Survival Mode

Warning sign marked Perigo at a stormy ocean seashore by Arth (Pexels)There have been two significant times in my life when the environment I was in was so toxic that I persisted in survival mode. I learned something about myself during those times, that survival mode shuts down anything related to the Bad Thing. Survival mode numero uno was graduate school. I'd been harassed by my advisor and then was retaliated against when I tried to speak up and change advisors. It was hell, and I still sometimes think it was a miracle I made it out of there and got to attach doctor to my name. It then took me a year entirely away from the Bad Thing for the salted land of my enthusiasm and verve to return, and when it did it exploded. I lived and breathed science. The ideas that had been locked in my brain, the observations, the hypotheses, the papers that came out of that time. Because I felt safe, and that safety let me emerge from survival mode. That effusive joy that came from spending my days…