I am tired of struggling.

This biomass assessment project is a nightmare for me. My research partner barely managed to hold herself together for weeks at the beginning of the quarter when I thought everything was fine. Now I am barely managing to hold myself together, and everything is not fine. Two weeks until the end of the quarter and I am losing my mind trying to communicate with my mentor... And my partner... And myself.

I just want this thing to be over. Cat and I seem to be absolutely incompatible. I have never met anyone quite so overwhelmingly hostile in my life. To break it down relatively simply, the quarter has gone something like this:

Cat overwhelms us early on, absolutely smothering us with advice and commands. Rebecca and I both are seriously turned off. She cuts us down at breakfast, bringing Rebecca to tears because we missed an appointment we didn't even know about. I make every attempt to do things without Cat, asking for her help only when we need it. We climb with Cat. It's good. We climb alone. It's really frightening. We get better at climbing, but the stress is getting to Rebecca. We climb. We do labwork. Cat bites our heads off in the lab because we're not climbing enough. We talk with her. Things seem better. We climb more. Genevieve arrives to help climb and get help creating a book on beach seeds. Things seem to be going well for everyone, but there is tension in the air. Rebecca finally loses it, and goes on vacation. The floods arrive and freak everybody out, including me. I miss a few days of field work. A tree falls in the lab clearing and Cat spends days dismantling it piece by piece. I remove some samples from it. Rebecca comes back from the beach, a new woman. Meanwhile, I have been doing everything in my power to avoid interacting with Cat, who has been giving us plenty of space since the last blowout.

Genevieve and I get really into this book project, and I start to neglect lab work. Rebecca and I scale back our project again and again until it seems like a complete waste of the entire quarter, but at least the stress level is lower. I become totally swamped with the book project, and labwork goes out the window. I injure my shoulder. No more climbing for me. Rebecca has run out of labwork to keep her busy and is chomping at the bit for something to do. We head out and finish our fourth tree, and return to the lab with some samples. I feel super guilty for basically dropping the ball with the biomass project but I can't leave Genevieve hanging with the book unfinished. We push on. By this point, I am losing my sanity from all the self-imposed stress and pressure to get this book thing off my plate. Rebecca is doing things for our project but I am no longer paying attention.

Yesterday, Rebecca spoke with Cat. She decided to jumpstart our lurching project and Cat has now officially taken the reins, which is good for the project. However, it is not so good for me, because I can no longer avoid her.

Today, I learned from Genevieve that Cat has been holding a grudge against me for weeks since the flood, when that tree fell over in the lab clearing. She wanted me to help dismantle it and I told her I had a lot of other things to do. That obviously was not the right answer. At the time it seemed like no big deal but now it has exploded all over the place.

I spoke with Cat today. I told her I was tired of struggling to communicate, and that I just wanted things to go more easily. Her immediate response was (and I quote), "Well, just let me tell you, the problem is all you." She repeated that phrase twice more before phasing into a twenty minute rant. It was good for her. She needed to do her best to make me feel as puny and insignificant as possible. I don't really know why. She seems to find it much easier to belittle someone than to attempt some sort of civil, productive communication.

Ah. Life is tough. This is the toughest it has been in a long time. I can't remember the last time I felt so frustrated by my inability to breach this sort of communication gap. And it's clear that I am going to have to make all the effort in this situation. Cat will certainly not exert herself for my sake. I am just tired of this. I am tired of fighting with Cat. I am tired of shipwrecking Rebecca on these little islands of despair and wasted time and frustration with me. I am tired of burning my bridges with matches I didn't know I'd ever lit in the first place. I am tired of biomass sampling. I am tired of La Selva. I need a vacation. I am going to the beach for a few days. I need it.

In other news, the beach seed book I've been working on with Genevieve has reached completion, for now. She's folding the pages as I type this. Later we will incorporate photos and publish it on the web.