Once more, with feeling

Had an eensy bit of a leak in pseudonym-anonymity, and have laid low, changed my handle, and deleted previous blogposts in a paranoid rave.

For good or worse, though, I'm back. While I'm uncertain that I'll ever be as prolific a publisher as some of the ladies on my blogroll, I have had a lot of things on my mind lately.

To wit:
December was awful. Really, truly, bad. I hit a mental brick wall with my lab work, and felt like a bird who had slammed into a glass window. I spiraled slowly downward to the ground, my damaged cerebrum misfiring and sending me into an ugly depression. I'm no stranger to this particular d-word, but it seems that as I get older, it just gets harder and harder to climb out of the darkness. It was insidious this time, starting with seemingly innocuous thoughts like "oh, i think things at home with hubby are a bit strained, but I'll just keep that to myself for now," and "you know, I don't really feel like exercising this week because I'm falling behind at work, so I'll just work some more," and let's not forget "oh, who needs these silly fish oil supplements anyway??"

Before I knew it I was on a sleep schedule that alternated between going to bed at 4am and getting up at 11am to going to bed at 11pm and getting up at 11am. Okay, so the timing of this post will probably clue you into the fact that I'm still working on climbing out, but trust me when I say that the fact that I'm writing about it is a step in the right direction.

In short, I've been depressed. And the past week, I've had a nasty cold. But I'm getting better from the latter and, more slowly, from the former. As is always the case, the process of getting better renders me introspective about the whole ordeal. What have I learned from this particular depression (aside from the stuff I already knew: that I am self-indulgent when it comes to depression)? I'm starting to sew some pieces together, and the process is painful. I'll lay out some of the stuff that I'm working with here.

1. I've learned already that graduate school, for me, is mostly about learning to manage myself and my possibly outrageous expectations. The problem here is that I have no idea how to reconcile my notion of what is RIGHT with the inherent power dynamic between PI and myself. For much of my life my MO has been to be as straightforward as possible when people were doing things I thought were wrong. Here, though, it's pretty obviously not my place to tell Semi-Famous PI that he's being an ass when PI fails to meet deadlines. It's not that PI couldn't use the feedback, it's more that I don't want to be the person with that responsibility in lab, and PI certainly doesn't need or want some uppity graduate student getting in his face about some piffly little thing when PI has a million responsibilities. Also, I want a good letter of recommendation for whatever the hell it is I'm going to do after this painful experience is over, so I'm trying to keep my trap shut and my head down in my work.

2. I am really bad at taking care of myself. More, I am bad a knowing what it is that I want, exactly. I attribute this to the death of my father five years ago, my inexperience with romantic relationships, and the aforementioned possibly outrageous expectations. I am terrified that when I figure out what I want and how to be good at getting it, that I won't want anything I have now: job, husband, everything. I'm scared.

3. I think I'm a lot dumber than the people that I'm with, but that I'm a lot smarter than most people. This puts me in an awful position: I am frightened of my peers, but scorn the populace. I hate being elitist, can't hang with the elite, but I can't stand hanging with the public. It's purgatory of the worst kind.

I suppose it's pretty obvious that an internal overhaul is necessary. Just, please, tell me how I'm going to accomplish that and live my life without going (even more) batshit insane?