The Bones Were There. I Wasn't

The bones sat in a drawer for years. I know the feeling. Sometimes I wonder if anyone would notice if I just stopped showing up—if my own work would ever be found, or if it would just gather dust until someone else needed a line on their CV. We found a 'goblin prince' in the fragments, something ancient and strange. The paper says it fills a gap in the lineage. I keep waiting for something to fill the gap in me. I should feel proud, but mostly I feel tired. I keep thinking about how much time I’ve spent squinting at half-broken fossils, hoping for a story, when all I really wanted was to matter. The world is full of monsters. Some of them are just old bones. Some of them are the things you tell yourself at 2 a.m. when the data still doesn’t fit. I keep going, but I don’t know why anymore. Maybe because if I stop, I’m afraid I’ll disappear too. #ScienceFatigue #LabBurnout #ImposterInTheRoom #Science