I actually wrote the following post Wednesday of last week. I felt pretty terrible, psychologically, so much so that I cancelled my plans to go anywhere. I feel a lot better now. I guess things were just getting to me too much. Then, I felt nervous about putting this online, event though I do not have a lot of people reading it, but I realized that this kind of thing is what most people find the most interesting or meaningful, so here it is:
Today has been bad for me. It started out fine, I guess, pretty normal. I went to an appointment to meet with a health care navigator. We didn’t get anywhere, though I had to wait around for a while. The office was nice enough, small, open, and entirely staffed with people of Indian origin. Their English was perfectly fine, and they conducted all business in English, so I it wasn’t as if I had some weird cultural issue. The agent working with me was polite and seemed to know what he was doing. He helped me fill out the application. Then, we had a problem. I was lucky we only had to wait for, maybe, thirty minutes to get someone on the phone to help. He told me that we were fortunate that I was eligible to apply now, outside of open enrollment. During that time, many people apply at once, and there are problems, and people can easily wait for an hour or more to get help over the phone.
We received the help we needed. The guy on the phone was polite also, probably because he was not haggard and weary from the flurry of help calls during open enrollment. There is still a problem with the verification of my income, which does not exist. I tell him I don’t have an income. I haven’t had a job since July 1st, and I do not receive unemployment benefits because Virginia does not believe you deserve them if you quite to relocate—even if you are not the one (in your relationship) whose profession is driving the move. I have a big problem with this because I damn well pay taxes so that unemployment benefits can exist, and I expect to receive the benefits that I pay for when I need them. I now know why some people do stupid stuff to get fired. “Sorry to hear that they had to let you go, dumbass. Here’s a little money to help you while you get back on your feet; You’re moving with your partner, who’s moving because she got an amazing opportunity in another place? How nice for the both of you. Good luck without a paycheck sh*thead.”
Anyway, that process is ongoing, and I have to call next week. I walked away from an hour appointment with no health insurance. A little later, we go to Manhattan. My partner needs to get her paycheck from the CUNY’s Bursar’s office in the Graduate School building, which they keep in midtown. The building is old, but has been kept in good shape. The interior looks incredible—a fine example of what old buildings can look like, if the owners care to make it so. Most old buildings in Germany look like this, and when I’m talking old in Germany, I mean that it was first built in 1562, not 1901. It makes me wonder why the Queens College buildings look like sh*t on the inside.
As the subway train gets moving, I start to feel a deep anxiety. It doesn’t really go away all day. I can’t explain it, but it messes with everything. An asshole in an SUV did not help. He tried to shove his way through the crosswalk while we had the light to go. He drove terribly close to four or five of us. The streets are very crowded today. I feel sick.
There were a lot more homeless people laying around than I have seen before. The heat has been less brutal, which probably encouraged them to wander around a bit more. Homeless people sleep on the subway too. I imagine it’s because there is air conditioning and no one will likely mess with them. Almost all I ever see them do is sleep, except for the few that hang out in front of the Flushing Macy’s, next to the subway escalator that leads up from the station. Those guys actually tend to be awake during the day, as well as the women that sit around Midtown Manhattan begging.
We leave the lavishly redesigned graduate center and head back towards Bryant park and the subway. I found a game store that specializes in retro consoles and games, as well as special, boxed editions and collectors’ items. We browse through it, and it’s fun to look at original game cartridges from the Super Nintendo and the first Playstation. The distraction is highly effective, but it doesn’t last. My anxiety returns. We get something to eat, and I feel a little better. The feeling is still there. I had plans to go train at a karate dojo in Brooklyn tonight, but I canceled them. It wasn’t that trip that made me anxious; I just didn’t feel strongly enough about going in order to overcome the emotional state I was in. The closer we get to home, the better I feel, but it wasn’t completely gone by then. I ate a snack and took a nap, played a game for a few minutes before going to sleep.
A couple of hours later we are up, and I finally feel somewhat normal. But now, my anxiety feels more like depression. I don’t want to do anything. My partner encouraged me to write about it as opposed to sitting at my desk with my head down. I kind of don’t want to do that, even. Writing what’s naturally in my head should be easy. Writing fictional stories is hard. You need to do a lot of planning. You need to take a lot of things into consideration. Essentially, you need to put a lot of work and energy into the very thought of it.
Somehow, I am managing to sit here and write something when I don’t want to do anything. There are things I want to do every day, and I am afraid of feeling guilty for leaving them undone. When I feel bad, I tend to do things to distract myself, like play games are read junk articles online, or engage in other internet-based, time-wasting activities. Then I don’t do anything actually productive or good for me, and I feel guilty. Guilty as hell. Then I run out of time to do anything about it, and the path run straight down to hell from there.
After some sleep, I felt better. Breakfast always makes me happy, even though I, often, do not fully wake until after I have made and eaten half of it. At least that’s a good sign that I’m feeling comfortable at home. Now, the challenge is to keep myself from locking myself away in here.
Little Robot in a Giant City 