I Found the Missing Black Holes. I Lost Myself.

I spent three years chasing ghosts in the data—hundreds of hours staring at LIGO readouts, hoping for a blip that meant something. Everyone wanted the missing link, the intermediate-mass black holes. I wanted to matter. When the signal finally came, it wasn’t relief. It was exhaustion. I didn’t feel like a scientist. I felt like a machine, running the same analysis until my brain blurred into static. My advisor called it a breakthrough. I just wondered if I’d ever sleep without dreaming in error bars. They’ll write about the discovery. They won’t write about the nights I sat in the dark, wondering if the universe was missing more than black holes. #ScienceFatigue #LabBurnout #ImposterInTheRoom #Science