On Coping Mechanisms Before the Unknown.

I like shows like The Leftovers and Outer Range because they explore the different coping mechanisms humans adopt when faced with the unknown.

Anomalies in life represent cracks in our worldview, and this may only suggest our worldview is incomplete. On the other hand, it may suggest that, while our worldview may serve as a useful map or model, it has its limitations — or it may even suggest our fundamental assumptions are entirely incorrect.

When such weird shit happens, some people are quick to bury it. They don’t want to know the truth behind it — hell, it terrifies them just thinking about it. So they ignore that UFO sighting, that out-of-body experience, that telepathic experience, that past life memory, that apparition they saw, that precognitive dream.

Maybe they hyperfocus on mundane matters in their life, distract themselves with sex or drugs. They might take refuge in religious interpretations or attempt to dismiss it all by echoing the ridicule such subjects often recieve from popular scientists. In any case, they all appear to value comfort more than they value understanding, and for them comfort requires maintaining the status quo.

Then there are those that love the mystery, but not because they want to solve it, not because they have a burning desire to put the puzzle pieces together, but because they feel they need to maintain that mystery, that magic in life.

Fuck all that bullshit.

Others, they keep looking. They research, investigate, contemplate, and experiment when opportunities arise, determined to achieve greater understanding. They play with models, oscillating between belief and doubt, trying to distinguish between facts and bullshit, changing their views in accordance with subsequent data. They value understanding over comfort.

I truly wish this last reaction was more common.

Just Another Overdose.

6/20/22

I go to sweep the bathroom at work and, opening the door, I almost walk into manager Steve. He’s holding back laughter, and it’s not due to him nearly making me shit my pants, either. He scoots passed me to let his laughter go as I lean in the door, and quickly discern the origin of the giggles: some guy in the men’s room stall is moaning, grunting to a steady beat.

Steve suspects he’s humming while pooping, maybe even sleeping. Despite hearing no wet, meat-slapping sounds, my immediate assumption is that he’s masturbating, and instantly I’m irritated about what I might have to clean up after the presumed potty-jacker is done with his deed. So I go to sweep the rest of dining room, hoping the guy exits the shitter soon.

Spoiler alert: he does not.

Maybe ten minutes later, I go back into the restroom to find the moaning has ceased, and this disturbs me more than the initial moaning. The silence is penetrating. And that’s when I begin to suspect what my dumbass brain should have initially suspected on default.

I leave the restroom and walk a short distance, step outside the front doors and hail Steve, as I want someone there to share in my horror, whatever it is that might be awaiting me beyond that stall door.

A corpse, perhaps. Maybe a half-naked guy taking a post-masturbatory snooze with his strangled dong now held loosely in his hands.

We walk into the men’s room and I knock on the stall door, yelling, “Is anyone in there?” No answer. I ask it louder. No answer. Steve asks if he should call 911. I tell him I don’t know. I announce, yelling again, that I’m coming in as I unlock the door.

I push it open.

On the ground, lying on his side, is a tall, lanky guy, his long, brown hair tied back in a ponytail. His face is a deep red fading into purple.

“Yup,” I say. “Call 911.”

One of the girls behind the counter called 911, as it turns out, and whoever she is talking to on the other end is asking her if anyone is administering CPR. No one is, as no one knew how, and I have that overwhelming feeling that I should be fucking doing something but didn’t have the vaguest fucking clue as to what.

I’ve never had this feeling before: that given I work in a fast food restaurant in this fucking town, I should probably be trained in CPR.

Props to the cops. They reacted as my dumb, idealistic ass believed they should have — they promptly arrived, and in numbers (in the end there were four or five cruisers), and wasted no time bolting through the doors Steve and I held open for them and directly into the bathroom to do all they could to revive the overdosing numbskull turning purple as Grimace on the restroom floor.

The firefighters that arrived with the ambulance, on the other hand, immediately pissed my likely overly-judgmental ass off. They arrive some time after the cops, pull in to the lot comparatively slowly, take what seems like a goddamn eternity getting out of the vehicle with their equipment, and when they finally do so they both move in a slow, lethargic, almost reluctant manner.

I realize I’m being a judgmental asshole here — please keep that in mind. As much as I feel goddamn certain I know how a long, bad day at work is, I could never imagine the shit they have to deal with on a daily basis, particularly in a drug-addled, cesspool of a town such as this. After long enough, you’ve got to become desensitized, just as a psychological survival strategy. You have to get tired given the frequency of overdoses in your active area, and perhaps today was a rather straining fucking day, at least for the two of them.

Maybe they are grossly underpaid and under-laid: again, I deeply sympathize, as I know the state that breeds all too non-fucking well. But damn it, chug an expresso, take your job seriously and execute it to the best of your ability. Lives are on the line.

You could argue this guy lying on our floor tiles asked for it, that he was flirting with death by sticking that shit in his veins, but this isn’t some convenient, no-skill job you picked up because you’re a deadbeat like me who, despite being unfit for the world in which he was born had to find some way to pay the rent and food and so on. No, you trained for this. You specialize in this. Do what you chose to do with your life and do it the best you can.

The cops did it. You can do it.

Assholes.

Peering from some distance at the open door of the men’s room, I see more occupants than I have ever seen, and ever wish to see in there. I then proceed to go outside, light a smoke, and suck down passionately on the butt of my cancer stick, staring off into space, trying to mend together coherent, rational thoughts in the midst of the hyper-violent, emotional maelstrom wreaking havok within my dismal fucking soul.

I’m right where I often find myself — stuck between wanting to help, wanting to play a more meaningful role in the world around me, and wanting to distance myself from this endless chaos, run away and hide in peace, in nature, in two parts solitude and one part among family and close friends, feeding and brightening the dimming glow within and around me as I strive to find some deeper meaning in this ever-chaotic bullshit world we humans have — in our niavette if not in our irreversible idiocy — built for ourselves on this otherwise-beautiful biosphere.

Crouching down, smoking my smoke, I feel sad and angry. Hopeless yet defiant against that hopelessness. I feel disgusted with the world yet determined to ease and overcome this existential nausea.

Cigarette extinguished, I proceed to the door to find the man who had been dying on the floor seemingly miraculously on his feet again, though just barely, standing on the opposite side of the glass door, which I subsequently opened for him. The cops proceeded to guide the guy out, who was a little wary on his feet and seemed like he’d just been prematurely awakened from a deep sleep as he held some clear tube up his nose with one, unsteady hand.

In the parking lot, in the booths in the dining room, and yes, in the bathroom, this has happened before — countless times before. And I’ve often seen the aftermath of ODs, or at least heard of it, but I’ve never been party to the discovery, to the whole of the process. This is a new experience. This burst my goddamn cherry.

I’ve already had enough of it.

Anxiously Driving in the Rain.

After I try to manage my anxiety all the way to work, driving in the rain, I think to myself:

I drive every day. To work five days out of the week, and on my days off I typically force myself to go grocery shopping or drive to Circle K. Despite driving every day, the terror of driving remains. It’s there when road conditions are top notch and intensifies if its raining or snowing.

Shouldn’t constant exposure result in a reduction and eventual extinction of this response?

As has been the case lately, I’d also been thinking how I really need to get a better-paying job, hopefully one closer to my apartment and which does not require driving down a long, dark, deer-infested stretch of road every workday.

I’m usually reactive, not proactive, so this is not going well for me. I feel the anxiety swelling in me. Which does not make me eager to stop smoking weed, which would be a good idea as many if not most decent jobs are going to require a drug screening.

Which, I must say, is not only fucking stupid, but unethical in my view. This is my body, what business is it of yours what I do with it? Judge me on my behavior, on my work ethic, not my body chemistry.

I’ve considered (as I do chronically) getting back on antidepressants again so the anxiety doesn’t triple upon stopping the weed, as prescription pharmaceuticals should get a pass on such tests.

I also wondered if I might be able to get prescribed marijuana for my anxiety and depression. Though this seems incredibly unlikely, it would solve at least one potential problem.

Especially after my withdrawal symptoms from hell when I tried to ween myself off of Effexor XR some years back, I certainly trust weed more than the aforementioned prescription pharmaceuticals.

But its just a comforting fucking fantasy.

And why is it that every time you take an illicit drug, or the legal drug alcohol, people say you’re masking the problem, but every time a psychiatrist gives you a prescription for a drug its considered treatment?

And why are psychiatrists the only legal drug dealers?

I was also feeling bad because I’d failed to respond to Moe’s texts this morning. He had gotten a job at Amazon and wanted me to get a job there, too, as you start out making four dollars more an hour than I’m making at my present job after sixteen years of service. The issue is that I wanted to find a job that was closer and better paying, and while this job was clearly better paying, it was about double the distance I took to work every day, and just as the Winter season is approaching, no less.

Despite the money, I just can’t bear that anxiety every day. Particularly if I have to stop smoking pot, which would be a necessity for this job.

Hating my emotions, loathing the fear standing in my way, angry at the anxiety over driving to work in the rain, I clock in and go about changing the trash. As I make my way to the break room I see Dustin sitting down at the table. Casually, I say hey to him, and after he responds, that’s when I realize my ginger coworker is redder in the face than usual, tears running down his freckled features, voice flailing.

I ask him what’s wrong. I ask if he’s okay.

The fifteen-year-old son of a friend of his, a woman who he had only seen yesterday, had just called and informed him that she had died in a car crash after driving her mother to work.

“That was her greatest fear,” he sobbed. “She was always afraid of driving in the rain.”

I failed to add that I shared that terror, failed to report that it had been occupying my mind as well. That certainly wouldn’t help him. I honestly don’t know what would. I just touched his shoulder and spoke with him a bit, though there’s really never much one can say at times such as these.

What, It’ll all be okay? Cheer up? Death is an integral part of life?

I got him some more napkins from up front as he did his damnest to pull himself together so he could go back to work.

I was even more anxious tonight as I drove down that dark, rainy road between my fast food place of employment and my one-bedroom apartment. But I made it home.

It could be worse.