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The questions will be about my life and how I plan to celebrate. Answers: I don’t have a life, and I will likely celebrate by drinking alone and going down Reddit rabbit holes researching random and upsetting things like fecal-matter transplants, or the Golden State Killer, while making myself regret everything. I’m not sure that’s relatable, so I’ll say I’m having dinner with friends. Oh, the lies I am forced to tell just to fit in at the western regional office of Supershops Incorporated.
So many office situations show no regard for people with anxiety, yet we’re the bad guys if we can’t cope.
But Rhonda runs the morale club, and with Brendan Fraser as my witness, there’s nothing more demoralizing than the Morale Boosters. Her morbid obsession with birthday tracking, cake buying, and forcing people to sit through off-key renditions of the “Happy Birthday” song can’t be out of love.
As a person, he’s like the human embodiment of an internet comments section.
The first red flag should have been during my interview, when Gregory said the company was “like family.”
Why are people so obsessed with asking about other people’s plans? Has anybody ever wowed someone with their answer? My answer will always be that I spend my days off recuperating and forgetting my days on.
Shit. The child may have seen too much at this point to ever lead a productive life.
When she was younger, she used to draw outlines of bodies on the walkway and insist on playing this portable piano for every passerby’s displeasure.
When I was a child and we were shopping for school supplies, she told me I didn’t need an eraser, I just shouldn’t make mistakes.
There’s no way this reality was the intended human experience.
“It’s okay, we’re Persian.” This is Mom’s defense for most things that my dad and I question.
Mom’s prescription for me is always just to literally stop being sad. I know it’s not malicious. She grew up believing that depression and anxiety are controllable with the right attitude, fruit, and sunlight. She has traumas of her own that she’s been ignoring, long before my pile of problems joined the mix. As an immigrant, this is survival mode.
Stu Wilkins has been hunched over the printer in front of his pod for the past fifteen minutes, watching sheets of
paper spit out in one-second intervals like some twisted form of corporate meditation. All these people, with their thoughts floating so close, sitting beside one another in complete silence. Nobody ever randomly screams during these moments—a phenomenon that should be studied.
As a coping mechanism, I move on to binge-watching some astronomy documentary, learning how big the universe is and how we are all teeny dust. It’s right as I’m having an existential crisis about the point of life when my mom’s picture takes over my phone screen, the ring vibrations drilling into my stomach.
