Approaching whatever

So the other day I am in the pharmacy and the chick says, when you are over 45 you need to get an endoscopy if you have heartburn twice or more a week and I'm like, you cheeky cunt, but I guess I have started to look worn down.

When you are approaching 45, all you really want is to do your life over, because now you know. It would have been cool if at 15, 16 there had been someone in my life who knew but there wasn't so that's that. And I am hoping that when you are going down the other side of the hill, you realise that you can just live the life you have and it's okay. Really, all I need is paid work and I think I will do that okay. Of course I still wish and hope that ex-Mrs Zen will wake up one morning and think, oh fuck I really didn't do the right thing by him, but if she hasn't figured that out by now, well I guess she isn't going to, right?

I have an interview with Centrelink tomorrow and you'd think the whole thing was easy. You just apply for five nonsense jobs and there you go. But the problem is, it's wrong to do cheat like that and I find doing the wrong thing awesomely hard. I can lie if I can convince myself it's the right thing to do but I can't make myself do wrong.

Don't ask me whether that's a virtue or a vice.

The thing is, I ran out of work in sort of a hurry and I didn't have any advance notice because the people I work for simply didn't care at all about me and tbh would never even have told me it was over if they could have got away with it. The woman I mostly worked for has actually ignored all my emails. Don't ask me what goes on in the head of someone like that because I don't know. It seems entirely dishonourable, but she's Chinese so maybe she sees it differently.

Anyway, it knocked me for six. It just didn't seem fair that I should be so fucked. I know I'm smart and capable and it seems to me that it should all have worked out for me. I did the right thing. I came here for the sake of my family and I made sacrifices that went completely unheralded. I have been useless for three or four months because I am just shellshocked. I need to snap out of that but I think it's going to take a job to help me out of the crater.

I was telling B today that what I had wanted when I was younger was to work in a bookshop. I would have been really good at it. I'm the sort of person who if you told me you liked a certain sort of book, I'd find that book.

But the world doesn't have any use for that, or it seems for anything I'm capable of doing.

Except that B has a use for me. She wants me to love her. She doesn't want me to transform into a being I can't ever be. She wants something at least close to who I am. I say close, I mean on the same continent. But that's better than wanting someone from a whole other planet, like ex-Mrs Zen did.

***

So today someone rearended me. I wouldn't have had anything to say about it if it hadn't been a bit weird. I am on Mt Gravatt-Capalaba Road, driving towards Garden City, and there are roadworks. So I've slowed to 40 and the car in front is a ways in front. The traffic is spaced out because it's just after rush hour. I see that car in front has braked so I brake. I'm at about 20 with my foot off the brake when I realise the guy in front has actually slowed to a stop.

WTF.

He is letting someone in. It doesn't really make any sense to do it because the traffic is not heavy but whatever. I slow to a stop too, not too abruptly, and bang, a ute has run into the back of me.

So the guy is saying, you guys must have braked suddenly and I'm thinking, but I don't say, no not really. Later it occurs to me what has happened and how unlucky the guy has been.

So I think he has been talking to his missus. They've just returned from holiday so they're relaxed and easy. He turns to talk to her, something I never do because I have focus issues and force myself to concentrate with loud music and willpower. So he looks at me, I'm going 40; turns to look at her, turns back, has missed my first spell of braking and thinks I'm still doing 40; turns to her and turns back, bang. I am not where he imagined I would be on the road. I mean, who the fuck stops to let someone out in light traffic? He could never have expected that. I know I didn't. But I watch the road, the car in front, all the time, so I knew what the idiot was doing.

So there it is, another car wrecked. I hope it can get fixed. This guy's insurance company does not take care of it. They want quotes and pictures. No assessor. I just tell them it will cost X and they look at the pictures and go hmmm, maybe. At least the car was driveableish so I could get it home without a tow.

Is it a metaphor for life? I did nothing wrong. I was by the book and beyond: taking care and concentrating. He wasn't but it costs him nothing. It's a company car, his dad owns the company, it won't cost him a cent and his car wasn't damaged much. I ended up dazed, nauseous and dizzy and my beloved car may or may not be a writeoff (I'm hoping not obv.).

Yep. Sounds familiar. Sigh.

posted by Dr Zen @ 8:14 pm