I am not meant to thrive. I crash and burn and offend and, cuttingly, even harm the people trying to help me. I am unequal to the barest of performance. Today, I am so utterly depreciated of spirit that I empathize with the homeless souls in the streets of New Orleans, understand their reasoning. Empty and hard and too upset for bitterness....
Tears and sobs and wild screams. I hang up the phone and force myself not to crumple onto the cold, snow-dusted concrete. As I enter the suspiciously-empty break room, Kirk comes in, his walk quick and expression agitated. He sits in a chair on the table ahead of my own, the one closest to both window and TV. He carefully says, "Hey. I heard you were a little unwell. Do you want to talk about it?"
I don't want to bother you, I think. Somehow, that care for the fare of other people has surpassed by threatening hysteria.
I don't want to further inconvenience the office that I've left on you for too many days as it is, with dying dogs and dreams of adventure and emergencies that level my existence unto that of a child's.
I swallow, saying something quietly to reassure him, my thin voice thick with rib-racking sobs, barely contained; but he shakes his head: "I came to check on you, because I care about you. Do you, err, want to be alone right now? Are you going to be okay to come back?"
I nod. "I will be back," I say lowly. Awkwardly, for it is clear he is torn, he leaves with a little nod.
He is a good person, but I can't bring myself to share. I can't do it. I can't do anything. My fist hurts from pounding it against the wall, throwing myself against the walls in anguish. Shivering from the cold as I sob.
A kindly technician next, also armed with chivalry.
Somethin' happened, he says. He's "no idiot." He asks again if I'm all right, if there's anything he can do--and, when I apologize for the inconvenience, he is startled, shaken to his bones. As if the thought of his own comfort didn't occur to him, because he is busy serving propriety and delicate young women who collapse on the street instead. "Don't apologize," he protests sternly. "Just.... you'll be okay? Right?"
I smile and say something comforting to him, and he leaves, clearly and utterly relieved that my effeminate madness has passed me.
Lori next. My coworker, who, along with Kirk, have been unfortunately responsible for teaching me manners these many months, brings in an empty bowl--a pretext that will assure her entry into the empty break room. A shield against my grief. She opts to open with a good-old-fashioned, Kirk told me you got into an accident!! Why didn't you tell me?
Slowly, starts and stops, level voice, I tell her everything. The license, the whole thing. She expresses sympathy. Tells me of a story she suffered through, slipping on black ice, hitting a stop sign--they gave her failure to yield. That it could be me, and she much prefers it was the car that suffers the damage.
I barely force myself to go back. I slip into the bathroom to smear something on my eyes, makeup, so I don't look like a blotchy mess. The tears, unsurprisingly, make my eyes as green as mossy water, as algae, with sunlight streaming through.
Kirk, his feelings hurt by my rejection--poor thing, poor dear, I meant to spare him and hurt him instead--leaves for lunch quietly. I try to smile at him, but it stretches my face and comes out like a grimace.
Trish comes over.
"I'm not trying to upset you," she begins, and waits a moment, as though testing me for stability in case I start sobbing again, "but you flipped--right on K, right? On the way from Stoughton?" I tell her the whole thing, beginning to end. As is the instinct of good mothers, she helps me pick through it: there was freezing rain, right? And this happens ALL THE DAMN TIME. The Stoughton police, she said, would not have deigned to ticket me, this is a regular occurrence--"I'd fight it," she finishes firmly. "They'll probably just throw the whole thing out."
I dearly hope that she is right.
