Going to bed at night became tortuous, first for the mind, then for the soul. And the worst of it wasn’t even the loneliness.
Included in this progression of torture was the participation of the “death scroll” on my phone as well as the almost nightly occurrence of resorting from that to, “Well, this is getting me nowhere; guess I’ll go to porn now,” and other behaviors like these—habits of insomnia—that made the bed-going an act of resigned psychological abuse. Grossness permeating throughout my mind, my body... my soul. My life felt as if it was nothing. No, my life indeed was an act of nothing. An act. And I was either a terrible actor or a wonderful one, depending on who my director was.
At the time, I viewed nobody as my director. In my mind I was simply a reactor of life, responding not to the stimuli set before me, but simply responding to the reality of life. Even if only deep within, an admittance to reacting to said life quite poorly would be made, but the idea that I was reacting to any other entity or entities making up the reality of a fabricated world set before me had yet to enter my mind.
Torture, which, when viewed from some outside source or third party, presents itself well as a horrific surface-level inflicted upon physical pain. However, deep below, within the tortured upon, there begins a new sort of energy—or rather, lack thereof—that begins to take over and ultimately completely replace the naked pain of your mind, body, and soul; two of which are already inward but are only viewed as such once one begins to better understand the relationship between life and its actors, reactors, and directors.
Eventually this change began to occur in me. My grossness turned to numbness; the pain is never the end, only its introduction. The numbness with regard to my bed-going was this: the dreading of the act ceased because it became just that, another act. It terrifies me to think of this state. Though, at the same time I feel quite thankful for it. It is by God’s hand that this particular end led to a new beginning.
As one might come to expect with times of drastic change, it began as typical, the day that glitches began to appear in the reel, ones that had passed me over in times before. Perhaps, when numb, an unharmonious slip in what we once perceived as normal sometimes becomes more noticeable to those who have resigned themselves to the float of fake reality.
I had just arrived at work and had been sitting in my cubicle for no more than five minutes—of course it would be another hour or so before I would actually start working, if you call spreadsheets on a computer screen work—when a coworker, a man whom I neither liked nor disliked, peaked his head into my space. In his right hand he held the same chain coffee cup that sat on the desk in front of me, one I had yet to take a sip from, yet had already provided me with some queer level of comfort; I assumed my co-worker’s was doing the same for him.
“Did you hear?” he asked.
Before the numbness I would have been tempted to give a sarcastic reply; I hated non-contextual openings. “I hear many things,” would have been the mold of my response, however, a simple, “No?” was my reply at that moment.
“Weiss got the promotion.”
“Of course he did. We all knew he would.” I was now even more annoyed than I was by his opener. This news not only could have waited, I would have found it out on my own within my inbox.
“Yeah... but like we were saying the other day, there’s no reason he should get it, he’s basically worthless. Yet, like we predicted... here we are.”
I was too tired to even be annoyed at this point. It was obvious he wanted to get a rise out of me, and if I didn’t indulge, he was simply going to proceed to the next guy. And a rise wouldn’t have been unjustified. I just didn’t want to give in, nor did I see the point. So as my response, I simply gave the “I’ve simply resigned myself to it all,” smirk and shrug combination, hoping that he’d catch the hint. He did, and I was again alone with my full coffee cup.
But was I resigned to it all? Even with my numbness, I was still irked, though not enough to carry on about it with my co-worker. And why was I so irked? This was such a common occurrence, and not just in my place of employment nor only in places of employment. It was common everywhere: the lowest rungs of ladders becoming the top ones, through no skill or ability—unless you consider manipulation a skill—of their own. Obviously, this was not a new complaint, this persistent leeching of societal hierarchy.
Perhaps it was my numbness that caused the complaint to stick with me longer than usual, resulting in no work being accomplished between my co-worker leaving me alone and the arrival of my lunch break. Instead of working, I fed the beast. I scrolled the news headlines, checked the scores from the night before, and returned to old, faithful social media to get a fix of more fakeness. I even checked to see what movies were currently playing—all of which looked awful, though strangely I felt a desire to see one. Of course none of this caused me to feel good, but I wasn’t searching for good feelings. I wanted—no, needed—a collision to occur between my own personal numbness and the numbness of the manufactured world set before me.
At the onset of this collision, there stood that not too distant acquaintance of grossness. A quick return, to be sure, but this time of a different sort, because with it came an even more distant feeling, one of anxiety. Not the bad kind, though. Instead, the kind of anxiety that brings about a desire to stand as everyone else remains seated.
“What world are you in?”
The speaker was another co-worker, one I liked better than the previous. I was sitting in the breakroom, only picking at my lunch, when he sat down across from me.
“I’m not really sure anymore.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” I surprised myself by that response. It was a subtle shift in position, a posture towards standing.
The coworker chuckled, perhaps nervously. I knew the whispers going around: the office space was concerned about me. I think he’s really depressed, they would say.
The coworker quickly moved on to his motive: “What are you doing this weekend?”
“With how today is going, I’ll either be staying here late tonight or I’ll be coming in tomorrow?”
“Not feeling it today, huh?”
I laughed. Then, instead of being sarcastic in response, I was honest: “Let’s be honest, it’s been quite awhile since I ‘felt it.’”
He laughed and the mood lightened. I was glad, and later thought back to this simple moment.
“Well,” he said, “some of us are getting together tomorrow evening to see a movie. We were wondering if you’d be interested in joining us?”
I knew it was an offering based out of pity. This is what they had come up with as a response to, “Should we do something for the poor fellow?” But I wasn’t offended. It was a nice gesture, and I decided to accept it as simply that. And I also accepted the offer itself. Not because I wanted their pity, but because that desire to see a movie was still present, even if—perhaps especially if—it was a terrible one.
“See you tomorrow at seven then,” he said as he got up to back to work.
“Looking forward to it.” Again, I was being honest.
I did end up staying late to finish up. The last few hours of an empty office provided me with a kind of silence that filled an unknown need. No coworker chatter, no phones ringing or printers beeping, nothing. I initially intended to turn on some music for background noise, but somewhere between opening up the app on my phone and diving right into completing the work, I had put my phone down, and it wasn’t until after I had finished that I realized I never actually turned anything on. Then I drove home, again in silence.
On this night I continued with the “death scroll” while lying in bed. But while still quite numb, that anxiety from earlier in the day also made periodic appearances, which of course resulted in a struggle to fall asleep. Still, sleep eventually came, and I was able to wake without an alarm.
After waking and completing morning hygiene, I drove to a nearby park with trails through a forest. I left my phone in the car, and I walked... for hours. I can’t tell you what my thoughts were while walking; I was conscious only of the motion of my legs and feet, the wind against my body, and the sounds and songs of nature.
When back home I ran up the stairs to my apartment unit. But as I began to insert the key, a thought, one initially residing within my lungs, came to me. I placed the key back in my pocket, and instead of going inside my unit, I ran back down the stairs. Then back up. Down and back up again. I repeated this for twenty minutes, then showered and left for the movie.
The movie was terrible, the ending being the best part because, well, it was over. But as the credits began to roll and as my fellow movie-goers got up from their seats, I remained seated.
“I’ll be right out,” I told them as they stood wondering if they should wait for me to get up before heading to the exit.
I then watched the entirety of the credits. My name was nowhere to be found in them. I then stood up, satisfied and proud of this seemingly absurd realization. But it wasn’t absurd at all. Just as with this terrible movie, my name also needed not be associated with the manufactured world of gross script and stimuli.
That night I went to bed with new resolve to no longer be a scripted actor reacting to the stimuli set before me. No more would I be directed by people who had no rightful claim to be positioned within the director’s chair. I also went to bed knowing that I’d be going to church in the morning, that I would re-dedicate my life to be directed by the God above.
Great work Mark.