader telling me how greatly my words resonated with her, that a particular post found its way into her hands on the brink of a crisis and helped ground her. Others have shared praise for the quality of the writing and unfiltered truths, which I deeply appreciate.

As much as I am moved by the benefit sharing my experiences has to others, it is still, at its heart, my space for me, as stated in the very first entry nearly nine years ago. Thank you for reading, nonetheless.

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Female Scientist by Medic Kun

It would be irresponsible to perpetuate the impression that my perseveration is limited to botched romantic entanglements, as I likely have with the first three parts of this post. The more intimate a relationship however, the more deeply intertwined two minds, hearts, souls, the more opportunities there are for serious misunderstandings and subsequent hurt to occur. Involvement requires trust; trust is founded upon vulnerability; vulnerability makes me nervous; nerves short circuit my brain into panic; panic leads to flight; flight leaves questions unanswered, chords unresolved, words unspoken and years or decades down the track, endless loops of all the things I wish I could do and say differently playing through my mind.

When I think back on these myriad relationships and the consternation they continue to cause, I'm often struck by just how hard I actually did try to make amends in the past. How I've tried to explain the inexplicable, apologise for outright inexcusable behaviour, smooth ruffled feathers and even been pardoned, but the broken trust never heals. This is what gets me. I don't know if the other parties ever actually trust me again, but I do know that I don't trust them to trust me and so I slink away to avoid censure. This is what happened with The Scientist.

The Scientist was a stalwart woman, infinitely dedicated to her pursuits. In the many years I knew her, I watched wave after wave of tragedy, mishap, misogyny, and hardship smash her up against the rocks of life, but she never bowed. Looking back now, I can imagine she undoubtedly must have had her moments in private where she broke down and wept, wanted to throw in the towel and give up, but her public persona was so steadfast that any weakness was hidden. She was definitely one tough cookie and I seriously admired her.

In the wake of several of my own major life upheavals, I was foisted unexpectedly upon The Scientist. She didn't really want me in her charge for many good reasons, but neither of us had much of a choice in the matter. I always sincerely wanted to do right by her, as anyone would when working directly under one of their heroes, but my heart was never in the work she had me doing, and then my head couldn't stay in it either.

I've written briefly before about my cycling accident in New Zealand but haven't yet had the opportunity to fully explore the damage it did physically, mentally and emotionally. I've been toying with a PTSD-focussed post to explore its different manifestations, but my writing energies keep pulling me in different directions. I mention it now because it played a significant role in the destruction of my working relationship with The Scientist.

Hitting the ground at 30 km/hr is never a good thing. Landing head first at that velocity is an especially bad thing. In conjunction with the multitude of serious injuries I sustained that day, I was also severely concussed. I can only estimate how long I was out cold by what I can remember of the distance between where I lay crumpled and the path where the first people on the scene would have been when I crashed, but however long it was sufficient to cause significant damage that continued to give me grief for many months afterward.

I had no idea how bad things were upstairs until several sleepless weeks went by. It's hard to say how much of my memory issues were directly related to the trauma and what was a secondary byproduct of the concussion-induced insomnia, either way, my brain was fucked. It's never nice to have your brain operating at less than full capacity, but I can tell you that having scrambled brains whilst completing intricate scientific research, taking the most complex graduate coursework and trying to mop up the mess of your life truly fucking sucks. My normally brilliant mind was rendered useless. I couldn't remember a conversation from the day before let alone what a professor was talking about by the time I finished writing notes in class. My typically hyper-reactive emotions jumped into uncontrolled chaos. I was a walking time bomb.

When you can't keep anything straight in your mind and everthing feels like a race against the clock, it's only a matter of probability before one of the many mistakes you're making daily is going to genuinely cost you. The Scientist's lab was absolutely no place for a mis-wired brain like mine. There were so many protocols to follow, so many minute details to attend to every second, so much to learn and keep track of. I probably would have been OK if I hadn't been so over committed, if all my attention was focussed there, but it wasn't and I was floundering. Then one day up whipped the perfect storm.

I was stressed beyond belief and trying to juggle too many things. A dear friend, who was also under the The Scientist's wing, but didn't work in this lab, came in with me when I needed to check my experiments. There was no problem with her being in the lab, she often use the microscope therein, but she had zero training on the experimental equipment. We were talking, she wanted to be helpful, I was distracted and trying to get things done quickly. I asked her to do something deceptively simple before checking something else and realised too late that what she did affected someone else's experiments on the line. At the time, I honestly didn't think it was a big deal. The same tiny perturbation to my own experiments wouldn't have made any difference whatsoever. But the other experiments were a completely different beast. We destroyed them in a thoughtless instant. Weeks worth of someone else's work down the toilet.

My ridiculous mistake was so opaque to my mind that it never occurred to me to contact my mentor or the other student right away. I casually mentioned it in passing a few days later and the shit hit the fan. The other student was murderous; my mentor asked why she shouldn't ban me from ever using the lab again. Let me clarify here that not using that lab again would sign the death warrant on the PhD I'd been pursuing for the previous five years. It was not a happy option.

After wallowing in mortification for a few days, I wrote my supervisor a very long explanation and apology. I was seriously remorseful. It was the single biggest mistake of my professional life, one I knew had completely tarnished my reputation. The Scientist is a most magnanimous woman and she pardoned my sins, allowed me to resume working in the lab, and did her best to insure I successfully completed my PhD.

But I never felt right about things between us again. The strain on our already burdened relationship was enormous. Every interaction with her felt dangerous, never knowing if she was going to throw this or one of my myriad minor transgressions back at me.

The day I defended my thesis, The Scientist took me and my parents out for a celebratory lunch. We'd scarcely spoken outside of obligatory thesis and research group meetings since the lab debacle, so I was incredibly on edge about this small social outing. Much to my surprise, she positively glowed to my parents about what an amazing job I'd done, how much cutting edge research I'd successfully pursued, and what a fantastic student I was. I was absolutely floored. She never struck me as the type of person who would spout insincere flattery, but I can never stop wondering if she made an exception that day.

Thoughts of this woman whom I so admire, with whom I've travelled, dined, worked in the field, taken saunas, and partied, who's baby I've held and dear friends I've shared and lost, now only evoke shudders of shame and remorse. I've never been able to bring myself to connect with her via any social media or list her as a reference on my CV. Sadly, I never went through graduation ceremonies for my PhD, in part because I was too ashamed to ask her to hood me. I'm simply left to wonder if she considers me a black stain on her otherwise impeccable advisory record.

In the Beginning…

Three years ago I was about as unbalanced as any certifiably sane person could be. I was out of balance emotionally, physically, personally, socially and spiritually. Life was spiraling out of control at an ever increasing pace and I lived in constant fear that it would all come crashing down around my ears at any moment.

This was about a year and a half after I found myself, knife in hand, seriously contemplating suicide in the cold dark kitchen of my cabin in the North. Life no longer seemed viable. It was a no-win situation no matter how I looked at it and there just didn't seem to be any good reason to continue. The story from here differs depending on who you ask, and I was probably too numb to really remember, but it was then I realized something needed to change. Unfortunately, I didn't really know what or how so I just started changing things, which does not typically result in a well-balanced approach.

About two months later I was skimming along just fine despite incredible odds against it. My boyfriend of more than four years was out of the country and I chalked up my renewed strength and vitality to his absence and decided to call the whole thing off. Yep, just like that. Forget years of friendship and love, to hell with the shared house and our mutual friends, I was taking the Band-aid® route: get it over with as quickly as possible. I ended four and a half years of incredible intimacy before we got home from the airport Valentine's eve. I moved out, got a cat (he was terribly allergic) and jumped into rebound mode before the stores sold out of roses and chocolates.

In retrospect this may have been a bit rash. It did, however, feel completely logical, reasonable and justifiable at the time. My jump took me out of the proverbial frying pan barreling into the fire.

The intervening months between the afore mentioned events and the place I started this post, three years ago, reads like a bad cross between Danielle Steele, Nancy Drew and Little House in the Big Woods (not that a good cross could likely be produced out of those). Hunks and heartbreak, intrigue and intestinal disorders, harsh winters and insane northern summers, plus way too much time spent working on the infinitesimally small details of volcanic eruption dynamics provided a very long and bumpy roller-coaster ride. Each of the major events along the way deserves its own space to be deconstructed and reconciled, but that will have to wait for another post. Months of insomnia made me feel like a raving loony. Short intense relationships with guys who were just no good turned me inside out and upside down. Through all of it I was very lucky to have a small cast and crew of close friends who stood by me, otherwise I may not have made it to a most important turn in the road.

Three years ago, I decided to go cycle around New Zealand. Solo. Not all of it, just bits and pieces. I didn't head off with much of a plan, but I did one little piece of research that completely changed my life and got me acquainted with what was so dearly missing in my life: balance. I've never been someone who looks at the email-content-driven online advertisements that pop up all the time. I'm generally pretty good at mentally filtering them out, but a pop-up for WWOOF came up in response to my email exchange about the upcoming trip with my mother and seemed to beckon to me. I few clicks later I found my way to a yoga center in Golden Bay and knew I had to go there.

I had never really 'done' yoga. I learned a few poses and was given a few private classes from certified yoga instructor friends, but that was the extent of it. I knew very little about yoga and, as many uninitiated Westerners are want to do, just viewed it as a glorified method of stretching. I imagined I would spend my week on the hill blissfully contorting my body for hours a day, living it up with other blissed-out souls and sleeping like a log each night. The reality couldn't have been much further from the truth.

Satyananda yoga isn't for the 'holiday yogi'. Asanas (the graceful, stretchy poses commonly associated with yoga) make up only a single component of the many branches of yoga and are not strongly emphasized by those who follow the teachings of Swami Satyananda Saraswati. At this particular retreat, karma yoga, meditation, yoga nidra and kirtan were the primary daily yogic practices, and as I previously mentioned I wasn't mentally, physically, emotionally or spiritually prepped for the catharsis that these practices would induce.

I think I broke down at least once a day for the entire week. Sometimes I sobbed so hard I nearly flooded my yoga mat in the middle of a chanting session. I didn't know why I was crying and I couldn't stop. It was draining. It was exhausting. I cried until there simply were no more tears to cry. My body seized up and I could hardly move.

Most people, upon finding themselves in such a state, might entertain the notion of stopping, or at least really slowing down, for a while to take stock of their lives and really contemplate what the hell was so f'ing out of whack. I, however, am not most people. I jumped back on my bike the day after I left the retreat and rode 100 km in the driving South Island rain just to ride to the end of the road and back. And I didn't just cruise along either, I pushed and I pushed hard.

The next day I got a wake-up call. I went to see a highly recommended body worker in Takaka. She spent an hour going over my beaten body loosening things I didn't even know were tight. She was far more tuned into imbalances in my body than I and pointed out that I was treading thin ice, something was about to give. I thanked her for her input and the fantastic massage and tucked her advice away somewhere in the back of my brain. She did have a small immediate influence and I decided against riding over the legendary Takaka Hill (which has thwarted many a fine cyclist) in the fog and got a lift instead, which may quite possibly have saved my life.

But I'm a bit like Teflon® when it comes to advice because I'm stubborn as hell. I wanted to keep riding and so I did. I even shrugged off a ride to the ferry terminal and into Wellington (no more than 10 kms) just because I'm so damn stubborn. This last act of pig-headedness nearly did cost my life and left me with physical and emotional scars that are still healing.

I found the signage for the bike route away from the ferry terminal in Wellington confusing and decided to take the main route I felt would lead me into town. This was a very bad idea. Many a cyclist has come undone on this road as it provides a nasty combination of zero shoulder (read: concrete barrier) and railroad tracks at an acute angle to the road. I saw the tracks a'commin', I was riding 30+kms to stay with traffic, I head checked to see if I could move out to cross the tracks at a safer angle and was on them before I could blink.

It took me two days to fully reconstruct what happened by mapping out the bruises on my body and the damage to my bike. All I knew at the time was that my saddle bags went flying out into the road, a semi-truck blocked traffic behind me and that a small group of people was at my side 'immediately'. I put 'immediately' in quotes because I realized much later that four people who were either at work or walking down the foot path could not instantly materialize at the side of a crumpled cyclist and I had, therefore, blacked out for a while.

But still I wouldn't admit that I needed to slow down. I got on a train to National Park the next day and spent the afternoon wondering why I was having so much trouble rock climbing. The day after I took the bus to Auckland and spent the night unable to sleep. Following that I rode my smooshed bike around the city wearing a borrowed helmet because I broke mine in the crash. And later that evening I boarded a plane for the U.S.

It was my mom who finally intervened and insisted on taking me to her chiropractor's office. The woman there realized I had dislocated all of the ribs on the right side of my sternum. The muscles of my abdomen were twisted and matting down in odd directions. My neck was fucked, the inside of my hip joint was bruised and I had a golfball sized lump on the back of my head. She couldn't believe I had walked away from the accident let alone gone rock climbing, cycling!!, and flown half way around the world.

Let's just say I was a wreck for the next few months. The pain, the post-concussive issues, the insomnia, etc. were more than enough. Yet I was dealing with it all on top of the demands of my Ph.D., teaching and a new massive heart ache. Thankfully, I had brought something else back from NZ to help me deal with it all: yoga. I was practicing every day, just little things, but they were so grounding. I felt that the universe had simultaneously smacked me upside the head (literally) and provided me with a tool to get my shit together. It was time to come into balance.