My Personal Time

It was dark. 

I was staring out the window, holding an herbal tea in my hand.  I could feel it getting colder.  I didn't bother sipping from it.  I'd made the tea maybe fifteen minutes ago, to have something to drink.  By “drink,” I mean this is the closest I can get to alcohol.  I used to drink coffee as a replacement, but I started overdoing it.  I switched to tea, anything non-caffeinated.  Almost hilariously, I drank this stuff so I would be able to sleep.  But that wasn't happening, and maybe never would.

I'd come to loathe sleep.  More and more, it just seemed like wasted time.  I could be relaxing instead of sleeping.  I don't count the two as one and the same.  Relaxing was something I wanted to be aware of.  Something I could actually experience.  Sleeping was simply me switching off, unable to remember any dreams.  And it was stressful; if I didn't get enough, I was liable to get sick, or, at the very least, drag my feet through the day.  Apps on my phone wanted to measure it, wanted to coach me on my sleeping.  I was unaware how bad I was at sleeping.  So now I wanted to avoid it.

I sipped at the tea, feeling something gritty in my mouth.  I looked down and saw that the tea bag had ripped open.  I swallowed the leaves, and went back to looking out the window.

It was entirely black outside.  I couldn't see anything.  There weren't any sounds, either.  Not a car coming down the road.  There was nothing.

My apartment was probably illegal, just space I rented in a house.  Some others were renting other parts of it, which were sectioned off into separate units.  We all lived outside the nearest small city, by some kind of farm.  There weren't any streetlights, or even a damn deer.  I wouldn't have minded watching a raccoon have a go at the garbage.  It’d be something.

This was my time off.

This was my gift to myself.

Anything else cost money or required friends, two things I didn't have anymore.  I wasn't even sure if I wanted them anyway.  I thought I knew my friends, but I didn't.  They were absolutely fine with pushing around women.  I stopped being fine with them.  I didn't know if they had changed, or if I'd never noticed.  When someone you know turns out to be an abuser, and they straight up admit it to you… I don't have anything to say.  I have nothing to add, or anything to give.  I am useless.  

All I can say is I will never forget hanging out with him, and him turning to me and saying, “Okay, so, that thing on the couch happened, but so what?  She's dramatic.”

Jesus.

I sipped at the tea.

So, now I was living alone.  And living alone is pretty much illegal.  If it's not, they might as well make it so.  A studio apartment cost twelve hundred dollars a month, and if you wanted decent food, the best thing to do was to stop wanting it.

You need to have two jobs.  Thankfully, one of mine was a four day work week.  I had a second one for a while, but they were cutting hours down.  It took me far too long to get hired for that job, too.  Now, I was screwed again.

I sipped slower at the tea, trying to make it last longer.  All I was accomplishing was drinking a colder and colder cup of it.

When I did have work, no job was below ten hours.  On top of that, I refused to quit working out.  It was only pushups and running, but I kept at it to stave off encroaching depression.  It hadn't arrived yet, but I knew it was down the street, waving at me.  I kept up running.  If I kept up running, it meant I wasn't giving up.  Wasn't getting lazy.  At least, I hoped so.  I'd ask a psychiatrist, but that required money.

My spare time was only watching trashy free movies on my aging phone while cleaning my apartment.  This was a losing battle; I never could seem to keep up with it.  And every time I let it go, I started to hate myself again.  Calling myself lazy.  Saying no one would ever want to come to my place.

The tea was fully cold now.  I drank it anyway.  I refilled the cup with hot water, using the same ripped bag.  I wished I could smoke some bud.  It was legal, but some jobs still tested for it.  So all I could do was watch the used tea bag steep, and then stare out the window.

Up until right before I made the first cup of tea, I was putting out my resume, looking for more work.  I was even shopping some of my crappy writing around, hoping that I'd make a few dollars.  But I didn't know what to write.  Or what to submit.  Or what to do.  I would never be good enough for pure literature, and anything else?  Well, then I would be up against mass produced garbage, mostly made up by AI; nothing I could compete with, because anything I did would drown in a sea of half-assed product.  

Some site wanted thriller writers to pump out stories for them, awful little scripts that would be turned into audio dramas for an app based out of India.  A dead app.  The ad they put out said they could pay up to fifty dollars for a story, maybe less, but I hadn't been so desperate that I would ignore the fine print.  They'd give you half of what every new subscription was, subscriptions that you brought in; they were never going to pay out the fifty dollars.  Why the hell would anyone subscribe to them?  I saw what they were putting out, and how bad their metrics were.  On top of that, I was supposed to badger my friends on social media (which I didn't have anymore) to sign up.  The company was so broke they needed me to do their damn PR for them.  Christ.  I was starting to think nobody had it easy.

They said they would PayPal you the money.

There were a thousand jobs that would pay you to dump stories into an AI.  Or to “talk” with it.  You know.  So they could cut you loose and have the AI reconstitute what you fed it as its own.

I almost took a different job that paid one hundred dollars.  You were to write twenty thousand words for someone.  This person wanted to write a book, and by write a book, they meant they wanted to pitch an idea and have you write it.  I still feel dumb for not taking it.  But twenty grand of words for someone like that would have probably been awful.  I wondered who posted that job.  Maybe it was a kid.  Which would be worse: a rich kid doing that, or a delusional adult?

I stared into the blackness outside.  My lights were off indoors.  I didn't want to spend money on the electricity.  There was no taste to the tea.

My phone was away from me now, powered off, the TV, too.  I didn't know what time it was.  I didn't care.  I knew I had to sleep, to get something, but I still didn't even try.  My job required me to load a truck full of party rentals: heavy tables, chairs, portable stoves, all the dishes plus utensils, and drop it all off.  The kind of people who rented this stuff always trashed it.  Our dishwasher was broken, so, now we were now cleaning the dishes outside, using a power washer to get the slime off.  Then, it passed to another group of us, who filled a bin full of water and scrubbed them.  The stagnant water had a smell which reached into your mouth and tickled your throat.  I hadn't thrown up yet, and I didn't know if that was a bad idea; did I want to keep that rotten stench inside me?

One of the crates of dishes were full of black mold.  I was told to just throw it out, and look for more.

The water from all this was eroding the dirt driveway we shared with another company, some kind of construction firm.  They were getting angrier and angrier with us, to the point where they were walking over and yelling at us.  It was probably only a matter of time before someone swung at somebody.

I walked away from the window and sat on my couch, staring at the switched off TV.  I couldn't make it out too well in the dark, but I knew it was there.  I didn't know why I bothered looking in that direction, especially since I picked up my phone and turned it back on.  I angled the screen sideways a bit, keeping the blue light partially away from my eyes; I was handling it how you're supposed to handle a knife, never pointed at yourself.  I set my alarm, and lay down.

I rested my hands on my chest, feeling it rise and fall.  I felt exhausted, but couldn't sleep.  I concentrated on my breathing, wondering why that would work.

This was my free time.

I wanted to reach for my phone, to search for more jobs, and told myself no.  I felt horrible for doing that.  I felt stupid for doing that.  Lazy.

I should instead enjoy my free time, I told myself.

I tried to watch my hands in the dark.