Aftermath

It’s been a little over three weeks since the whole armed robbery business, and I still can’t think of a single thing to write here. I don’t even know why I’m writing now, to be honest. When I wrote my last entry, I had to stop every so often because I would get dizzy and short of breath every time I started to describe the incident. Unlike all the other things I’ve spewed out over the years here, the robbery remains the one stressful thing that didn’t get better the minute I wrote it down. If anything, I think the anxiety surrounding it has gotten worse as time has gone on. Then again, I was pretty much forced to go into work every day and walk past the safe more than one-hundred times during any given shift. That couldn’t have been good for me, not that anybody really cared. I’m a cog in a wheel. A paycheck for my wife. And that’s that. Life has to go on, even when your brain is trying to process all the fucked up things humanity has done to you over time. What’s a little personal stress as long as the rest of the world is at ease. At least the robber is doing okay, I suppose.

I guess I wouldn’t be so bitter about the whole thing if the company had showed any kind of safety initiative during the aftermath. But they gave us more man hours for the first week, then promptly told us we had to give those hours back. The better security system and smaller safe never materialized, either. Then, to add further insult to injury, the hours for the store were slashed across the board. Full time people like myself went from forty hours a week down to thirty overnight. A manager quit out of frustration and we were left worse off than before the robbery. At thirty hours a week, I’m not even scratching by. But that’s beside the point. Less man hours for the store means fewer people to cover the place when the customer traffic gets light. Which is exactly how we wound up getting robbed in the first place. It’s a vicious cycle, and nobody can give me a straight reason why corporate wants to cut hours so badly. They keep saying we’re not making sales, but our head pharmacist says our numbers are okay. All I know for usre is that my heart starts to race every time the customer traffic gets light. I start shaking every time I hear the front doors beep and one of our regulars steps through. They only way I can get through a shift on the weekends is to lock the doors forty-five minutes early and let people in one at a time. That freaks my regulars out, but at least I know a guy with a ski mask isn’t going to stroll through unannounced.

Last Wednesday night was a turning point for me. I think that’s when the stress and anxiety collided and forced me to bottom out with this whole situation. Distraught over the current state of our finances and the fact that only myself and Mike had been scheduled to close on the Saturday the 2nd, I started a crying jag that went on for over thirty minutes. I’ve had a couple of these since the robbery and usually I was able to overcome them pretty quickly. This one seemed to go on and on forever, and the longer it went on the more frustrated and ashamed of myself I grew. Eventually, I spotted one of my flannel shirts on the floor beside me and I grabbed it and looped the sleeves around my neck and pulled them tight. I only did it for a second, but it was long enough to make me gag and feel like I wanted to vomit. I dropped the shirt, swallowed my bile, and took a deep breath. The crying had stopped and suddenly I felt an overwhelming sense of calm wash over me. I put on my hat, coat, and gloves, and went outside and sat on the park bench we keep on our porch. The temperature was below freezing that night, but I stayed out there for fifteen minutes or so just looking at the stars. I knew deep down what I had done was fucked up. And yet, it was the most calm I had felt in days. But in couple of days that followed, I was just numb, like I was a carbon copy of myself. I confessed the whole thing to Lynn, who was less than pleased. A huge blowout ensued, but I didn’t care. It was just one more thing in a long line of things that were wrong, and I didn’t care about any of ’em at that point.

At the end of the day, I know what I am. I am a guy with an alcoholic father and a bipolar mother. I have a high school diploma, but no drivers license. I went to college for two months, but ditched it to work retail. I’m good with computers, but I’m not certified in anything. I’ve got decent benefits at my current job, but not hours. People talk about the economy and the possibility of a recession, but I’ve been in a recession for the last forty years. I’ve never had a financial leg up. Never. But I’ve never worked my way through problems in a haze of alcohol and pills. I’ve tried as best as I can to take things head on, but bad genes and questionable coping skills has always made it difficult. The situations I’m dealing with now…I dunno. I’m starting to wonder how people do it without doping themselves up. Because for the last three weeks I’ve looked at a bottle of tequila we keep stashed under the sink, thinking it’s just the thing I need right now, even though I officially gave up tequila when I was eighteen. I guess that’s my way of saying I’m pretty lost with all of this and unsure as to what I’m suppose to do next in life.

There has been one little slice of positivity in all of this, though. On Monday, I met with an IT guy that both my wife and my friend Mike work with. It wasn’t a job interview or anything like that. I had been venting to Mike about how nobody in IT was going to even look at me because I wasn’t certified and had nothing in my resume that would make a company even look at me, let alone hire me. He came in the store the next day with a half-hour appointment with this guy. I was instantly nervous. “Look, Mike,” I said. “I don’t want to misrepresent myself. What I know comes from home use. I know nothing about the corporate IT world.”

Mike stopped me. “It’s just a conversation, Rumble. Just sit down and talk with the guy.” So I did.

For thirty minutes we just chatted about computers and our backgrounds. Come to find out, here was a guy heading up the IT department of the company my wife works for, and he knows nothing about programming. In fact, he isn’t even certified as a computer tech. He got there on networking and being in the right place at the right time alone. The advice he had for me was solid and he sensed I was nervous right from the start, even though I was doing my best to be cool about the whole thing. In the end, he said he’d float my name to a couple of his peers who staff up big IT projects around the city to see if there was some sort of entry position I could take on part-time until my resume fleshed itself out. There were no guarantees, of course. But it was a small step, a first contact. And it was extended with genuine warmth and concern. What happens next, I don’t know. But if I could just get on with somebody on weekends like that, it would certainly kill my fear of working weekends for the drug store. Two birds with one stone and all that.

So, friends, that’s where I am. It’s not pretty, but as always, it’s honest. And that’s really all I can give at this point in time. I guess I’m lucky I can give anything at all. Don’t worry, though, I’m still here and won’t be doing anything stupid down the line. There’s a reason for all of this someplace. Sooner or later, I’m bound to bump into it, right?