The Dark I know well

The title of this blog is actually an homage to Kara and company, a group of girls (women?) which whom I used to eat. We'd get together, and argue about politics, hitalia, and what ever else was on our minds. We'd unwind after our busy days, or get wound up. There was always some good natured bickering. Most of the core group were humanities majors, with a rogue chemist at least two years ahead of me who I never really knew, and a sometime civil engineer/math major. In the class 3 years behind me were a handful of biologists. My major was eventually came to be discribed as "mad science", possibly due to my tendency to break things or have accidents in lab.

My freshman year, I spilled 1M sulfuric acid (pH 1) on my lab partner's notebook. (Concentrated sulfuric acid will burn holes in paper ... skin... pretty much anything organic). My first semester of organic chemistry, quite possibly during the second lab, I forgot to burp my seperatory funnel. This "burping" process is necessary to make sure that carbon dioxide or other gasses don't build up in the funnel. The gas built up too quickly in my funnel... and my acidic product exploded all over the bench. In the second semester of the class, I broke $250 of glassware, melted a plastic weight boat all over the counter, and produced 1 product the entire semester (incidently, this is a product from a reaction I ran the first semester, unsucessfully). Junior year was okay... I don't think anything catestrophic happened during biochemistry, my principle chemistry class. Physical chemistry was a DISASTER. I spilled acid on myself... acutally, acid spilled on me. Then, there was the bomb calorimeter that I broke, and subsequently fixed. I also managed to break a thermometer in analytical chem... among a series of other incidents which included spending 3 days on NMR and junking up the HPLC (*an expensive instrument*, ***a good seperation system for chemicals***) with diet energy drinks. My schedule didn't hurt the "mad science" assumption.

So, onto the truth... the madness isn't all just in the title of the blog, or my tendency toward common laboratory accidents (honestly... anyone could break 2 seperatory funnels in 1 year). I've been clinically depressed since the age of 13. Last year was bad... I drew into myself and  somehow managed to pull myself through the insanity of my senior comprehensive project and physical chemistry. I bitched constantly about my physical chemsitry teacher, probably because it was the only way I could put into words the angst and pressure of EVERYTHING else in my life.

I know things are getting bad when I turn nocternal. Right now, I hate mornings. But, that might be because I'm working 10 - 12 hour days at the office, then coming home and grading. It might be because I'm holding myself together for my roommate, my friends here, and my friends at home. It might be because no one has expressed physical affection to toward me since my boyfriend and I started dating. I haven't been hugged, held, any of that. It might be because I'm fighting my own perfectionism, my fears, my doubts, and wicked homesickness. Maybe this shit is too much for my blog.  Maybe this is just what its here for. I dunno.