I woke up with a vague toothache this morning. By the time I reached the workplace, it had turned into a dull kind of pain that comes and goes. The heat made me feel more tired than usual, not that I'm complaining about the sunshine... people at the office have been looking like drained zombies for the past few days, and it made me wonder if I, too, look like a drained zombie now.
Must be the result of the anticipation for the longer-than-usual weekend ahead of us, courtesy of religion's celebration of something that has to do with Jesus coming back from the dead. I keep wondering what the Easter bunny has to do with it nowadays, but anyway... Whatever sells, eh.
On my way back from work, I argued with myself whether to book an appointment with the dentist or not. My illogical phobia of needles wins the argument every time - well, until the pain is so excrutiating that I wish I could shoot myself in the mouth. Then the idea of letting it get worse until it killed me kind of appealed to me. I fantasised about it for a while as I was being crushed inside the train taking me home by a sweating crowd of tourists in sunglasses mixed with fellow penguins (by that I mean all the office workers wearing a more formal attire).
As I walked down the quieter streets leading to my building, and immersed as I was in the dying streaks of sunshine, more depressing thoughts began to overwhelm me. I realised that I've never felt more stupid in my life, and maybe that's down to the fact that I work in a field I know nothing about, and yet I have to keep pretending that I can somehow cope.
I went to a meeting yesterday and listened to bankers talk about how now was really the right time to get back into stock picking. I actually understood what they were on about, but then as always when I'm witnessing such occurrences, my mind suddenly starts to focus on completely different things than the ones I'm 'supposed' to care about. What I mean here is that I was supposed to focus on the bankers' talk and their announcement, but instead I found myself staring at the old banker guy, fascinated by the fact that he could talk nonstop using such complex jargon that even a dictionary couldn't help you understand it. My mind tried to understand how it was possible for a human being to be able to talk and talk about things so complex as if one was talking about the weather. I mean... The guy could go on and on without even thinking or pausing, and it made me wonder if these people were even human. Maybe they were robots, I thought to myself, and that was why they could talk about such complex and unatural things so easily.
I was kicked out of my pondering by the banker's cellphone ringing loudly all of a sudden from his pocket as he was standing in front of a screen to explain something that had to do with the talk of the day. He drew the phone out of his pocket and laughingly said that it was his wife calling. Everyone at the table laughed heartily without even the need of a prompt, it seems. My reflex was to laugh along with them, of course, but at the same time I shrugged inwardly: he must be human after all, I concluded to myself.
I was still on my way home when the sudden urge to burst into tears gripped me. I had to swallow hard and squizz my eyes for a second to chase the tears away. I got home and the cat greeted me happily, for a split-second making me forget about my unspoken sorrows, and then I stared at Charlie the hamster's cage, and then back at the cat.
"My God," I said out loud for no other human ears but mine to hear, "you don't know how lucky you two are. You're treated as brainless pets and no one expects anything from you. I'm a human treated like some pet, and yet the weight of expectations on my shoulders could dig a hole as big as the universe."
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