Today was bad and tomorrow will be worse
I woke up this morning from panic stricken dreams to see that some panic was indeed merited as I was late to work!
I threw on some clothes from the unkempt pile of unwashed garments and rushed out the door. It felt good to be moving somewhere with determination, something that I had almost forgot how to do. Rushing down the streets and flying through intersections on my own two clumsy feet just to get to a place where nobody liked me and the feeling was mutual. This job had been a boring one; monotonous as a slug seeped in syrup. There was seldom any actual work to do so my neurotic mind raced endlessly all day. I could not just be at ease, nothing was ever that simple for me.
I arrived 45 minutes late that day. Not more than an hour but not much less. I saw my sole co-worker was already In, that sullen son of a bitch Boris. I hated his guts and he mine. But due to us being the only two in a windowless room for 8 hours a day with barely any work to occupy our minds we had developed an emotional dependnacy on each other that was borderline abusive at times. I would get cross at Boris for something he had done, or said, or I had imagined he had done or said and for days I would utter hardly a word to him. Then around day 4 I would break down and we would begin talking again as if nothing had ever happened. Boris naturally did the same and what we were as a work unit was essentially a rickety old see saw riveted with spikes and wrapped up in barbed wire. Everyone else at the job had begun to avoid us.
This particular day I was cross at Boris for some comments he made yesterday about how lazy I had become since we had met.
“Lazy?! You sighing slav son of a bitch I am only a product of my environment, you put me anywhere else and I’d be busting my ass
For 12 hours a day relentlessly”
“Sure” Boris said “Of course you would”
I got so God dammed mad at him and his stupid remarks but I'd get over it. For the truth is I hated Boris but we were inexplicably tied together in our misery and our unspoken rule was to never sever that tie.
So as I arrived at my work station I made the mistake of speaking first, it was a sign of weakness.
“What’s up?” I grumbled out of one side of my mouth
Boris grunted in return without looking at me.
I quietly sat in my chair. The minutes ticked by like hours as I awaited for Boris put forward a display of warmth, but there was nothing in that Russian immigrant’s playbook today that involved anything other than an aura of robotic coldness. He was clearly upset at me for being upset at him. This delicate game of bipolar chess was at a standstill.
Perturbed by this I went to the back area to loudly throw file boxes around for an hour. This usually centers me, between metal shelves where no one could see me alone with all of my stupid thoughts and ideas. The only place to properly reflect on my life in the workplace. Today however I was at the helm of a depressive episode and nothing could pull me back from the brink. As I was throwing files around tears stared to run down my cheeks. What an odd sight that must have been; a 6’3 broad shouldered man aggressively moving around heavy inanimate objects while tears sprung uncontrollably from his eyes. I kept rhythmically at my task though, stacking boxes one by one as I tried to ignore everything else. This couldn’t keep my mind occupied though, so the bad thoughts started chiming in. What was I doing here? In some shitty office working 9-5 as a neurotic desk jockey with no foreseeable future. A man of my stock wasn’t meant for this but for a glorious death in some great war. During my time here I had developed an unhealthy obsession with wartime diaries of soldiers on the eastern front of world war 2. They were stories of real men on both sides fighting with no hope and no way out of the frosty death filled meat grinder. Why couldn’t I have been there? It was horrific beyond words no doubt but it seems like a superior alternative to rotting away namelessly in the soul crushing bureaucratic machine. Yeah I could do it, maybe fight over in Minsk where Boris said his Granddaddy was stationed. I’d hunt that son of a bitch down and kill him in the hopes of preventing that abomination Boris from ever being born. Yeah that’d be alright.
Salty drops dried up as I lay back against the metal shelves sliding down into a seated position. Fantasy after fantasy played in my head like an old smoke filled movie theater as I slowly drifted off into sleep…
I awoke from light dozing a short while later to see nobody had been overly concerned with where I had been for the last hour and just what the hell I was doing. I returned to my desk to find Boris wasn’t all that worried either, he was stonewalling me to such a degree that I’d never witnessed before. I sat cooly down at my desk and began to pretend working. Glancing at the clock, what time was it? Being in a room with no windows screws up your perception of time like a Vegas casino. God dam my day had only just begun and I had no real work to do. I opened a blank word document and started mindlessly typing gibberish at a rapid speed to appear busy. My Mother always said I should have been a piano player. Looking down at my fingers effortlessly moving across the keyboard was an elegant sight indeed but all they were producing was garbage. I’m sure if I had taken up the piano the results would have been similar, maybe I would’ve looked cool as hell doing it though.
This task of acting like I had a task was not enough to occupy my mind though. So the bad thoughts started up again. Why did God make me such a clumsy, ugly and stupid son of a bitch? Why did he put me here? And more importantly why did he put Boris here too? The tears started rolling quietly down my face and that made things worse. People passed by my desk speaking words at somebody. Their mouths were moving but I couldn’t hear the words nor discern to whom they were directed to. I must have been a ripe sight, I wonder if they talked about me at the water cooler?
“Hey you see that big ugly son of a bitch crying at his desk again?”
“Yeah I called him a retard and he didn’t even hear me, what a fucking clown!”
Eh, probably not as they tended to ignore me more then anything else. Even if they did gossip I didn’t care I just wish I could stop god dam crying. Boris came to the desk next to me to retrieve something. I covered my face with my hands so he couldn’t discern my shame. The last thing I needed was for Boris to see what a sorry state I was in. His air of superiority didn’t need anymore encouragement as it was well enough on it’s own in that thick mongoloid skull.
Dammit though I just could not stop crying. What was wrong with me? I had to leave work as it became too much to bear. I leapt up from my desk facing away from Boris and ran out of the room to find my boss. I awkwardly cornered him with tears still in my eyes and aggressively asserted that I needed to leave. I never was too good at requesting time off due to an overly guilty conscience so whenever I did I usually did so in a way that was inappropriate. My boss looked confused and concerned:
“Ok go home man I hope you feel better”
He said sounding puzzled. I felt his eyes following me as I scrambled to the exit without saying bye to Boris. Maybe he thought I was going to commit suicide. Maybe he thought I had finally cracked. I certainly felt like I did. I stood outside waiting for the bus. Still crying and banging my head softly against a concrete wall behind me. I must have looked positively insane but who knows maybe I was already. The bus came and I sat all the way in the back corner and continued to sob in bursts It was only 10:29am.
The bus rounded a corner and began to pass through the industrial section with a large cemetery on one side of the road. I gazed out at the smokestacks and headstones. It felt like there was something significant about what I saw, maybe something artistic about placing a field of death right next to factories bellowing black smoke into the atmosphere. I thought of my Father’s grave which was in a similar place. It had been over 10 years since I had last visited him. When I was a teenager having a nervous breakdown I would go frequently. I felt nothing while there though , sitting across from a large flat stone wall with my Father’s name engraved in a small square section. God here I am now 25 years old and still a basket case. Maybe I would end up in some wall somewhere with my name engraved on it. It wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Everywhere felt like a grave to me: School, work, my room. All small sectioned off boxes in a larger box. The whole world seemed like a crypt with nothing but the dead and the dying inhabiting it. It had always felt that way to me in some form or another since my Father died so long ago…
The bus came to my stop and I hopped out. I began my short walk down filthy gum covered sidewalks to my own little box that was tucked away in the corner of my Mother’s house. She had let me move back in so that I could get better but I felt like I was just getting worse. There was just no conceivable way I could see to climb out of this hole I’ve dug for myself. Get another office job? Go back to school? It all seemed the same to me. No matter where.I went it would always be the same so why bother?
I arrived home. Ah safety at last! I scurried up stairs to my room and closed the blinds and lay in the darkness. It was only 12 o’clock. Oh well maybe tomorrow could be better. Ah who was I kidding, today was bad and tomorrow will be worse. I lay still at last
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