I can't believe how exhausted I am at the end of each day. Part of it is from acclimating to life in cubicleland with it's beige partitions and horrible fluorescents and hideously bad air (I actually had someone say to me yesterday: oh yeah, new employees always talk about how sick they feel after being here for a couple of hours). Another part is the sheer fact of leaving the house at 7:30am and not returning until 5:30pm, of being in bed by 9pm in order to be up at 5am rested. But mostly it's the intense stress of dealing with slam-bam, full out, full tilt, full throttle Human Beings being human for eight hours a day.
May I share with you how mind boggling it is to listen to a man describe how he's had the power shut off, the phones shut off, how he's freaking as to how he's going to feed his four children, the other that's on the way, and you can tell by the sheer panic in his eyes, and his utter lack of dental care, that he is telling you the gospel truth?
And then he is followed by a woman so perfectly coiffed that I am awed, and how I hand her a tissue as she tells me about her daughter that is dying of injuries sustained in a car wreck, her husband in stage four cancer, her total inability to find work in the past eleven months. And when I take her input data, I discover that before her layoff, she was making well, well, well into six figures a year. And for a second I clock that she used to make four times more than I've ever made in my best year ever. That she most certainly lives in a huge sparkly house, drives a spankin honkin faboo car, and had a monthly clothing budget that was more than I spend for rent. But I feel her pain, her horror. Because I know how f*cked she feels. I've been there if not on the outside then deep on the gooey, horrified inside.
And she is followed by a man who used to be a firefighter, who is now looking for anything, yes, he will accept the info on the $7 an hour cleaning job, yes please, is it for the evening shift or the overnight? When I ask him why he doesn't find a job as a firefighter he lifts his sleeve, shows me the scars and tells me about the night he tried to rescue six children in a fire, and how they all died. The scars are terrible, and even though he knows that the children were all dead by the time he arrived, he's still haunted by them, and he feels that if such a situation comes up again, with his injuries and the limitations they may impose, he just can't risk it. And so instead of taking 50K a year firefighting work, he takes the info on the $7 an hour cleaning job. He is beautiful, his chocolatey eyes full of love and life and sparkly Yes and utter, utter surrender. I want to hug him. Instead I shake his hand and say: I wish you well.
So many times I say: I know that you are under unbelievable stress, and that your life has been turned upside down. And this is what I can help you with. And then I list what I can do for them. Not addressing what I can't, because that list is so very, very long. I try to focus on what I can do for them. And then do it. And take my breaks, and go to lunch, and leave at 5pm.
One of my supervisors turned to me the other day and said: On Friday night I sleep like a baby. On Saturday night I sleep like a dream. But come Sunday, I wake at 3am when the nightmares start because all I can think about is how many people I won't be able to get to tomorrow. He's worked there for over a decade.
I'd like to say that I make a vow to not get pulled in each day, and yeah, I can say that. But then I'd also have to say how I fail at it, every day. Partly because I'm fresh and new at it, and every interaction stings like it is happening to me, not to another human outside of my experience.
I know that I am in this job for so many reasons. To understand what it means to be part of the 8-5 worker hive. To see another realm of human misery. To watch the robots of emotion, how people use emotion to try and effect an outcome with another human (hello anger versus tears versus supersuperniceness.)
Whatever it is, I come home at 5:30, deal with kitties and phone calls to return and emails to answer. Then I figure out something to eat, and crash in front of a dvd or hulu.com, Wallace curled up on my neck, breathing his kitty snores into my mouth. I take a Bendryll by 6:30 so that it'll help me be fast asleep by 9pm so that I can wake up at 5am, play with kitties for a bit before I'm up at 5:45 to begin another workday.
Yes. Life is. Mysterious. And amazing.
I'm grateful for the income. And the eye opening. And for the chance to look into another person's eyes and say yes, I can do something for you to make your living a little gentler. Even as I've completely unmoored myself from cushioning from other humans for myself.
Speaking of cushioning, I miss my cushioned life of holistic service, of teaching and doing sessions, of writing and speaking. But I'm okay with this. Life said This and I said Yes. I still say Yes. Until the the next Next comes along . . .
