Siege of the Spirit

Fear and loathing in the presence of my betters

Last week, three sales and technical reps came to my workplace. I’d been informed they were coming at a certain time and was as mentally prepared for this horrific event as I could be. These meetings usually take place in the conference room. There’s a good-sized table with decently spaced-apart chairs and plenty of light by which to watch people’s faces and see all their materials. Best of all, it’s a non-clinical area and you can have your water bottle with you.

My department is also a room. It’s filled with benches and safety cabinets and incubators and agars and analyzers and a microscope. I’m back here because microorganism wrangling is a one-person job and I need to work alone. I often keep the lights dimmed because overhead lights are just … cruel. I’m fortunate to have a choice. There’s even a window, a decadent luxury in a lab. But the room has one horrible feature: the workstation is against the wall opposite the door. Not only is my back to the ever-open door, but a biological safety cabinet and bookshelf loom at my back, between me and the doorway; I can’t see it even when I turn around. Whenever anyone comes into the department, they round this tower and appear beside me and I startle so hard my butt catches air. Sometimes they speak suddenly just before manifesting, which has the same effect. The adrenaline spark is so intense that it hurts—a lot—exploding through my body and brain, slamming into my fingertips and toes and the crown of my head. Every nerve shrieks at once. It’s comparable to touching an electrified livestock fence multiple times a day.

Invariably they act surprised by my reaction, though it happens every single time they come in unless they do me the courtesy of knocking or dinging the call bell I have on the counter by the door for that very reason. There are two or three people who accommodate me in this simple way before they come on around. The rest gasp or laugh or say, “I didn’t mean to startle you,” or all three at once. Sometimes they appear offended that I should be startled by them, as if they have the right to have me not be startled by them.

Then they start talking about whatever they have come to interrupt me with. My heart is pounding and my face is so flushed I feel like my eardrums are going to burst. I’m trying to slow my breathing while the pain recedes from my nerves, which feel like tiny stick people flailing their arms and screaming as they are dragged back into a wormhole. I scramble to shift my focus to what the other person is launching at me and redirect my thoughts from the microorganisms I’ve been pondering.

But none of these terrible things were going on when, sitting at my workstation in the low light, I heard unfamiliar voices out in the corridor mingled with those of the two supervisors. It’s time for the meeting, I thought, proudly calm, and grabbed my notebook and went to the door.

With big smiles they greeted me, Super1 and Super2 and three female sales reps from the biotech company. Grinning back, I focused on each one’s name and face and promised myself I’d remember. And instead of then proceeding to the conference room where I could see them, they formed a phalanx and advanced at once into my dark domain. There, the supervisors toured the shadowy beings around my department as if I were not even present. Nobody thought to turn on the lights.

When our happy group came back around the biological safety cabinet toward the doorway, they stopped. Maybe they were talking about the analyzer they were standing next to; I don’t even remember. All I remember is that I tried to say something, felt irrelevant, and we continued standing right there in a close, roughly ovoid configuration, me trapped against the incubators between Super1 and a sales rep, with no escape.

I’m fairly certain I have various conditions that have never been diagnosed in addition to my bipolar. Maybe they aren’t anything. But they are challenging obstacles for me all the same. One of these is acute claustrophobia in groups of people. Another one is intolerance of standing in one position for any amount of time unless I’m in the woods. Another one is insomnia and chronic exhaustion.

Well, the conversation went on. I waited for Super1 to make a move to head to the conference room, and he didn’t. I slowly realized, to my utmost dread, that they had in effect started the meeting right here, huddled together in this dark, compressed space. I was okay for a few minutes, but fatigue set in along with the claustrophobia, right on time.

I was still struggling to maintain an interested demeanor well after it became clear to me that no one was interested in my dredged-up ideas about anything. I quit trying to contribute and turned my attention to fighting the claustrophobia. There was no direction I could move. Super1 lounged against the incubator on my left, an option I didn’t have because I was at the space between the incubators. The rep to my right seemed to close in on me. She could almost brush my sleeve. Panic arose and I was quickly exhausted trying to suppress or at least hide my frenetic panting. With the hyperventilation, strangely, came the imperative to yawn. Yawning, I’m aware, is universally interpreted as a sign of disrespect rather than complete exhaustion in such settings. I’m also aware that fighting the urge to yawn is a challenge shared by everyone, which made my failure to subdue a couple all the more socially unacceptable. My self-consciousness was justified when one of the impeccable reps snickered, openly watching me struggle.

By then, I could no longer stand still. Oh, how I wanted to. But I couldn’t. My legs were spasming. I squiggled and fidgeted like my son in first grade before starting Adderall.  Their talk was gibberish. My ears roared with the effort to hold back yawns, to still my restless legs and arms. And yet I found myself fixated equally upon my own misery and the plight of the third of the visitors.

Unlike me, she had perfect composure the entire time standing business-casual in those skinny high heels she was wearing. They were the sort of shoes, I thought, one might wear to a meeting in which one expected to be sitting at a table in a conference room. Standing there like that for so long on a concrete floor could be nothing but torture. I was stuck on it like I get stuck when someone mentions they have to go to the bathroom and then lets events carry them along and doesn’t get around to going. All I can think is GO TO THE BATHROOM PLEASE.

I needed that lady to get off those heels as much as I needed to crouch on the floor, yawn big, and then run around the benches screaming.

I was shaking inside, dizzy and near tears by the time the meeting seemed to be wrapping up. There were sporadic “Well, it’s been really great finally meeting you,” sorts of remarks, and “Here’s my card,” mixing in with final pitch fragments and answered questions. Any second, we’d all exchange final handshakes and they’d be out the door. And I wasn’t glad. I was desperate.

But Super2 suddenly had a burning question. It was very important. No, that’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking this.

Yes, what about this? Super1 agreed. Clarify, clarify. And the wheels began turning once more, and the conversation rumbled back to life, and I held back my tears with no idea what anyone was saying. I felt like I was about to pass out. Eventually the shifting around, closing of notebooks, and handing off of brochures resumed, and this time it was for real. The meeting was over. But the terror was not. They all started socializing. “You driving back this evening? Where to?” “What’s your sales territory?” “What motel are you staying in? Here’s what to do while you’re in town. Oh, you brought your bicycle? Let me tell you about the trails!”

I was still standing there. I could not even chew my leg off. I was well and truly trapped, and I could no longer hold back my tears. But a coworker appeared with a specimen for culture as if a guardian angel had shoved her in the door to rescue me with a task only I could perform. I sidled unsteadily past the woman next to me, surveyed the items in the hood, and then whispered to the aide, “Bring me another one. Say it’s STAT!”

But that interruption was the catalyst. The meeting actually broke up. For they all were as full of it as I was, having been caught in a PCR amplification loop of polite small talk that seemed inescapable. But they could play the game. It’s all just body language and concealing the tells. They could do it. They could pretend they were okay, and with engagement and endurance. I could not. That’s the difference between “normal” and me. I dove headfirst into setting up that culture. I waved the slide in the air to dry it for staining. I tooled around the bench a few times. Then I stepped out into the bright hallway.

There they all were! Clustered around Super2’s office door! Well, I’m sure she had questions and inconsistencies to point out and they were all quailing before her acumen.

I zoomed to the breakroom, chugged water, and looked at Bluesky for a minute. I went to the bathroom, not because I needed to (I didn’t; I was frankly dehydrated) but because it was a door I could get behind and lock.