I am a working man. I have been on both sides of the collar. To make this a bit more clear, I have worked both white and blue collar jobs. I have dressed in suits and uniforms. I have traveled for work. I have been contracted. I have been on both the fair and unfair sides of the working world. Yes, I can understand the grief which comes when you open up your paycheck and see how much the government partners with us and unfairly I might add. So yes, I pay my taxes too. And then some.
I have been known to be busy enough to run into myself at the door. I have fit the description of what it means to burn the candle at both ends. I’ve spread myself too thin. I have seen the ups and downs of personal and financial problems.
So yes, I am a very real person.
I like to think that I am in touch with reality. So, this led me to think about a recent argument.
I was called a big shot. I was told that I write about life yet my life is not like my writing. To this I say well hey – my life is subjective.
Everything I write is true to me. However, and to be absolutely clear and transparent, I am not a big shot by any means. I write about mental health. As a means to both humanize and normalize life and it’s ups and downs, I write about my challenges and losses as well as my victories and accomplishments.
I do this because, to me, this is my yin and my yang. I am not above or beyond anything.
I am not so brave nor am I bulletproof by any means.
I am human.
I have no right to claim to be anything so special. I am a person in this world. I’m a dog trying to find a warm spot on the pavement.
I am a searcher. I am a hunter. I have been both the hunter and the prey and yes – I stand behind my claims that oftentimes there are no victims. Only volunteers.
As for me, sure, I have volunteered myself and borrowed tomorrow’s problems.
I have projected and assumed. I have thought myself into crisis mode and without any doubts, I have prepared for imaginary wars that either didn’t exist yet or they didn’t need to exist at all.
But due to thought-provoked assumptions, I thought myself into anxious fears and anxious retaliations. I worried myself into chaos mode, all due to the threats of insecure assumptions.
I built walls from the brick and mortar of anticipatory anxiety and the hasty assumptions. I built walls instead of bridges because of fears which, of course, would otherwise leave me vulnerable.
I have lived in big houses and in little apartments. I know what it’s like to dine at some of the finest places in my City. I can say that I have seen and tasted great things.
I’ve had the expensive steaks. I’ve had the so-called seafood towers that are fit for kings and queens. And sure, there is the other side of this.
I know what it’s like to have nothing in the bank and find a few extra dollars in my pocket. This was good to be happy enough to buy some fast food.
So yes, I know what it means to have to order from the dollar menu. However, and luckily and perhaps even fairly – I have to admit that I am somewhat of a fast food junkie.
However, as a person who literally ate himself to an unhealthy weight; and as someone who ate himself into a high cholesterol count, who reached an unhealthy high blood pressure, and as someone with a high glucose level that could have (and possibly should have) put me into a coma; and lastly, as someone who dropped a little more than 60 lbs. after turning this around and someone who is currently eating and living at a healthier level: Please note that this is a fair and much needed public service announcement.
I must advise that nothing good happens to the stomach after three or four burritos, or a few Big Macs, or perhaps even closer to the fact (and from the heart of my gluttony) nothing good happens to the belly after eating six or more doubles with cheese from White Castles. I should also include that I’d eat this with a bunch of fries, some onion rings and whatever other sides you can think of.
Yes, that was me . . . (then)
But more importantly, I am a working man.
I know what it means to wake up early. I wake up each day between 3:30 and 4:00 in the morning. My daily routine has me up and awake because I have to be out of the house before sunrise.
There are times when my work removes the chance for me to see daylight because this is the way it goes: I am in before the sunrise and home after sunset.
I know what it means to have to work through the holiday season.
Hence, this is part of my life.
I understand what it’s like to be on the job while others are home with their families for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner.
I work. I have bills. I have debt. I have a life to pay for and responsibilities to uphold.
This too; this is life.
I can say that I remember a time when I worked as a recovery specialist. I learned about what it was like to work the Christmas Eve shift.
To be clear, due to my past experiences in my personal life and losses, I hate the sight of hospitals, coronary care units or emergency rooms on Christmas.
However, as a specialty worker, I had to respond to a deployment.
This was just a few hours before midnight on Christmas Eve. As a specialist, my job was to meet the client at the designated emergency room after a drug overdose.
Not such a happy job . . .
My objective was to connect the person with services to either housing, treatment, help or even peer support, which was me.
Yes, safe to say that I did my job fairly well.
This call in particular was for a young girl. You could tell that she was once very pretty.
Very pretty, indeed.
She still was but the street life degraded her truest form.
She was homeless, missing some teeth, somewhat dirty from living on the street and violated in so many ways that I refuse to mention more.
Then again, those violations were more like financial trades. Hence, although degrading, they were a needed and voluntary trade. More to the point, these were the transactions that she used to keep (and continue) her drug habit. This way, she could get by . . . without being dope sick.
Either fortunately or unfortunately –
She overdosed on Christmas Eve.
Before I go onward, and since this journal is focused on learning and finding the means and what it takes to be happy – I will leave out some of the emotional weight that took place that evening. However, in simple words, there was an unbelievable purity about this moment.
Two people who didn’t know each other met and talked like people should, without judgment and without arguments.
She was a young woman who was old enough to buy a drink at a bar but young enough that her youth was still within grasp.
She was tired and beaten and simply put – there was a moment of kindness between two people and yes, I can say that due to this event –
I am a man who witnessed a Christmas miracle.
Absolutely.
I was there to meet her after she overdosed. She was dead and brought back to life.
I was there to remind her of this and, as well, I was there to inform her of her value which to her, admittedly, was an identity she lost somewhere in the sex trades with older men who paid her for unthinkable things.
This girl ran away when she was young. She had not spoken to her family in more than four years. However, on Christmas Day, she was able to call home and tell her family that she was alive and going into a treatment facility.
I wish I was there to witness this conversation. I wasn’t. However, the news was reported to me by the young woman and the head nurse.
Other dramas took place afterwards. But this was beyond me. I was only the specialist. I was part of the moving factor; however, there is a business part to this world.
No, the business part of this is not as kind or as caring about life or the fact that a young woman overdosed and nearly died on Christmas Eve.
Either way –
Regardless of the dramas that happened after my visit, and due to the benefits of Narcan and the hospital who reversed the effects of heroin – that girl nearly died.
But instead – she survived.
For the record and in spite of the insurance problems and all else that went wrong, I was told that she got herself together.
I was told that she cleaned up.
I never saw her again. But I know what I saw.
And that was a miracle.
The fact is we all have to work. We all have crosses to bear.
And yes, oftentimes, we have to see the details of mortality to understand what it means to be alive.
Sometimes, we have to do things to get by. While some are more riddled with shame or guilt, we all have to find a way to get through life and remove ourselves from misery.
But sure –
We all have a tough job.
I can say that I have worked on the filthiest jobs. I can say that my blue collar side of life has led me to work on replacing drains or clearing out the worst kinds of stoppages.
AKA: toilet drains.
For example, there was a time when a woman flushed half of her weave down the toilet in the public bathroom.
I remember this because I was an engineer’s assistant at the time. I was otherwise known as a helper. I was a grunt, or a go-fer, as in go-fer this or go-fer that – or go get me some coffee, kid.
Or go-fer the mop and bucket and clean up this mess!
I did this because part of my job was to clean up after the engineers and the mechanics. I’d have to clean the tools or clean the mess that was made after repairs.
Our primary work was heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems.
Also, and to be clear, I am a union man. I am proud of this.
I am proud of my union culture and thankful to be part of Local 94, IUOE (International Union of Operating Engineers).
And, yes, I’ve had to deal with some dirty jobs.
My work is centered around building maintenance. My division is focused and centralized in commercial office buildings in the New York City area. Yes, I do this as my steady gig.
This is the job that pays my bills. However, my other work (and my writing) does not pay my bills at all.
But, to be fair – that is the work that pays my heart.
My day job, as I call it, is a job that consists of simple building duties like resetting a tripped breaker in the electric closet or, sometimes, I have to perform mild to moderate plumbing duties that range from basic and simple bathroom repairs to replacing water lines and drain lines. Otherwise, our work is to keep commercial office buildings warm in the winter and cool in the summer-
Or at least that’s the goal.
However, let’s get back to that weave we found in the toilet.
Shall we?
The tenant was a full-floor tenant.
This means that they leased and occupied the entire floor in the building. This also means that they are responsible to pay for the upkeep and maintenance of their bathrooms.
The tenant was an interesting one, to say the least.
They were a publisher of a specific magazine that, well, . . . let’s just say, this was a magazine that I was unable to buy at the store when I was a kid.
This was a magazine that I used to come across from time to time, usually it was handed down or swapped from someone’s collection.
I viewed this magazine so that I could see pictures of naked women doing naked things.
And yes, I smile as I write this to you.
I laugh because there are stories for days on this matter. Although the magazine was an otherwise nudie mag with beautiful women in the pictures, there was an altogether different vibe behind the scenes.
The people who worked there were not quite as beautiful. Some were absolutely and downright ugly.
I never saw any of the models and the people who acted as office management were often mean and ugliest from the inside out.
So, back to the weave . . .
We received a complaint of a backed up toilet that could not be cleared. And, as a result, we had to run a snake down the drain, which we did.
A snake is a metal line, like a cable with a corkscrew-like head that runs through the line and then clears up and removes the stoppage, which it did.
The office manager for the tenant was an often unfriendly, older woman. She was adamant that this was the building’s problem and that she refused to pay for the building’s services.
However, upon retrieving the hair piece from the drain in the women’s bathroom and realizing that someone flushed their hair piece down the toilet – we advised the office manager that yes, unfortunately, this was “their” problem and that yes, there would be a charge for the building’s services.
The office manager was PISSED!
Irate, might be a better word.
She made us put the hair weave in a plastic, zip-lock bag and then deliver the bag to her desk, which I did.
Afterwards, the office manager went from desk to desk of every woman who appeared to have hair extensions, weaves or otherwise.
I swear, I was there to see this . . .
She pushed the plastic bag with the mangled and shit-covered weave in front of the suspected woman and asked, “Is this your weave?”
I told you . . . ugly to the core, this was.
Funny as hell – but ugly to the core.
And no.
The office manager never found out who the weave belonged to.
But in fairness, she was a lot kinder to me afterwards and offered her appreciation. She told me that I have a shitty job and apologized for her frustration.
“You have a shitty job,” she said.
And I told her, “No pun intended!”
She laughed . . .
I suppose my point is that in spite of the shit we have to deal with (pun intended), yes, there are times when we just have to laugh and say, “You know what? This is pretty fucking crazy!”
It’s not bad – to be crazy, I mean.
I’m crazy. And that’s good.
I have lived. I have failed.
I have fallen. I have endured.
But more to the point, I am still here.
I want to normalize life and the “shit” we go through.
Some have it easier. Some don’t.
I don’t know where I would be without the people who either encourage or force me to laugh.
Take you, for example . . .
You make me smile. The fact that we can sit here, together, and go over this or talk about the crazy shit that we see on a daily basis –
this is my road to sanity.
Happiness –
For the record, I put on a pair of jeans from my dresser drawer this morning.
I dug my hands in my pocket. Know what I found?
Fifteen bucks . . .
Barring any bathroom emergencies or shit-filled wigs, let’s see what else we can find today –
and keep us happy.
Shall we?
The Written Addiction 