Life

It was a very trying day. It started out well, but quickly disintegrated. I spent most of the day shopping with my mother in the city. For some reason, my anxiety really kicked in today. It seemed like I got cornered at every store I went to, salespeople perpetually dogging my footsteps and trying to get me to look at things.

Within an hour I was becoming rude and irritated. I went into one store and must have gotten bothered by about four salespeople in a span of fifteen minutes. My mood just dropped. I have enough trouble interacting as it is, and this only made the problem worse, because I soon found myself dreading walking into another store. I got snippy with my mother, annoyed by the people, and I virtually forgot what it was I was doing there, and only wanted to go home. I hate how fucking easily I let myself get into those moods. I get misanthropic to the point where I want to go back to the car and sit, just to be away from everyone, to have some downtime to recover.

I eventually started leaving my mother in stores, telling her that I was going to go look in a different one (we were in a mall). But in truth, I found myself pacing the length of the building, trying to relax a little. When I finally went into a store, again I was bombarded by people selling things, and simply walked out.

I was searching for jewelry in one store, where one guy in particular wanted to talk to me. I never really know how to handle those kinds of situations. What really irks me, is the fact that a few years ago that sort of thing never would have happened, yet now it happens regularly. Because I was fatter before, apparently I wasn’t worth anything, now, suddenly, people take interest. I will never understand that kind of vanity. It makes me feel cheap, and like the world is nothing but petty. I always find myself being defensive and irritated when it happens, like I’m trying to even some score I can’t see. I seem to think, “well, you wouldn’t have wanted me before, so now that I have the opportunity, I’ll reject you first”. I guess it’s a stupid way to be, but I can’t help it. I feel like if anyone is even remotely interested, it’s for a bad reason, and because of that I refuse to give anyone a real chance.

The point of the whole trip was to buy my mother something for Christmas. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Eventually, though, we ended up going to a few more pleasant stores, where we were finally left alone. I even bought a few things and started to feel better. We sat down and had something to eat, taking our time. I just wish it could have been like that the whole trip.

Tomorrow I will probably go to the ocean. The beach. I look forward to it. I haven’t stopped thinking about it for the longest time.

There are times, when the thought of ridding the world of every trace of myself seems like a good idea.

If you cannot see it, then perhaps it never was?

Unrest

It was quite a disastrous day. Everyone was moody and gloomier than usual, a side-effect of the holidays gone bad. I stayed 9 hours, which I haven’t done in a while. I felt every hour of it, because for whatever reason I woke up not feeling too well. I was tired and physically felt like crap, which makes little sense since I got more sleep the night before than I generally do in two combined nights.

I also made the mistake of not eating. I was there from 10:30 to 7:30, and by the time I got home I really needed something. I must have been more stressed than I thought, because I ate more than I should have. I didn’t binge, but it still wasn’t good. I wasn’t even hungry after I ate leftovers, but for whatever reason I kept going. I was pretty pissed off at myself.

I have the day off tomorrow, and I don’t really know what I’m going to do to keep my anxiety at a minimum. I’m sure I’ll probably go at it again, eating until I get too sick to continue—that seems to be one of the few ways to find some sort of temporary relief. I don’t know how else to deal with it at this point. No matter what I do, nothing seems to provide enough distraction and I slowly slip into a horrid state of mind where I end up laying in bed for hours, awake, planning things I shouldn’t be planning. Death has become this obsession to me, and sadly, it is one of the very few things I waste energy thinking about. I run the list off in my head of the things that I could do with my life, and every time I find myself disinterested.

There is no time other than the present, at least it is that way in this head of mine.

Sleeper

I slept after I got home from work yesterday, a good five hours at least. It was filled with the strangest dreams. I’m suspicious that one of the dreams is something that has been going on for a long time, and maybe that is why I feel this incredible sense of de ja vu off and on.

I’m in my old livingroom at the home I grew up in. It has its dingy, dark brown carpet and a couch that curls around most of the room. The television is on, and I vaguely look up at it from time to time. I’m walking a little circuit in the part of the room not obstructed by furniture. I must be pacing for hours, because the movie changes and I keep going. But this is a desperate sort of thing, because I’m taking longer strides and I feel a slight panic in myself that I don’t really understand.

Sometimes when I pace in the real world it is like that. I get very anxious and emotional, and I might be crying or just walking much quicker, not really looking at anything in particular, not really seeing.

This behavior started in the time I used to spend alone. My first year of home schooling was very rough on me at first. My mother had three jobs and was barely ever around, and my father had begun to work long into the night instead of coming home at 5:00 as he used to. I was completely alone. My friends had all gone to the highschool I’d rejected. I’d even gone to the orientation for it, but a few weeks before I was to attend, I had a  bit of a breakdown. I couldn’t go. I’d opted to go on home school, mostly out of cowardice. I was afraid, so very afraid. I knew I would only be bullied and harassed even worse than what I’d already gone through. And…I couldn’t. I knew I didn’t have it in me just then to deal with it all again. I was already having thoughts of killing myself, and had gotten to my highest weight ever.

Maybe it was anxiety that started it. Being alone for so long, for days and days when all I had ever known was a life surrounded by other people. They gave me so much homework I distinctly recall falling asleep on my open textbooks trying to figure everything out without someone there to help me. But regardless, I got up later and later, and tried at my studies less and less. I stopped caring. I kind of went into my own world, and for a time, I felt better than I ever had. I even lost all the weight I’d gained and got to my lowest weight because I started spending a large quantity of time exercising.

The pacing had gotten worse, however, and I’d spend hours and hours at night doing it. I had this insane fear of being caught, and would listen intently for the sounds of anyone coming to check on me at night when everyone would finally get home.

In this dream, the kitchen light is on. I keep returning to the kitchen, repeatedly filling glasses with tea. This thirst is on me and I can’t seem to quench it. Back and forth I go for a while, glancing at the television, before stepping quietly into the kitchen to refill my glass yet again. I look out the window for a moment to see the black of night, and a very delicate light from the moon filtering through the branches of the lone tree out on our lawn. I don’t know why the blinds aren’t drawn, and my paranoia suddenly comes to me. I pull the shades down and spin them until all the light is blocked out. I look over my shoulder to the livingroom, and take off my headphones to listen. Just the quiet drone of the television and whatever is playing. It says ‘IFC’ in the corner, which I notice for some reason.

It’s when I go to the kitchen and come back again, that I nearly let out a sound. My mother is walking over to the couch, and looks over at me.

“You scared me,” I say, taking a deep breath and yanking my headphones off a little too irritably.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she answers.

She’s had insomnia for what must be years now, and it used to be common for her to get up in the middle of the night to watch I Love Lucy or The Brady Bunch while I’d be doing my pacing in my bedroom. Occasionally she’d walk in, I’d get very agitated (at being caught and not knowing how to explain it), and wait until she went to sleep again. Sometimes it would take four or five hours, but I’d wait patiently for the sounds of the television to die out. 

“You should take something,” I advise.

It’s not because I care that she sleeps that I say this, I say it because I want her to go away and let me have my time to myself.

“I just did.”

I nod disinterestedly, my eyes wandering to the television. God how I hate that thing. I only use it to cover up the sound of my footsteps. These days, nearly four years in the future, I use a fan. 

I think we sit on the couch for a while, and I’m impatient as ever, asking her if she feels tired. It takes a bit, but finally she does, and I breathe a sigh of relief when she returns to her bedroom. In this dream she is not injured. Her hands are normal, not curled under, and she walks like she always did, without the shuffle that I’ve finally gotten used to.

I have to go get something to drink. I realize too late that all the tea is gone. I start water on the stove, hurriedly. In the meantime, I grab a soda and start chugging that down. My eyes keep going to the window.

Did anyone see me, I wonder?

Bottomless pit.

I went outside this morning to find a foot of snow had fallen in the night and was continuing to flutter down.

I’m not sure what brings on these bouts of bad mood. But yesterday was yet another, one spent crying too much and avoiding sleep. Now I can’t seem to find the rest I need unless I am exhausted. Taking naps is becoming increasingly more difficult. My body no longer wants to humor me, so it is on these 4-5 hours of sleep that I must survive. Today was the first day in about two weeks that I didn’t down caffeine to keep me awake. I endured the sleepiness. I will be sleepy, that is simply the way it is, I guess.

I got an interesting surprise this morning on my way to work. I didn’t know this song could even be played on the radio without being severely edited:

 

I always laugh a little bitterly at “I’m breathing, so I guess I’m still alive/even if signs seem to tell me otherwise”. The video to this song has always bothered me. The way the doll is so helpless, like a puppet to the creature that keeps it, forced to become whatever it wants it to be. Nothing but a slave, but then again, the creature too, is a slave to the doll when you think on it. It goes both ways. It was very odd that it played then, because I had been thinking about how much I feel like I ‘do unto others what has been done to me’. I feel like I turned the tables sometimes, and not always on what the perceived enemy was, but myself. And there is sanity to be found in that, whether I berate myself or the world at large.

I’m nothing but someone stuck on the idea of revenge, always trying to get back at all those injuries that were inflicted on me over the years. It may be a stupid way to be, but I know that part of my soul is dedicated to hating. I will never escape that, and my grudges will last until my death.

To avoid…

Another day off. Yesterday was…interesting, to say the least. I never went to bed the night previous, and all I had done was get up from my computer chair to go shower and get ready. I did my 8 hours, which was chaotic and horrible, naturally; not a good day whatsoever and all the higher-ups magically appeared to criticize everything while we’re trying to swim instead of sink. And there I am barely conscious, which was my own stupid fault.

 I also found out someone called in and made a claim that the morning workers were standing around doing nothing when the store was supposed to be open, to our boss. So being that she is quite nosey, she checked the footage from that day on that hour.

Sometimes you do get revenge.

Apparently on the tape I’m preparing food ten minutes before opening (which is how it is supposed to be), while my coworker and I are having a conversation as she puts on her headset (which she doesn’t have to put on until six; but we always try to be ready ahead of time…). I haul ass in the morning; I have no alternative. I must have all of the food out to last for the entire morning and have it cooked by six. I also have to turn on all the equipment, plug in the freezers, prep all the trays, and get all my supplies. One half hour is all I get to do this in, and I am completely on my own. But I get it done. And then I assemble and cook the food until at least 7-8 in the morning, if not later, until someone comes in to help.

For anyone to even suggest that I would be fucking around, infuriates me. Why don’t you get back there and try to do it, then? Why don’t you run the entire back of a store by yourself for a good portion of the morning and see how you fair? They’ve left me alone until 10 before. You want to talk about having a bad motherfucking day?

Anyway, once that was over I went home for about an hour, waiting for them to get the checks at work. Then I went back, stood around for awhile and got to see one of my coworkers, who was just about to go off to a party and get as drunk as humanly possible. She smoked and I giggled, out in the cold, watching all the people walk in and out of the restaurant. I ran off as soon as I got paid, then went to town, which was another experience in and of itself.

I was standing at the counter of another fast food restaurant around 4, trying to order food. For some reason I couldn’t seem to speak properly. The guy at the register kept getting confused, and I was feeling too anxious to talk at all, but somehow I blurted out something and did get food. I hadn’t eaten all day, so I didn’t have much of a choice; it was either get food or don’t eat at all.  I don’t know why I get so anxious out of the blue like that sometimes.  I can be okay with it one day, then terrible the next.

The same thing happened in Walmart, and then again at another store. I froze when they would ask me a question or try to make typical conversation. I’d mumble something and look at the floor until they were done ringing everything up, then I’d snatch up my things and leave as quickly as possible so I wouldn’t have to say anything else. It got worse when I went to look at some Christmas things. This guy says something about what I’m wearing, which isn’t anything to worry about. I walk away, forget about it. Then there he is again, five minutes later when I’m carrying a few things around. He can’t seem to restrain himself from making a comment about the items, so I say something a little snide, and move to another aisle. But I can see him hovering in the corner of my vision. My lack of sleep has caught up with me by then and I am on the verge of verbally attacking him because I simply don’t want to be bothered. For any reason. Instead, however, avoidance kicks in and I end up on the opposite side of the store.   

Sometimes I feel like this wolf with snapping jaws, then other times I feel like the timid little rabbit that would prefer to run than face something. Sometimes I think suicide would be a rabbit moment, and maybe that is one of the reasons I haven’t gone as far with it as I would like at heart. I am a true avoider; the confrontational person that comes out at times is a temporary side-effect of annoyance and anger. I get fed up and I act. The rest of the time I’d like nothing more than to fade into the background and be unseen because I am too weak to try and the desire to do anything doesn’t really exist.

Finally, for the last round of stores I put on my headphones and blatantly refused to acknowledge anyone, even if they were speaking to me. No, I can’t hear you, sorry.

I’m not sure if I should be angry at myself for that or not. I didn’t want to be out in the first place, and only endured it because there were things I needed to get. I had even weighed myself before I left and nearly not gone because of it. I should have been home sleeping, truthfully. I guess none of it is really an excuse though. What’s funny to me is the more time I have been spending out in the world, the less I wish to see of it, when the words of anyone else are to integrate and try more in order to get better. Why then do I feel like there are even fewer reasons to venture out?

If it was up to me, I don’t think I would leave the house anymore. Regardless of how much I have been panicking in my time off, I would prefer to deal with myself, the real problem, instead of trying to be something I’m not. I feel wrong in the presence of others, more so than when I am by myself. I’m always lying and playing a game that I don’t really want to play. Why play when you care not about the pieces and their outcome, I wonder? The crux of this is that I can’t feel and I have trouble conjuring up any kind of feelings for those around me. And maybe I can’t feel for them because I can’t feel for myself. I can’t even care about my life, so how can I concern myself with theirs?

I’ll go on avoiding. Nothing else but that seems to make me last.

Selfishness is amusing, somehow.

At times I don’t understand myself. I’ve hardly gotten any sleep in the past week, and I suspect that is part of the reason I am having horrendous mood swings. I’m getting three to four hours a night, and whatever nap I have during the day (and those, I have noticed, are becoming shorter and shorter and harder to come by, and do little to provide real rest).

I came home in a bad mood. I worked with good people, but I was too tired and it seemed to drag by (again, almost no sleep) and I found myself standing around in a daze during the short periods without orders, where generally I would be cleaning or stocking more things. I had a stomach ache because all I had was a chocolate bar and a few cookies, and of course to make that better, I bought a sundae at work right after I got off my shift.

I walk into my room, and there’s my cat, meowing and meowing to be fed. So I do that, even though I’m screaming at him to shut up. He doesn’t like whatever canned food I gave him, and begins to stalk off after sniffing it, but stops short. I realize he’s about to have a hairball. Terrific. 

Yesterday he shit in the corner of my room for no reason. He’s just irritating me beyond all belief, and I have to make sure my bed is made, because if it is even a little bit lumpy with blankets he’ll go to the bathroom right in the middle of it. I’ve already made the mistake of getting into bed and finding that cat shit was smeared all over the blankets. That’s a real great feeling when you’re exhausted and only going to get four hours of sleep anyway. I end up having to get all of my blankets together and throw them in the wash at 11 at night and take a shower and dispose of my clothes.

So he’s having his hairball. Well, something goes wrong. He starts convulsing, and actually falls onto his back. His legs go straight out and he twitches. I called myself Lady Apathy once for a reason. I watch, sighing in annoyance. I don’t even move forward to see what’s going on or help him out. For some reason it doesn’t matter and I wonder briefly if he’s going to choke to death while I stand there, contemplating the vomit I’m going to have to clean up.

Events like this are scary to me because of the lack of feelings in me. It’s one of those rare times where the apathy and I are face to face, in a strange sort of agreement. I have no fear of death, yet I know that in a true crisis I would likely do nothing. I’d be disinterested in helping rather than being too frightened to do so. The numbness is so strong there is no inclination to help. I’m tired and don’t feel like it; that is the sum of my feelings. 

I’ve had moments like this with my mother. I won’t go into detail; I have enough left in me to know to be ashamed of my inaction. I was always fascinated by psychology when they try to justify inaction in an emergency. Generally it is thought to have to do with social conditioning, fear, and most often confusion. Many people have trouble identifying an emergency, oddly enough, and in large groups the herd mentality runs rampant. If no one reacts, the chances of one person being different from the crowd and helping are very low (keep in mind this percentage is dependent upon how many people are present; smaller groups tend to be the worst, interestingly). If there is only one person, however, the chances of them getting involved are much higher.

My reasons, again, have nothing to do with fear or confusion. I’ve seen plenty of things die, and did my best to save them—back when I could feel. A family dog once almost choked to death, and I reacted accordingly. My dad nearly had a diabetic seizure when he came home from work once. I immediately figured out that something was wrong when he stumbled and couldn’t speak without stuttering. He came up the walk pale and shaking, bracing himself against the wall when I opened the door. I grabbed handfuls of the sugariest cereal in the cupboard and shoved it into his mouth. 

Things happen, we react. But what happens when you lose the inclination, and it has nothing to do with any of those other things that might prevent others from doing something? Does it make you inhuman? Does it make you evil? I don’t know anymore what to think of this. I don’t believe in good and evil, regardless of what I say. I do what my gut tells me and as far as general ideals go, my choices could go either direction or even somewhere inbetween. At the end of the day, I have very few morals that I strictly abide.

My cat  keeps choking for a short while, but finally stops on his own. I haven’t moved, because he’s got some of his mess on the floor through the doorway I have to go through. He gets up and nearly falls, but begins walking away. He ended up trailing puke all over my bed. I picked him up immediately and put him in the cage and went to do the laundry. In fact, I didn’t think about it until I sat down to type this. I also threw a packet of ranch dressing at the wall. It splattered everywhere. This was after I discovered there was nothing I wanted to eat. Apparently, at the time, the best reaction I could think of was making things worse.

I really don’t know what my problem is. I want to get rid of my pets. I want to quit my job. I want to die. Everything seems to culminate into this existence I don’t want to face or deal with. Everything is too much of a bother, nothing is interesting, and all I can seem to draw out of myself is more pessimism. 

I can see it clearly; don’t think that I can’t. This is full of negativity. I skip over any bits of my day that might have been alright and target the bad, going into much more detail. I consider it to be a character flaw of mine—not to say that I can’t stop—I am perfectly capable of being optimistic just like anyone, but for whatever reason it feels too difficult and I don’t even want to try. I’m lazy and weak and don’t want to make an attempt. I want to just flip the switch and forget it all ever happened. I want my life to be a bad dream and my death to be the waking. That’s what it is, really, I want my suicide to be a quick fix for my problems, a fix for having to be here at all.       

I’m a selfish bitch, and for some reason that doesn’t seem to bother me half the time. Maybe because deep down I see everything as a means of pleasing oneself. I don’t know if that is even slightly objective or another view brought on by my pessimism, but it is slightly comforting. It’s selfish to leave, maybe, but it is also selfish of others if they were to be angry about me not sticking around. It goes both ways, really.

shift

Yet another memory.

I’m fifteen. It’s a car filled with rage. You can almost feel it; a hostility that is so powerful it’s maddening. There’s a CD in the player, and the volume is a little too loud, but somehow we still talk over it every once in awhile. The windows are down because it’s summer and the heat is strong enough that you can see the waves of it off of the pavement.

We park. Get out. It’s a very slow, measured thing. We aren’t hurried. We aren’t happy or sad. I’m looking around because it is all new to me. I never trail my father; I always walk right beside him. I don’t know if he trained me that way or if it was something I picked up myself. I’ve learned over the years that many of my behaviors are ones that were conditioned. For instance, I never knew why it was that I always shake hands with new people I meet, regardless of age or anything else. Apparently it was something I was taught. Even if I am a child, I show respect and deserve respect. Things like that still puzzle me.

We’re through the doors where we go to the front desk, and ask which room we should head to. She’s been moved, they say, and we’ll have to go to one of the higher floors. We’re both silent, and I’m just taking in the scenery. It’s that aniseptic smell of a hospital, one that I quite like. The scent is a clean one, and it covers that other smell. Or maybe it’s an aura. Depression and death. Maybe I’m imagining it.

Finally we get to our floor. There’s a long winding hallway, then the room we are standing in front of, which is nearly at the center of it. The sign above reads ‘ICU’. We wait awhile, I don’t remember why. Maybe it’s because over the speaker someone says ‘Code Blue’.

“Means someone is about to die,” my father says to me.

“Do they have a code word for when someone has actually died?”

He nodds. We’re cleaning our hands with some kind of foaming hand sanitizer, waiting to be let through the doors. The man who came to greet us lets us inside, through the strange glass doors, and we walk in, none too quickly. It’s almost as if we don’t want to see. I know I don’t.

There’s a angry way about him, and it seems to have intensified from the walk. My heart is, for lack of any more suitable a description, pounding. I’m fear and anger and confusion, and it’s making a coldness creep over my face and prickle at my temples. I always get that feeling when I am dreading something. It becomes so powerful it is physical. Funny thing is, I get the same sensation when I have to walk up to a cash register to buy something.

There are rooms all around, with a desk at the center. To the left there is a room, dark, barely lit. I can see the outline of tubes, like some kind of monsterous tumor of umbilical cords, all leading to a man’s mouth. I frown a little, wondering what will be in the room I am going to. For some reason there is no pang of pity, no feelings of being upset or sad. I am more nervous about being in a stange place than anything else. I’m sticking much closer to my dad than is necessary.

It was the first time I was completely emotionless. I was so confused by it. I couldn’t understand. And in these passing years it has never faded, only grown more powerful, until it left me feeling like something only partially human. But the burning of fury was all too alive in me. It was like the sun of my universe, the one thing that kept me going, the one tool I was left to defend myself with.

She’s in a tall white bed. Her face is marred by bruises and cuts, and covered in a sheen of perspiration. She looks barely alive. And then it begins.

It’s like a dam exploding…without the sound. His voice is always mellow when his is angry, to the point that as a child I would cringe when he took up those tones. It was worse than yelling, it was worse than being punished. It was a sound that always made me want to crawl into a corner and die because it was so frightening. It makes people scared of him. I’ve seen men just back away from him when he goes into that voice, like they know something very terrible is about to happen. It’s like god coming down to scorn you personally, voice almost a whisper yet nothing but vitriol. I think for a time as a child I saw him as something akin to a god. Even now, I still find myself hesitating to stand up to him. And to this day, I am the only person I know that will.

This time I am not the one that has to bear that voice. I feel something reminiscent of glee. And at the time I am not ashamed of it. I am not the one who did wrong. I am so angry that I would give anything to have her feel as terrible as I felt, anything to have some kind of revenge. And I feel justified in my rage, because my dad mirrors it.

I’m almost certain that is what most of the visit consisted of: a threat. A very evil, very horrible threat. Do this or be left behind, he says. Somehow the last few days have shifted my feeling so much that the thought of never seeing her again, or even her death does not even slightly pain me. In fact, many of nights I wished for it, if only to soothe my own wounds. I’ve always been the most selfish of people.

She cries, if I recall. She cannot speak, so the tears are silent ones. I’m standing in the corner. I’m sure I probably joined in at one point, but much of it has been swiped from my memory. I only remember the window, looking down at the cleared patch of orange-red dirt where they were prepping for yet another towering building for the hospital. I watch the Caterpillars crawl over the mounds of freshly-tilled earth, not even sure why I came. To see? To make sure it was real?

But it feels so unreal, standing there at that window looking down. I must not be real. This existence is not a real one. I am not loved and I am not cared for. My father will fade into insanity and my mother will die in that bed. I am doomed. I will never finish school and I will never have a life, because I can’t do it.

For the longest time I could not cry. It must have taken a year for the ability to return. At that window I am nothing but a reflection glaring back. Something monsterous and disgusting, something that wishes death on anything and everything. I know that something is terribly wrong with me then. I know that I have crossed some barrier I wasn’t meant to. But I leaped, I ran. I wanted it. I never stopped to contemplate that I would never be the same and that I ruined what little chance I had at a normal life with normal feelings and normal relationships with others.

I want to be this thing, in that moment I wanted it as much as I wanted revenge. I reveled in not hurting for once, in feeling nothing. It was like a beautiful gift, even if I barely understood it.

I left feeling almost giddy. Was it to be a life free of pain? I was too stupid to realize I had only traded one evil for something much, much worse. The temporary relief was in fact beautiful, it’s what came afterward that was so ugly.

Still can’t find it.

I’ve come to despise getting up early. I can no longer sleep 14 hours as I used to so easily. I miss that now, because when I wake I have an entire day ahead of me, one I never quite know what to do with. I want to feel better. I want to wake up and feel as though it’s a good thing to have hours at my disposal. But now it is as if the hours left over after work are nothing but fillers that I ungraciously want to toss aside and forget about. I keep talking about this, maybe because I am uncertain what it means or what I can do to change it.

Every day off I try. I’ll go through ten different projects trying to find one to keep me occupied, or I’ll play some videogame for a very short while, or I’ll even sit down and make a rather sad attempt at reading something, even if it is a local newspaper that’s more mundane to me than perpetually watching the Weather Channel. Anything. Usually what happens is I eat. I cook throughout the day, and eat, over and over and over. I always end up sick and regretting it by evening, but that doesn’t slow the process. I continue until, finally, I find myself doubled over, my stomach so fed up that it will make quite a valiant attempt to free up space.

I might heave for twenty minutes, but I stubbornly refuse to vomit. No, I get to live with these consequences. I get to spend the night in pain, and the next morning nauseated, and go to work and pretend that there’s nothing wrong with me, even though the upper part of my stomach is so painfully swollen it will literally have gained inches overnight to accomodate whatever I ended up binging on. It takes about two days to return to normal, and by then I either begin again, or don’t eat at all.

Why I do this is still not clear. Stress, I would think, though I rarely show any kind of panic or anger at work. All of it seems to come to me when I get home, like the gates to hell have been opened, and it swarms me suddenly. Our turnover rate is extraordinarily high, particularly in the area I work in, and it’s easy to guess why. We must have begun our original orientation about six months ago with about a hundred people all together, that were spread out over four different stores to be trained before coming to the store we are at now. We have a board the in breakroom with congratulations signs on it for those who made it to the sixth month. There are about fifteen names on it, nearly all of which are those who became managers.

We constantly get new crew, and I find myself struggling to remember their names. Most of them won’t last, I can tell already. They spend their first two weeks being willing slaves, then get lazier and lazier once they get comfortable. I get irritated and will literally walk around them if they aren’t going fast enough for my taste. I’m sick of being blamed for their inability to do a very simple job. All it takes is energy, but they whine constantly about not getting their breaks when all they do is stand around, while I’m busy doing most of their job and my own. I’m lucky if I get two breaks out of three.

I come back from breaks and generally find everything backed up, with a screen full orders, shitloads of empty trays (all of which should be filled with food), and two managers in the front screaming orders at people, trying in vain to sort through the chaos, while their shitty front people continuously hand out the wrong orders. There have been times where they will pull me from my half early because one of the newer crew has gotten too far behind to catch up on their own.

I hate breaks. I hate them. I need to sit down; I shouldn’t be running around for 6-9 hours straight, but because nearly all the crew in the back is new and all of the girls I generally work with aren’t around because of training at the moment, it’s like going into a nightmare. The floor will be a disaster, slicked in grease and covered with bits of fallen food, then there will be a screen blinking, with four orders up and god knows how many pending. The machine that prints out special receipts will have a tail of paper hanging down to the floor, sometimes with more receipts shooting out the top and floating down into a pile. The managers always give me a sympathetic look. And then of course, I have to fix it.

One particular instance, several weeks ago, I finally got so irritated I sent the woman away from the table (I had already been pulled from my break twenty minutes early and wasn’t a happy camper). I wouldn’t even let her work with me, that was how badly it was going. She’s a shift manager (highest you can go unless you are the store manager) who has been working as long as I have, and the woman can barely make a sandwich. To top it off she is incredibly slow about it for no reason other than that she doesn’t want to work. I finally looked over at her and said, “Go do prep”, because she was standing there looking at the food more than she was making it. No one said a word.

And still they have been constantly hinting to me at my promotion as some kind of manager (they all seem to have different ideas…), which I don’t even know if I want. In all honesty, I’m an idiot. When I talk about this job like I’m good at it, all that I mean is that I’m willing to do it. That’s the only problem with employees: they don’t want to do it like it should be done. It’s an easy fucking job. You memorize some shit and make food, how hard can it be? But apparently no one wants to work for their money, or deal with that fact, that yeah, we get screamed at, yeah, there are some angry customers who come in and treat you like shit. I’ve had people standing at the counter give me step-by-step instructions on how to make their sandwiches because they ‘don’t trust the grill people to do it properly’. Yeah, because apparently if you work in fast food you must be a dumb fucking cunt that can’t read ‘add 1 cheese, no mustard’ on a screen.

It’s fucking insulting, the way people will look at me if I walk down to the local supermarket to pick up a few things and happen to be wearing my uniform. At the bank they always ask me, ‘where do you work?’ and when I answer they have to restrain themselves from raising an eyebrow. Yeah, I know, I’m not in the white-collar job my parents wanted me to have, I’m not going to college to become yet another of the supposedly educated masses. I stand over by some grills all day, making minimum wage, then go home and never leave the house.

To be incredibly honest, most days it seems like being dead would be more rewarding. I’m still not sure how to change that perception for myself.

Not this time.

When you spend enough time alone, you learn that there’s freedom nowhere. Even if you only commit your most horrible of acts all by yourself in a darkened room, you will still be judged. They will be there, trailing after you like a shadow, passing on their useless ideas to you, barring you from what you need should you permit them. And how easy it is to let them. How easy it is to feel as though the world is like this god, peering down at you, condemning you for what you are. But now it comes from yourself. Now the enemy has infiltrated your inner sanctum, and once it is let in, there are very few ways to get it out. It will cling until you tear it into pieces, until you find something, somewhere that validates you and makes you good enough to stand up for, to fight for. But sometimes you never find that….

I used to be afraid that if I thought anything bad, God would punish me. I’d wake up the next day and something terrible would happen to me or my parents or my friends. I used to spend a good five minutes in the night with the blankets up to my chin,  praying endlessly in this cycle. For anything and everything, for things to go alright the next day, for no one to die…. I’d say the same parts over and over again, until the words became jumbled. Repeat it over and over, like the fucker couldn’t hear me, like if I didn’t say it a hundred times he wouldn’t do it for me. You have to be like a slave to get him to listen, I used to think.

I’d walk up to the holy water in church sometimes and drop something in it. A necklace, a bracelet. Like somehow some water in a dish was going to do something to me. Things like that only have power because we believe they do. And what did I believe, really? I was clearing my conscience. I was trying to feel like I was doing everything that could possibly be done to keep everyone safe. Ah, what it is to be a child!

The prayers eventually turned to curses. I’d spend ten minutes facing the wall, white-knuckled, saying this darker mantra in my head.

Dear God, I hate you.
Dear God, I hate you.
Dear God, I hate you.
I hope you fucking die.
Dear God, I hate you.
Dear God, I hate you.
Dear God, I hate you.
I hope you fucking die.

It’s funny to me now, to admit to it. It seems almost crazy even. But no matter what happens, I always believe somehow. I can’t seem to fully fade into atheism, regardless of how pessimistic I get. I will die believing, and I will die still hating. I don’t even remember why anymore, how it all started, what moment it shifted. I hate him for being here, maybe. I think that’s what angers me so much; that I’m here and feel I had no choice. In the end it translates to an anger at myself for not doing anything about it. It’s me that I really hate; God is like this backdrop I can use to make it less inconspicuous.

Eventually that rage came back to haunt me. And I know now that that’s the voice in my head, the one that laughs and thinks this is all such a great game. I feel like I drown myself over and over, barely letting myself up for air.

You like that? Does it feel good?

I’m the one that I believe has failed. I’m the one that doesn’t want to do it. I’m the one who won’t die but yet refuses to really live. I don’t understand it. I have nothing in me that really wants to go forward, just this blind apathy to lead me around in the dark. And why? Why can’t that too leave me?

I wish now for some of that emotional clarity, where I wake up for the briefest of instants and suddenly I can’t stop crying for all that I’ve done, where I can’t think back and see a single reason at all to go on. Months ago that happened. Before the mountain. Before….  Was it before I started working? I still don’t know why I lived. I don’t know how I could hate myself so much and still continue to breathe. It feels impossible. But it was pure in all the ways this is not. I felt something, believed something. It wasn’t a blank, numb acknowledgement of self-loathing, it was something that felt real.

Never again? I was wrong to swear it off. I should have used those feelings when I had the chance, because I may float on forever in this apathetic void and not have that again. I may do it in a moment of weakness instead of a moment of strength where I am truly living with that feeling instead of feeling nothing, going on memory alone.

“There is no more lively sensation than that of pain; its impressions are certain and dependable, they never deceive as may those of the pleasure women perpetually feign and almost never experience.”

 

I won’t edit this. I don’t have the time.