October 21,2020
I’m sitting in my old work, Ricky’s, the restaurant that pushed me to make the final decision to end my life eight and half years ago. Sometimes being here is a comfort. After all, I spent twenty years working here so despite all the renovations and staff changeover it is at the very least a reminder of nearly half of my life. On the other hand, it’s also the place that caused me the most stress and anxiety I ever faced in my life. To say that I have mixed feelings about being here is a severe and complex understatement.
But I had to do something and go somewhere. I have been up since 3am this morning was becoming restlessness incarnate. On a normal day when I take my morning medication it knocks me out for at least two hours and often for as long as five but today is a wednesday and it’s the day that the gardeners are on site to mow the lawns and use leafblowers outside my bedroom for ninety minutes or so. If I don’t fall asleep before they begin, then I am stuck awake until after they leave and by that time, my meds have worn off. So here I sit, both comfortable and full of anxiety, trying to quell my palpitating heart by writing about how awkward I feel.
Marcia and Laura are both here, two of the waitresses I used to work with back in the day and they keep coming over to me and trying to chat, to catch up with old times but I’d much rather that they just leave me alone. I can’t ever get any work of substance done here because they keep interrupting me so I write this babbling soliloquy instead. I know they are just trying to be friendly but I have my laptop out and am judiciously tapping away with my fingers. You’d think that one or the other would get the hint. I won’t be rude and tell them to leave me alone. I’ll be happy when this COVID stuff is done with and I can again go back to working at a Starbucks, where they leave me alone to my work.
I have invited Oscar out for breakfast and will know in a few minutes if he can make it out. I’m not really sure I want to spend any time with him but he’s as susceptible as I am to depression so I thought I’d reach out for a change. He has so much going on in his life right now it’s bound to be a stimulating conversation. Oscar has been diagnosed with an auto immune disease which will eventually take his life and has a baby on the way, a decision no doubt influenced by his currently limited quality of life and the ticking clock following him around each day.
Sitting where I am I can see the front of the restaurant quite well and a couple just tried to seat themselves and had to be stopped by the hostess. In the middle of a pandemic they chose to ignore all the signs asking them to wait to be seated, sanitize their hands upon entry, and give their phone numbers to the staff, in case contact tracing is necessary. They looked quite annoyed when they were asked to follow the rules. It might just be a Karen and Kevin situation. Wait, and a third person just came in to sit at the same table and she refused to use sanitizer. What hell is wrong with people? I’ve been trying to understand this mentality since the pandemic became apparent and have been unable to figure out a logical point of view which would account for it. Is it willful ignorance? Is it simple lack of intelligence? Or perhaps they are conspiracy believers, that the entire world is out to control them by making them hide their face and nose?
To a certain degree I wish I could believe like they do, Dunning-Kruger effect in full effect and keeping me from understanding how little has been done, how many sick people there are and how much worse it is likely to get before the situation improves. I was recently asked if I preferred, in general, the level of knowledge I have now compared to what I had in the past and I said I’d choose my current level although in the past, ignorance truly was bliss. It’s like my lack of belief in a god. Maybe I’d be better able to deal with my mental illnesses if I believed there was a reason for how I felt and yet I am forced to come to the conclusion that had I never believed I may have asked for help much sooner, leaving me in a much better mental state than I am currently in. But as they say, if wishes were horses…
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