"I, well . . . (Well what do you think I do you pompous little twit. Just because I'm 76 doesn't mean I never did anything and lack skills. I have tons of skills. Didn't I put myself through law school with the help of a lifetime of loans? Didn't I raise my darling child until she was old enough to escape? Didn't I get married, divorced and finally find the love of my life who cooks all the time and I clean up when I can? And trips. Don't even get me started on the trips. Arriverderci pal because I'm going to Scotland as soon as I save up some money, which probably won't happen in the next four years and by that time I'll be 80 but so what, who says you can't ride the rails when your 80, just ask Arlo or his father Woody for godssake, and those are just a few of my dreams, I'm loaded with dreams, I have so many dreams they wake up my nightmares and) . . . every day I get up and make coffee."
Here we go again, Sunday morning at the F train stop. Desperate souls draped over the benches, bottles and dirty clothes strewn on the floor. Better keep my eyes open, don’t look at your phone. Be subtle but keep the peripheral vision…
15 minutes til the train, are you kidding me? Not worth walking to Broadway Lafayette to maybe get an earlier express train. Oh well. Gonna text my client, they’ll understand. OK, oh well.
A tall man cursing and yelling and angry coming my way. OK just stand near this family over here and keep my energy small, invisible, I will be ok, I will be ok. Feel my feet on the ground, breathe…. Feel my feet connected to the earth…. OK good, hope he stays at the end of the platform. Still yelling so though, jeez. Wonder what his story is. Sad. Scary.
Hearing a melody for a section of a song I’m working on, got to get that down before it disappears. If I just come over here next to one of the columns I can hum it quietly into my phone, here we go. Nobody cares anyway and I don’t care if they think I’m crazy. Let me do that again, that was too quiet.
Still watching that guy at the end of the platform, he’s coming back my way now again, he’s so angry, damn. Seeing an image I had during my Reiki session with my cats. Sweet Natalia, feeling her paw on me and suddenly feeling a shield of protection because of her energy. What a good girl.
Oh good that breeze means the train is coming. “Stand Clear of the Closing Doors Please!”
So she didn’t listen to you – who cares? It doesn’t matter. You’re a part-time employee in a job you don’t need, just trying to bring a little structure to your post-retirement days. Why are you so bothered?
Now you know what it was like for your employees -- having a boss with strong opinions who makes quick decisions – good ones most of the time – who can’t be easily convinced to change them once she's decided. She did hear you out – she just didn’t agree. She likes her way best. It’s not wrong. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t respect you.
I lie awake at 3 a.m. Pulse racing. Hands clenching. Monkey mind doing backflips. What if the CT scan shows a tumour? My first husband died of lung cancer. He gave me my first cigarette. We were 16. Smoking together was a courtship ritual. The habit caught up with him a decade ago. Was it my turn now? Why should I get away with it? Maybe because I quit 25 years ago and he did not. Surely the will power I had then will save me now. It’s only fair. And the scan will show that the shadow on my chest Xray last week was due to bronchitis? Still, maybe I should I get out of bed and Google causes of spots on lungs? But I’ve already spent hours checking a bunch of sites on the 7 symptoms, or the 6 signs, or the one sign you should never ignore. There is no point in this scrolling, I tell myself. Better to get some sleep. But wait, maybe it couldn’t hurt to check out Sloan Kettering one more time.
The class is heated stretch. I understand the heat, butt does it have to be this hot? It's really mostly yoga poses that we are holding for a long time. In American Horror Story, season 6, the mother (or is it the sister? I can't remember) talks disdainfully about her son's (brother's?) wife doing yoga. "In my day, we called that stretching." I disagreed at the time, acknowledging the common misconception. But here I am, doing yoga poses and just...stretching. is it a good thing to hold these stretches/poses this long in this heat? I question the knowledge of the instructors in this place.
Leave me alone to my own devices and stop asking me to change. Stop asking me to change on the end of a long day when I’ve had to play pretend with all the people around me that I’m trying to impress and feeling that I’m only failing miserably because I so despise the job I’m in.
I’m tired of where I am right now. I want to be able to be a horrible person just for one month of my life. To sleep when I want, to wake when I want, to eat reasonably terrible meals throughout the day and not have to worry about how much protein intake I intook because I’m not horrible enough to just not go to the gym, don't take it that far.
"Retired, huh. So what do you do all day?"
"I, well . . . (Well what do you think I do you pompous little twit. Just because I'm 76 doesn't mean I never did anything and lack skills. I have tons of skills. Didn't I put myself through law school with the help of a lifetime of loans? Didn't I raise my darling child until she was old enough to escape? Didn't I get married, divorced and finally find the love of my life who cooks all the time and I clean up when I can? And trips. Don't even get me started on the trips. Arriverderci pal because I'm going to Scotland as soon as I save up some money, which probably won't happen in the next four years and by that time I'll be 80 but so what, who says you can't ride the rails when your 80, just ask Arlo or his father Woody for godssake, and those are just a few of my dreams, I'm loaded with dreams, I have so many dreams they wake up my nightmares and) . . . every day I get up and make coffee."
I laughed out loud at the last line. :)
Here we go again, Sunday morning at the F train stop. Desperate souls draped over the benches, bottles and dirty clothes strewn on the floor. Better keep my eyes open, don’t look at your phone. Be subtle but keep the peripheral vision…
15 minutes til the train, are you kidding me? Not worth walking to Broadway Lafayette to maybe get an earlier express train. Oh well. Gonna text my client, they’ll understand. OK, oh well.
A tall man cursing and yelling and angry coming my way. OK just stand near this family over here and keep my energy small, invisible, I will be ok, I will be ok. Feel my feet on the ground, breathe…. Feel my feet connected to the earth…. OK good, hope he stays at the end of the platform. Still yelling so though, jeez. Wonder what his story is. Sad. Scary.
Hearing a melody for a section of a song I’m working on, got to get that down before it disappears. If I just come over here next to one of the columns I can hum it quietly into my phone, here we go. Nobody cares anyway and I don’t care if they think I’m crazy. Let me do that again, that was too quiet.
Still watching that guy at the end of the platform, he’s coming back my way now again, he’s so angry, damn. Seeing an image I had during my Reiki session with my cats. Sweet Natalia, feeling her paw on me and suddenly feeling a shield of protection because of her energy. What a good girl.
Oh good that breeze means the train is coming. “Stand Clear of the Closing Doors Please!”
You’re hurt. I can see that. But why?
So she didn’t listen to you – who cares? It doesn’t matter. You’re a part-time employee in a job you don’t need, just trying to bring a little structure to your post-retirement days. Why are you so bothered?
Now you know what it was like for your employees -- having a boss with strong opinions who makes quick decisions – good ones most of the time – who can’t be easily convinced to change them once she's decided. She did hear you out – she just didn’t agree. She likes her way best. It’s not wrong. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t respect you.
I lie awake at 3 a.m. Pulse racing. Hands clenching. Monkey mind doing backflips. What if the CT scan shows a tumour? My first husband died of lung cancer. He gave me my first cigarette. We were 16. Smoking together was a courtship ritual. The habit caught up with him a decade ago. Was it my turn now? Why should I get away with it? Maybe because I quit 25 years ago and he did not. Surely the will power I had then will save me now. It’s only fair. And the scan will show that the shadow on my chest Xray last week was due to bronchitis? Still, maybe I should I get out of bed and Google causes of spots on lungs? But I’ve already spent hours checking a bunch of sites on the 7 symptoms, or the 6 signs, or the one sign you should never ignore. There is no point in this scrolling, I tell myself. Better to get some sleep. But wait, maybe it couldn’t hurt to check out Sloan Kettering one more time.
The class is heated stretch. I understand the heat, butt does it have to be this hot? It's really mostly yoga poses that we are holding for a long time. In American Horror Story, season 6, the mother (or is it the sister? I can't remember) talks disdainfully about her son's (brother's?) wife doing yoga. "In my day, we called that stretching." I disagreed at the time, acknowledging the common misconception. But here I am, doing yoga poses and just...stretching. is it a good thing to hold these stretches/poses this long in this heat? I question the knowledge of the instructors in this place.
I want to be left alone.
Leave me alone.
Leave me alone to my own devices and stop asking me to change. Stop asking me to change on the end of a long day when I’ve had to play pretend with all the people around me that I’m trying to impress and feeling that I’m only failing miserably because I so despise the job I’m in.
I’m tired of where I am right now. I want to be able to be a horrible person just for one month of my life. To sleep when I want, to wake when I want, to eat reasonably terrible meals throughout the day and not have to worry about how much protein intake I intook because I’m not horrible enough to just not go to the gym, don't take it that far.