This Fairytale Has Mice Too

If you grew up in the age of Disney movies, you know every little girl’s dream is to one day become a princess and have prince charming rescue them from the metaphorical tower their lives are. Personally I was always more interested in the little animal helpers that came with it, boys seemed a little too dumb at that age. I wanted mice and birds to do my chores so I could sit all day in the grass and read my books and paint with my watercolors. Soon I learned this was not the way life worked and if my mother saw a rat in the house she would probably faint, so I had to avoid that at all cost. However, Disney didn’t get the narrative completely wrong, and I didn’t get a makeover from my little helpers, but I did meet my price charming because of them, so that’s close enough.

In my second year of college I was taking 18 credits which is a lot if you ask any normal person, but because I’m me, I needed to find something else to do. I decided to join a research lab that focused on neuroscience because... well, because I couldn’t just be happy with a full course load, I needed more work. Anyways, I attended the lab meetings at first to familiarize myself with the projects and eventually joined one. Without going into much detail, my job would involve working with mice and rats to obtain certain data from them. A month after attending the meetings, I was due to present a scientific paper from which I understood nothing; to say it went poorly would be a huge understatement, especially due to my fear of public speaking. Now, in that particular meeting, there was a new student, a boy that caught my attention for a minute because I remember thinking “we finally have a cute lab member,” but that was all. I proceeded to nearly talk everyone to death with my presentation and he decided to ask questions, which I hated him for, and so began a path of dislike towards him. I wanted to punch him, he was messy and annoying and would often give me heart attacks by sneaking up on me in the middle of lab without making a sound. To top things off I was asked to assist him with his work, just my luck right? I would have to spend hours upon hours around this person that annoyed the living heck out of me, nevertheless I agreed because you should never deny anyone your help.

Back then, I was with someone, someone who would go on to be responsible for one of the worse years of my life but that’s a story for another day. As the months went by we started to get along more, he wasn’t as annoying anymore and everyone at lab got pretty close with him. We had no interactions outside of work though, we were just two people helping each other out that happened to be friends with our coworkers, he wasn’t a close friend, he was just my lab partner.

He went through a breakup at the end of that year, and my relationship was taking such a toll on me I was having panic attacks daily. However, to my surprise he was always there for me. Whenever my boyfriend would take me to a breaking point, which was often, he was always there, making me study so I could forget about it. Making sure I wasn’t let my personal problems interfere with my academic life. When finals week came around I was staying up until three in the morning at the library studying, and he would walk me to my car every night when it was time to go home to make sure I was safe. You might think I’m the worse person for being with another guy until so late when I had a boyfriend and you might be right. But he was my friend, I wasn’t doing anything bad, I wasn’t even thinking about doing anything bad. I needed to study, and the only time I could do that was at night, when my boyfriend was out getting high with his friends and not making me feel worthless. We studied, we complained, and above all he made sure I was safe, which was nice to experience at the moment given my constant state of anxiety. My boyfriend and I had a horrible encounter which marked the end for me, I broke it off because I could no longer allow myself to be so miserable. Finals came and went, I was crying for most of it due to my breakup, my lab partner stayed with me through it all, forcing me to keep my act together, and then we ended the semester and he went back home. Never to be heard from again!

The End.

Just Kidding! There is a lot more to that story but you will have to wait a little to find out.

To be continued.