Today, I woke up with no hand.
At least that's what my brain told me. Brain woke me up out of a dead sleep, screaming "AARON, YOUR HAND IS GONE, WE NEED TO GO GET IT BACK!" I flailed around, trying to assess the situation through sleep-dried contacts and sleep-addled wits. For a few brief moments, I fully believed what my brain was telling me. I grabbed my left arm with my thankfully-working right hand, shaking it like a demon-possessed Slim-Fast, willing my apparently amputated limb to reappear.
This is all funny right now, but when you're working off 3 hours of sleep or so, that's bloody terrifying.
"Now, Aaron," you ask with semi-patient foot tapping, "is this going to turn into a ridiculously contrived metaphor for something that's going on in your life?"
First off, I don't think it's that contrived. Second, yeah, I guess I am.
If you're one of the few people that are fairly close to me, you probably know most of this, but for the rest of you that may not know the entire story, allow me a bit of exposition before I get into the meat of the post.
August 2011 to July 2012. The absolute worst, darkest period of my life. It all crashed down as I lost my job, left my apartment, moved back in with my parents. My confidence was shot to hell. I lost any sort of self-respect, slowly closing my personal borders to all but my then-fiance and my family. The only way I felt like I could deal with other people was through the barrier of Skype and a few hours of gaming. Other than that, I didn't want to deal with people. I abhorred the very thought of social interaction. If necessary, I could make it look like I didn't want to claw the eyes out of anyone that spoke more than five sentences to me, but I just wanted to be left alone. For the first time in my life, I genuinely considered suicide as an option to end this depressing venture and default on this terrible investment in my life thus far.
I found rock bottom in a 5-hour-a-week position at Whitney's Supermarket, cleaning out their meat room after they'd shut down for the day. I viciously detested this job. Shoe-deep in beef-laced water, scrubbing floors, and stocking shelves, but it was all I had. It was enough to pay for the gas from Charleston, and that was about it. I never felt so useless than in that job, so small and unimportant, so humbled. All I wanted was a way out.
Desperate to push away from this miserable existence, I started the steps toward joining the Air Force. Suddenly, I had to be better. I had finally found a reason to improve myself. Almost every single day, I was running a good mile-and-a-half, pushing myself further and faster each time. I had a sense of purpose about me again. I was sprinting toward a career, a stepping stone to self-worth and happiness, the ability to take care of my wife-to-be. It felt fantastic, and it seemed that there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
For a while.
I had my first doubts when the process started slowing down. Suddenly, there was roadblocks to every entry point into the armed forces. Debt, high school and college transcripts, and various other minutia were piling up, putting the brakes on any sort of forward progress. I had time to think. I had time to realize what my options actually were.
To this day, I'm not sure if it was fear, a sudden enlightenment that I never wanted to go into the military, or maybe a mixture of both, but I sent a polite email to my recruiters that said in no uncertain terms that I wasn't going to be wearing dress blues anytime in the next few dozen decades.
While this severely impacted my possible career situation, I found that it had actually alleviated my depression to the point of being around two or more people without the urge to beat people that broke my five-sentence fence with their own arms.
Problem was, I was still jobless, confidence-less, and now, living in a new apartment that I had absolutely no money to pay for. For the month before my wedding, I stayed by myself, searching for jobs by day and gaming by night until I literally was too tired for my burdens to keep me awake. Sometimes they still did. I slept on the floor of what was going to be Janelle's and I bedroom, sharing a sleeping bag with failure. Failure hogs the bed, by the way. Every night, the heavy summer air clung to my face, threatening to finish the job of suffocating me before my burdens got around to it.
July 1st. Sunday. I wandered into the back of my parent's church, enveloped in my own special blend of depression and disgust with a pity party in full swing. I sat down in the back row, callously watching the faithful up front kneeling at the altar, praying to a God that at this point I felt had screwed my life over. Bitterness had all but consumed me at this point. I was done with religious frivolity, done with the happy faces and "Lord bless yeh, brotha!", so done with all of these people whose every answer to any question was "YOU GOTTA HAVE FAAAAAYTHUH!"
Where the hell had faith gotten me? Faith had driven me into the very depths of self-worth. Faith had taken my job, my apartment, and my ability to have any sort of support for my wife. Faith had taken my personality and left me a stone-cold shadow of myself, desperate to cling to whatever bits of me I had left from my descent into madness.
Screw God.
Where was God? Where had He been when I lost everything? Where was He now that I was huddled in a corner of my mind, desperate for some sort of warmth and comfort?
Screw God. Screw it all.
All of this was running through my mind whilst I kept my emotions hidden behind the stonewall, leave-me-alone glare that I had perfected during my years of working retail. My mother, Lord bless her, didn't even hesitate. She sat down next to me and tried her best to encourage me, but most of it just buzzed through my ears. I didn't want to listen anymore, but she kept talking until I finally deigned to lend her my attention.
"...I just want you to have a job that you can be passionate about," came the tail-end of her last sentence. I glanced at her, gave her a half-hearted smile and nod, knowing she just wanted to help. I knew it wasn't going to, but I didn't want to hurt her feelings and brush her off.
Over the span of the next minute, I learned to never, ever doubt the effectiveness of the prayers of loved ones.
Not even 10 seconds after she said those words, not even 10 seconds, my friend Paul popped by my seat. Now, if you've met Paul, then you already know that the man is a 6'4 social butterfly, and when you see him coming, you're in for a pleasant conversation, whether you like it or not. In my current state of mind, the last thing I wanted was to talk to anyone, but I figured I could attempt to keep it brief. I had guests to attend to at my pity party, and they were an impatient sort.
"Hey, when you shippin' out?" he inquired while giving me a friendly buffet on the shoulder (which generally just about knocks me over). I politely replied that I had decided not to enlist. With Paul being a former Army man, I figured he'd be disappointed in my decision to remain a civvie. Instead, his eyes widened a bit and a smile spread across his face.
"Hey, you want a job?"
Paul works over at Dexter as the Technical Coordinator, and had heard through the grapevine that one of the area schools was in need of a new IT guy. He knew I had the skills to fit the bill, but he hadn't let me know yet because he thought I was still going into the Air Force.
I sat there, mouth agape at this turn of events.
10 seconds ago, I was a callous, bitter skeptic, ready to write off both life and God in one fell swoop.
That was 10 seconds ago. Suddenly, after months and months of searching and utter desperation, a job offer landed in my lap.
Granted, I was still cautious. There's no guarantees in this current job market, but I had a peace about it as I walked into Ridge View Community School's library for my interview. I mean, no pressure, right?
After all, it was only the day before my wedding.
I stumbled and weaved through their gauntlet of questions with all of the grace of a pregnant hippopotamus on ice, but my interviewers were gracious and friendly and helped put me at ease. I stepped out of the school that day with an old friend I thought I'd never see again:
Hope.
I pushed it all aside for my wedding the next day, focusing on the most important day of my life and just trying to take it moment by moment. It started with me strolling down the streets of Hermon singing "Get Me To The Church On Time" at the top of my lungs. It moved to me walking around on the tables in the back room of Hermon Baptist Church, trying to assuage my nervousness with childish antics, my dad watching me with a mixture of bemusement and the wistfulness of a man that was remembering his own wedding day. I watched my wife walk down the aisle to the opening of David Crowder Band's "O Praise Him", the piano melody, as beautiful as it was, didn't compare to her radiance.
"I do."
"I do."
Kiss.
Drive away with Mrs. Janelle Waite.
It wasn't until we were well into Boston and enjoying our honeymoon when I got a call from Ridge View:
I got the job.
Tears welled up in my eyes as I thanked God for His faithfulness to an ungrateful urchin like myself.
As I sit in this Tim Horton's typing this all out, it's been almost a year since the events of those times, and once again, I find myself in a similar position.
I found out about a month-and-a-half ago that I was going to be laid off. No one's fault but the economy and the state of things, but I had the short straw this time. Budget concerns and whatnot. Not really sure, it's all above my pay grade.
I'm going to be honest, it's been gnawing away at me. I had just gotten comfortable with my job, my awesome, awesome job with an office with my name outside it and everything. I had just gotten back to the point where I had a self-worth that wasn't about to commit seppuku, and now, everything's falling apart again.
It hurts. I've been pushing you all away, and I'm fully aware of it. I don't talk to people about it, because I shouldn't breath a word about my loss. It's no one's issue but mine, but I have so much on the line now. I have a family to think about, and this doomsday clock has been ticking over my head since early May, a quiet, deadly ticking that doesn't stop, even when I dream. I don't sleep well most nights, and I suppose that's because I internalize it all. I haven't talked to my wife about it as much as I should, I haven't sought support for it, because I felt I can handle it all. I don't interact with my friends, because I don't want to be arsed to pretend like everything's okay. I am a tank, and this is my battlefield. As long as people see how strong I am on the outside, then they won't worry about the grenade about to go off inside the hatch.
I'm frustrated. I don't want to deal with this all over again, because, quite honestly, I don't know if I can take it another time. The last time almost broke me, and now there's much, much more on the line.
I'm not necessarily writing this for you, dear reader. I need to write this for myself, I need to get my thoughts on a page and put it up so people can understand where I'm coming from when I excuse myself and wander away from their attempts at social interactions. I don't hate you. I just don't want to talk to you. It's nothing personal, it's just how I deal with this crushing weight with a straight face.
I feel like a one-armed man that can only cling to the side of the cliff he's hanging from but can't climb up to safety (ha! there's that metaphor!).
I want to have faith again. I want to be confident that God will come through for me again.
But I gotta be honest, I'm scared witless, and at this point in time, it's very cold out on this cliff by myself, and my fingers are slipping.
