home to nothing

"Do you do you like dreaming of things
so impossible or only the practical or ever the wild
or waiting through all your bad bad days
just to end them with
someone you care about...?"
-Dashboard Confessional, So Impossible

"What's it going to take to relax you?" she asked.

"Quitting," I thought to myself.  But I told her I wasn't sure.

She looked around the break room, her eyes searching for a solution.

"Do you need to drink a beer?" she blurted out.

Was my gray-haired grandmother with glasses supervisor suggesting that I start drinking?

"Uh, no, I'm not really into that," I said.

"Oh, well it works for me."  My shock deepened.  It was hard enough to imagine her suggesting alcohol to me and even harder for me to imagine her getting off work and cracking a cold one.  "We gotta find you something."

Duh.  If only she knew I've been searching for years for a way to loosen the knot inside myself.  Food had been my main source of soothing but even that wasn't doing the job like it used to.  The only thing I could think of that was relaxing was writing and I hadn't even had much time to do that with my Harry Potter book and movie marathon I had been working my way through during the last three months.  So, I had to wonder: what would relax me, what could I do to calm down?

Naturally, the new position at work totally sucks.  Yeah, I have more responsibilities and get paid more for them but I don't think it's really worth it.  I have a lot of paper work to do on top of still dealing with annoying and smelly customers.  I also have to do schedules and lucky me, I only have two other people in my department, both of which don't want to work.  One lady stepped down from the supervisor position to work part-time in a different department.  The other lady only wants to work at a minimum and only on certain days.  So, that only makes scheduling more complicated.  And the hours are long.  By the time I get home, it's nearly time to go to bed so I can wake up and do it all again the next day.  And the worst part is I feel pretty much trapped.

A couple of days after I accepted the position, I was having severe reservations about my decision.  I talked to the store manager about it, meaning to tell him I had changed my mind but he informed me he had already replaced me with someone else and to back out now would not only inconvenience everyone he had changed around but would also "leave him in a real bind."  Plus, he had hired more people from outside the store to fill in the empty spaces from the associate rearrangement.  So, I'd be basically screwing over a lot of people if I decided to go back to my department.  Obviously, I couldn't do that.  I was tied down.

It sucked seeing everyone else leave at 4:00, while I was trapped there until 5:30.  And as they walked out the door to freedom, I wondered what they went home to.  Most of them have families.  I think out of about forty people that work there, only five or so are single and even the single ones have children or some sort of family they enjoy.  They go home to friends and family and spouses and I go home to nothing.  Just a nagging mother, indifferent father and a cat who craps everywhere.  Nothing like the smell of feline feces to greet me after a long day of dealing with dunces at work.

I know I should be grateful for my parents and in many ways I am.  They definitely provide for me but they mostly provide financially.  And that's about where it stops.  I think a lot of people are under the impression that presence trumps tenderness.  Yes, my parents are around and I appreciate what they do manage to do for me but I also feel they lack in other areas.  My mother is never satisfied with anything I do, leaving me feeling inadequate.  My father doesn't speak to me, which leaves me feeling unwanted.  Sometimes, being there isn't enough.  Sometimes, criticism and lack of interest can be as damaging as absence.

And I think another paper cut is the fact that I even have to come home to my parents at all.  I should be further along than this.  I should be coming home to my significant other rather than an incontinent cat.  At the very least, I should be coming home to a rockin' bachelor pad.  And while I've managed to suppress those kinds of thoughts, it's in the moments of change that the emptiness echoes around me again.  My defenses are down during change.  When my life is stirred up, so are all of my emotions.

A lot of people tell me I'm too high strung, that I should try pot or alcohol or even sex to loosen up.  The only problem is my morals go against all of these solutions.  That's not to say I haven't thought about them before.  And that's not to say that I wouldn't indulge one of these problem-solvers in the future.  But those aren't really the remedies I'm willing to try at this point.  Sure, it would be nice if I could drown out my doldrums by getting drunk or high or even getting laid but I don't know how healthy those options are.  I've already ruined my body by treating my temperament with Twinkies.  I don't need to become addicted to meth or contract syphilis on top of my other physical defects.  Of course, I'm exaggerating but with my previous history of making my life (and death) so much worse, I wouldn't put a little venereal disease out of the realm of possibility.

STDs aside, I surely wouldn't mind coming home to someone at night, someone who would make me forget about my troubles at work.  And I think that's what most of my coworkers don't understand.  They have that comfort factor, that sense of relief, not grief, from their loved ones when they get off work.  But as for me, I don't feel I have a safety net, no one to calm me down or make me laugh, nothing to ease the tension or smooth out the strain.  I don't have much to look forward to, whether I'm headed home or back to work.    

I just have to wonder if anything will do the job.  I've tried meditation and prayer and none of those techniques feel concrete enough for me to cling to.  I could try pills or liquor but it seems that would only lead to other problems down the road.  And sex would involve the flesh and feelings of someone else and since I don't seem to have my own under control, I'm not sure I'd be able to handle the responsibility of someone else's.  I'm trying to calm myself down, not drum up more discord.

It seems the best course of action would be to exercise.  It's supposed to reduce stress and the waistline but I never felt any better after exercising.  Plus, I'm just too lazy, possibly too far gone to care to change, which is the saddest part of all.  It's just that I have so much going on, so much going wrong, that I wish I could pick apart the problems and take care of them individually.  Unfortunately, the world won't let me take it one gash at a time.  Therefore, it's all too overwhelming to try to tackle so I do what's easiest, which is nothing.  I let it fester, let myself rot more and more each day, and then complain to ease up some of the entropy.  Ultimately, it never gets me anywhere but it does get me by, just like drinking or sex.  Hm, I guess I've always had my own semi-effective soothing mechanism.  So, I guess I don't need the booze or the bodies after all.

I have my own ruminations to keep from unraveling.