Filling In The Gaps
Ever since Open Diary returned, I’ve thought about coming back at my old pace and just hammering diary entries out. But there never seems to be enough time and/or energy to do so. Back in my heyday here, I worked a completely different job and schedule at the 24 hour drug store. I was a pharmacy tech back then and worked a shift that didn’t completely drain me. Now I work the front of the store and my hours are totally vampiric. I have enough energy leftover each morning for the household chores and a couple of t.v. episodes and that’s it. It doesn’t make for much of a life, therefore there’s not much to write about. I’m on vacation this week, though, so I thought I’d take another stab at getting myself motivated again
Some updates:
My mother passed away in 2014 due to small cell lung cancer. My father passed in 2016 due to esophageal cancer. While sad as it may have been to lose them both in such a short time, it was kind of a blessing in the grand scheme of things. Their struggles were over. For her, it meant an end to the chemical imbalance that made her bi-polar. For him, it meant no more declining health issues and a release from the demons that made him a recovering alcoholic. In the end, we had said all there was to say. We said our goodbyes with sincerity and love, and there were no real regrets among us. After all of those years of struggle and turmoil in the family, things were just over. In many ways, it was a relief for me. I think my sisters took it way harder than I did.
I started having trouble at work right around the time my mother passed. There was a pharmacy manager bent on bending the store to his will and he was just impossible to work with/for. I didn’t know it at the time, but he had a problem with everyone who worked there. But I took his actions way too personally not knowing this was part of a corporate culture that allowing the bullying of associates. I did not handle things well and wound up breaking down enough times to make me seek out professional help through my employee assistance program. I’ve been seeing this counselor ever since. And while he’s helped me a great deal get my emotions under control where I can function on a day to day basis, he’s still trying to get me to understand that leaving the job is the only way to escape the abuse. But the money is good and I like things like food and a roof over my head. So I keep at it, keep making myself miserable. And right now it’s not the bosses making me miserable. It’s the customers. The pandemic has left the customers short of patience, which trickles on down to the staff. Like most of my other colleagues, I’m walking around with a very short fuse these days. Which is why I’m okay staying in and watching t.v. or playing video games when I’m not at work. People and their sense of self-importance during this pandemic do nothing but aggravate me. I used to think that during some sort of mass crisis, humans would band together and solve problems as a whole. After seeing how we’ve reacted to Covid-19, I’m not so sure.
A couple of entries back, I wrote about how the past few years have affected my friendships. But one friendship has stayed constant and true–my friendship with Beth. For those just coming to this diary, Beth is my old high school flame and the person I consider to be my best friend right at the moment. When my wife, Lynn, couldn’t/wouldn’t make the trips back east with me when my parents died, Beth was there to pick up the broken pieces of my heart and heal them with booze, food, and an open ear. Did lines and boundaries get crossed on these trips? Perhaps. But we’ve known each other since 1984, when we were both teenagers. We are the ones who got away from each other and the ones that will always come back to each other. And it’s not like our timing has ever been right to begin with. I am here and afraid of dismantling my life at the age of 54. She is there dealing with a husband who is slowly dying of melanoma. The situation is what it is. It always has been. But I’d rather have her in my life in some capacity then not at all. At the very least, I know I have one true friend I can count on when the chips are down. Which, considering the slowly shrinking social circle of my life right now, is a blessing. I’ll take whatever is given.