As the Buzzards Circle

The only time in my life I truly contemplated ending this as it were, was at my most indebted, making no money and with no one around me giving any sympathy.

In this cold, the tears nearly freeze as they run down my face. I am crunching salt beneath shoes that present me as ill-prepared for this season. On the other end of the line, a man, who doesn't really know me, is telling me the money that was taken out of my account to pay for my overdue credit card bill is gone, and I will not have it in my account to make the payment on my car. My car that gets me from my home that is roughly 58.1 km away on the route that I take the most. A total daily commute of about 120km if I decide to drive and get lunch somewhere (I do this most days). Roughly 4 years of monumentally bad decision making has me inside of a Giant Tiger at Christmas time begging a voice on the end of a phone line to give me money back that I most definitely owe outright.

December roads and parking lots are always flaked with white, whether it's warm packed snow that sticks to the asphalt or its an over-salting that no matter what leaves the surface with a dusting of particles. I'm walking back to my car after a man, who seemingly lost the will to fight my stubbornness relented and put my credit card payment on a payment plan, deferring this payment to the next week and attempting to get me back on track for after Christmas. I find myself overcome with intense amounts of needling around my body. While the past few years have been so incredibly difficult on me, sometimes due to myself other times due to others, this was the break I was always begging for. In my car I cry. It's a forced cry, one I bring upon myself because I understand how terribly frustrating all of this is. And there's a moment in my head where I believe that it would all be much better if it were over.

When I was younger I would pretend that suicide was an option. That I personally wasn't the type of person who was so enamoured by the world around me that I could be convinced to have it all just stop, but I remember these thoughts so much more clearly. They weren't contrived in a head ready for attention, but brought about as a genuine solution. I think there will be few days forward in my life where I won't live like I made it past that reasonable request. The one telling me that this would all be better if I just quit. The one where I don't wake up to a world stopped and awaiting me to catch up to it. A world where every step I take becomes so much easier and where confidence I forgot existed returns and my head smiles everyday. To give up because the world tells you truly that you are of negative value objectively according to markets and banks and government bodies. The days where I felt like a rag and the world was wringing every last drop out of me. My struggle and burden is of no more consequence than anyone else's. My issues white and middleclass and yet the immense sorrow I had without feeling was nearly impossible to describe.

I was an external being, I walked back to my desk through the halls with eyes reddened by corporate hold music. There were hundreds of people in this warehouse, mostly neutral but plenty with pleasant expressions on their faces. Their jobs tedious and dreary. There were no windows in this building and after a few hours of labour you lost your place in time. The night sky would startle you in the early winter as daylight savings time would shift the clock around you. In my tiny little cubicle I had nothing. The others littered with photos of people, decorations with snarky sayings, plants, and an assortment of tchochkies and trinkets that brightened an otherwise drab tan yellow office. I sat down and as I got back I dismissed my coworker, she was the last one other than myself for the day and, after a rather uneventful near Christmas day, handed me an "ugly" Christmas mug.

"Here you are my good sir. Merry Christmas!" We were charged with getting each person on our team of 5 an ugly Christmas mug. A fun little tradition I took with an immense amount of undue passion. At a thrift store I found an incredibly ugly and unwieldly mug, it was intended to be a Christmas tree and was conular in shape mostly. It was incredibly textured with many rising bumps and ridges and otherwise. I was rather tickled by how truly unique of a mug I was capable of finding. I handed it to her as she handed hers to me. Greeting me was a tall new mostly white mug, with blue outlined trees and a bluer background. There were some snowflakes falling on the scene and that was it.

Both of our mugs were ugly in a sense, but mine was not ugly to her, and hers was borderline offensively simple to me. I always think about keeping that mug when that interaction replays.

She waddles out of the office, a lady rather large proportions, and I hear the sound of something wet hit the ground as she walks past me. I see that liquid has come down her leg and it appears as if she is soiling herself. I'm now entirely frozen in a kind of fascistic fear that comes so infrequently I forget what it truly entails, embarrassment or fear. Of course as is just my luck she has forgotten to mention something to me and an event that can be over as soon as the door to our confined space is closed she extends it by starting a new conversation with me about something work related. And moreso of course I cannot focus on whatever it is she is saying as my body has gone into my own sort of fight or flight that happens in situations of mass social destruction such as these and I am in my own head over what on god's green earth has happened today and if I could just once catch a break where after some immense traumatic soul searching moment if the world could maybe hold back on the continuous shots of abstract moments of terror it would greatly appreciated thank you.

As my mind's racing slows and I'm able to now hear the words coming out of her mouth (as I'm certainly having difficulties reading lips considering I can scarcely look at her directly.) I catch the end of the brief note about some stores that had work orders called in and yes I acknowledge that I will follow up with them in an hour to ensure that these work orders are being actioned.

She turns to leave and says goodbye and I now begin to devise what I should do in this situation, three more hours in a piss soaked office? I call my manager and explain things to him. He's a really stand up guy, and as a stand up guy normally does, he feels terrible for me, and understands the frustration and just appreciates that I do feel so comfortable as to tell him that sort of situation and yes he tells me that not only will I not mention it to my coworker, he will also let me off a little early and will inform the janitor to do an extra clean of the carpets tonight and rest assured that when I come in to start the day tomorrow the carpets will be clean and the piss will be gone.

Sometimes the break you need comes because your coworker goes and pisses on the floor because of her ailing health. I find it funny that no matter how hard I tried to actually like really care about her I couldn't bring myself to open up and actually be effected by what had happened. And it's pretty telling that I continue incredibly often put myself and how I feel above the rest of others feelings. That maybe there's something a little broken in the way that I choose to think about duty and otherwise.

And so as I pack my things and get ready to go I look at my phone and see the email that the money I need for my car payment has re-entered my bank account and I shall live to see another day. It does not provide the relief from the feeling. The idea that this could all be over so quickly and I'd never worry about a credit card or otherwise ever again. On my drive home I listen to a short story about death and the part where the narrator dies as he describes slamming himself at high speed into the side of a tunnel I happen to be going through a tunnel is felt with a sort of cosmic irony that makes my hair stand up on end, not in a scared way, but the way it does when someone you love, like really love, whispers your name with their chin sitting on the top of your spine and they are speaking into the back of your head and your hairs stand up. I see the side of the tunnel and the narrator talks about how everything in that specific moment just stops and is extended out and I think how has someone so accurately depicted what I believe death to be like and sometimes when you read all of these little things that happen one after another and still I'm sitting here writing this despite the universe maybe saying I shouldn't go on I have to think, and maybe let a tear run down my cheek.

When I get to work the next morning the office smells of piss.