So I'm in my bed, waiting for it come on (it's very informative) but not really minding if I just pass out. Unconsciousness is my escape from reality, and even though getting drunk or high might make me feel better, passing out at least doesn't cost me anything.
I felt kind of like this once before. It was near the end of my last full-time job, temping for Xcel Energy. I had grown to like it: It was late at night, perfect for a night owl like me, I liked the people I worked with, and I felt productive. The only thing that bothered me about the job since my first day was the sword of Damoclese of the impending end of the department. I don't know when news of its demise began, but it seemingly started at some infinite point before I got the job, like the beginning of the Big Bang.
I lived with it for two-and-a-half years. At some point I figured, Well, if it's gone on this long, how can this department end? So, since I had this full-time job long enough, I started treating it like a full-time job, and not a temp job that could end at any time.
Well, near the end of my tenure there, either late 2005 or 2006 or 2007, more news began to trickle in. They really were going ahead with plans to install this new machine, and therefore our duties in the department were going to change. But it wasn't hard to see the writing on the wall; this contraption would be able to do much of the things we were doing now, and faster. There was no need for all of us there. The day or reckoning was nigh.
Despite everybody saying, "Oh, don't worry about it," I did. I'm not stupid, I knew what was going to happen. So either because I was depressed or I wanted to make sure I got a full eight hours in every day because I didn't know when the checks would stop coming, I let my production sag.
Unfortunately, Xcel was a company who kept track of performance. We would have these monthly printouts of how many checks we went through. I was pretty good for most of my time there, but till the end my supervisor showed me my inexplicable downturn and added this ominous note: "These stats are surprising, and not what I've come to expect from you, but these are the stats."
I knew what was coming next, but I didn't think I could keep my job there even if I did continue to do well. What hurts -- what still hurts to this day -- is the last working day of the year. Little did I know when I wished everybody a Happy New Year, or when I checked next year's calendar for possible days off, would I be called by the temp agency later that morning, a couple hours after work, and told I was canned. It may have been because of my lack of production. To this day I still believe they planned to fire me that day and not tell me. That still pisses me off. None of my goddamn co-workers or supervisors there had the fucking decency to tell me to my face, right in the middle of the holiday season, I was going to be let go.
---
Meanwhile, I had been feeling really sad at my other job, ushering at the theaters in downtown Minneapolis. There was this one cunt who was a floor captain, and she had always been rude to me. No one liked her; shit, she still works there and I bet no one still likes her. But around the time of the end of my full-time job I had one or two major blow-ups where she was a real bitch to me and I let her have it.
The second time I had to talk to my supervisor. He was a really nice guy, but after I told him my grievances and how my life was going, he told me he was loathe to take away a job from someone who hadn't outright demonstrated she shouldn't have it, i.e. she didn't choke a customer out during a performance of The Lion King.
When we left after the meeting, we shook hands outside the front door. He told me to think about it, and that he would grant my request for a leave for the rest of January. I never have told him, but because he didn't give me the answer I sought, that was going to be the last time I shook hands with him, or ever worked for him, or even ever stepped into one of those theaters.
I feel kind of bad for what I did next. Because I was filing for unemployment, I couldn't tell him I quit. But then again, I didn't want to come back because that bitch was still working there. So every month before I knew he started working on the schedule, I would call his number up in the middle of the night (to avoid talking to him personally) and say I need the next month off. I knew he was going to be nice about it, and I knew that would let me keep collecting my checks.
I did that for, oh, ten months. Finally, around December of 2006 or 2007, he sent me a letter saying that I was terminated. Hopefully he wasn't mad, and I really do hope that he doesn't feel I jerked him around. Really, he's a great guy. I am just disappointed that he didn't act like a boss when he needed to and fired somebody who deserved it.
---
OK, so, the bed. It was around this time where I would be lying in my bed, either at night before going to Xcel or the morning after coming back, and I would be trying to figure out life and where I'm going next and what do I want to do and what I am doing here. Life shit, you know? And every single time my heart would race and I would sigh and I would feel chest pains because I could not come up with an answer. What I could count on is lying perfectly still and hoping I would doze off. I would spend no money doing that, and I would have no worries while asleep. I remember telling my best friend my troubles over a voicemail around Christmastime: "I just want to lay down in my safe, secure bed and not do anything. That's the only time nothing bad happens." Or something like that. Buddha bless them, he and his wife were so worried that a) he told me in a voicemail to me that he loved me and b) they actually came around the house to see how I was.
Well, that's how I was feeling a couple hours ago. All I wanted to do was have the power of rest take me over and help stiff-arm my demons till tomorrow.
But this time is different. This time, Grandmother isn't acting too well. This time, my parents don't have the financial security I could take for granted. I imagine my safe, secure sleep being interrupted by Grandmother's loud goings-on in the kitchen, or the sense of dread that my folks can no longer afford to keep the roof above my safe, secure, cozy bed.
I'll be frank with you: I'm a pussy. I've always felt somewhat unsafe and insecure. I'm pretty sure I felt this way when I was young. But, at least looking back, those worries were those of a child who didn't understand the world, and therefore thought his problems were insurmountable. That kid didn't know the world of pain he would grow into, and he didn't understand that things could get so, so much worse.
Yes, I acknowledge that I could be acting irrational, even paranoid, now. Maybe I'm blowing things all out of proportion. But what I know is that, right now, at this very moment, I am sitting next to my bed, the one thing that, at the end of the day, felt as good and as warm and as permanent as any material thing in my life. I could get inbetween the sheets and, at the very least, feel like I have a shield against all the bad things that plagued me. I may not defeat them, but I had something on my side that could hold them back.
Now, not that I think it has betrayed me or anything, but now I don't feel that safe and secure in my bed anymore. My troubles aren't going to go away just because I can fall asleep. And that makes me really, really sad.
No comments:
Post a Comment