Today I will mostly stay vertical
As I walked to work in the snow today all I wanted was to stop at the deli for biscuits and gravy. Their warmth and heaviness would have been like climbing back into bed under a heavy blanket. And eating it would have knocked me the fuck out once I got to work, leaving my chin and eyelids drooping as I tried to type a reply to whatever pointlessness comes across my desk today.
“Stay strong,” I told myself, “resist your inclinations.”
The impulse to stop at the deli pulled all the stronger as I remembered yesterday: my kids had woken up in the middle of the night and again early in the morning. “Oh god, I… oh fuck, I just, I can’t.” I had mumbled to myself as I staggered to find and put on my jeans. Tired enough to be uninhibited but awake enough to be devious I remembered that my officemate would be out that day so I decided to sleep at work, put my feet on the desk or something.
On my trip to work that morning I calculated. “I have about 45 minutes available to sleep, which is enough sleep to make a difference. I need to fall asleep quickly though and I’m not very good at that.” I worried I wouldn’t be able to sleep, and worried that the worry would be the thing keeping me up. “I will fail, it will be my fault, and failing to sleep I will fail at everything else today,” a common script these days. Then I saw the deli and didn’t so much think as feel “biscuits and gravy, comfort, calm, relaxation.” I bought them and some roasted potatoes, ate while I walked the rest of the way to work. I dropped the empty deli carton in a dumpster, opened the door to my building, climbed the stairs, stopped at the kitchen to fill my coffee cup, walked down the hall to my office, opened my office door, closed the door behind me, set the coffee cup on my desktop, took off my winter coat, bundled it into a ball on the floor, and set my phone next to it. Then I lay down on my side, curled up on the floor with the coat under my head.
My hipbones felt rigid and pointy, like rocks in my pockets. The floor felt hard, as did the thought “I’m a middle-aged man lying on the carpet next to a wheeled office chair.” Fuck it. I wrapped a sleeve around my eyes to block out the light. The remaining biscuits and gravy feeling inside me was like a warm hug, like a Peanuts character patting my head, saying “poor, sweet baby.” An hour later I woke up, checked the time on my phone, thought about getting up, and rolled over. Twenty minutes later I stood up, slammed the cold cup of coffee, rubbed my eyes, stretched, and walked back to the kitchen for a refill.
This morning I wasn’t - I’m not - hungry. I had a big bowl of cereal. The appeal of the biscuits and gravy lies almost entirely with their tranquilizer quality. And so walking away from the store this morning biscuitless, gravyless, meant a commitment to working without napping on the office floor. Today I will stay upright, or at least I will not overeat to ease the act of lying on the floor. I congratulated myself on my willpower, patting myself on the back for winning a victory against myself. Small achievements in small lives.