Despite All My Rage I'm Still Just A Rat In A Cage

I'm ill. I've got the flu.
I've been sort of sick since Monday.
I hadn't slept well.
Yesterday, I came home earlier than usual.
I slept too many hours.

I'm about to get ready to travel to the city.
None of these issues is relevant. 

Last Thursday, a couple of colleagues invited me to give a talk in a Sleep Research Course.

Today, I'm going to talk about how the microbiome impacts on sleep and the development of some neurodegenerative diseasses and neuropsiquiatric disorders.

I had less than one week to prepare this talk.

Originally, I wasn't invited to this course.

The sad events of the last week, changed many things.

I'm sort of nervous.
The talk I prepared it's sort of incomplete... or I think so. 

I'm still ill.

I dreamed about my PhD advisor and his Associate Researcher.

I was in his lab, performing a stereotaxic surgery with one friend of High school.

The surgery was a disaster. I didn't have all the instrumental I needed.
The rat was suffering and my friend constantly told me that he had saved the rat from death, several times. I felt so guilty.

I hold the animal in my hands and I tried to give it comfort. It was really suffering. 

There were another guys in the lab, attending to a seminar.

As I was looking desperately for a heavy drug to give peace to the rat, the Associate Researcher walked close to us. She gave us a speech that, somehow, I had heard before, a few times. She was selling the idea that going to a Neuroscience Meeting was the best idea everyone could ever have. Deep inside, it seemed that this meeting was going to be the most boring thing in the world. She told us her speech so enthusiastically and smiling.

Also she said, in a pretty low voice, as if she didn't want us to hear it, that my advisor was going to be the star on this Neuroscience Meeting. So, in the end, it seemed that the point was that the lucky volunteers would be his slaves. 

She wore a dress with stamped flowers on a black background.
She seemed more honest than she seems in reality.
She didn't use heeled shoes –as she always does in reality– and she seemed shorter than she seems in reality. 

I was so desperately looking for ketamine.
I wanted to give a peaceful death to the rat, but I was so silly and proud of myself that I didn't want to ask her for ketamine.

Then my advisor walked beside me.
He seemed really angst. He had his stereotypical face of "Get out of my way, you useless dumb!" His gesture evoked on me some unpleasant feelings... but, somehow, they were not as intense as they used to be almost ten years ago. At the end of my postgraduate studies I really hated my life and I even developed some level of alcoholism, addiction to smoking and a couple of psychosomatic illnesses. 

These feelings left a pretty clear example on my dream. 
A rat was in agony and my advisor just didn't even know... or didn't care. 

Also, I had the impression that he was so tiny and that I could just beat him up and throw him a few miles away from me, with a pretty small effort.

My dream was an astonishing metaphor. 

Despite All My Rage, I'm Still Just A Rat In A Cage

Friends Don't Mean A Thing

I need to stop these thoughts. 

They come like an annoying internal voice.

This voice always whispers to me.

All day long, it whispers negative things. 

It is a hard habit. 

It is present in all the aspects of my life. 

It makes me sick. 

It makes me see the dark side of everything I do. 

I'm about to go to a birthday party.

I have to travel across the city.

It sickenings me, too. 

I've been thinking why I avoid this type of meetings. 

There is always a guy who appears out of nowhere and starts to say silly things about me -or about what I do- and I am unable to give a smart answer. 

It's a dilemma. 

Should I ignore him, or should I explain him why he's wrong?

When I decide to explain him, he just changes the topic. 

Should I laugh and pretend he's funny as hell? 

Maybe I should nod and smile. 

I am a slow-minded man. 

I am a troubled man. 

I always have. 

I guess I just need to don't care about what people say.

They always speak about things they barely know.  

However, they make me feel uncomfortable. 

Sometimes I wish I could be as simple as them. 

They seem to be happy having kids and cars.

Nonetheless, they need to go to the church each Sunday morning. 

They need someone to tell them how to conduct their own lives. 

They need to find a mystical force to have a reason to work all day long. 

They need a mystical force to tolerate their miserable existences. 

Maybe they don't even have time to realize how much they hate their jobs. 

They find happiness on TV. 

They find happiness on loud music.

Always the same song, or any song. 

They don't even have a favourite band. 

They go with the flow. 

It's OK. 

But I can't ignore them, when they speak about things they don't understand. 

I can't ignore them when they assume each one around them is the same. 

We're not the same.

Even when we f**k it all. 

These thoughts increased yesterday. 

I feel kind of dizzy and I have a stomach ache. 

I would prefer to stay at home. 

I'm sleepy and nauseous. 

I would prefer to employ my time in a different way. 

I can't stop these thoughts.

They are like an uncontrollable disease. 

I've been thinking how will it be when someone appears out of nowhere and start to say silly things. 

It seems likely that I am going to be breathless and speechless. 

Like I frequently do. 

Later, when I arrive home, I will be complaining about it and the response I should have given will appear and I will regret to be such a slow-minded man. 

On the other hand, it is possible that nobody speaks to me. 

Look at the bright side. 

(My whole existence is for your amusement.) 

Creep