Assessment

A Short Story

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

He woke up slowly, sliding out of sleep but not entirely out of the feel of his dream with a fog of anxiety. What am I forgetting? Is something important due today? Did I do something wrong? What does this feeling mean? He worried that the dream, which he could not remember except as an atmosphere, reflected some truer version of himself than that which he liked to imagine. But if his years of therapy had not revealed the source of this anxiety yet, probably it would surface. So, he sat up and got moving.

Having experienced this same sensation more or less daily for years, he knew that only when he got moving, drank some coffee, and ate some eggs would he feel any better. Recalling a study he had read or was it only the headline I read? No matter about morning habits and mental health, he felt confident that he was doing the right thing. It’s not my imagination. Studies have shown that morning rituals improve mental health, so I know this is good for me.

As he looked down at his lean breakfast of eggs and coffee and half a grapefruit, he felt a moment of self-satisfaction and maybe even pride. But it ended when he recalled that he’d eaten this same breakfast for years without any improvement in weight or mental health. He remained very middle aged, and he felt it.

The children came downstairs, and he poured bowls of cereal for each of them, all three insisting a different kind of cereal. At first he ate with his smartphone put away, but after the two younger children got into an argument that he could not even make sense of (“He took the doll with that yellow hair when I told him he could only take the other one I didn’t mean he could keep it she said it was okay she’s a liar no you’re a poop head”), he yelled at them to stop and pulled out his phone to calm himself down.

In the span of three seconds, he experienced a wild range of emotions. He felt guilt for using his smartphone at the table instead of interacting with his kids, and he imagined them turning into dead-eyed teenagers addicted to their own phones because “you used to be on your phone all the time when we were kids, dad.” Then he felt justified, Well, frankly, you were so bad for my Anxiety [a condition with weight and personality and presence, like a dog you regret rescuing from the pound] that I practically had to be on my phone to stay sane. Plus, he thought, this is just temporary. He knew how to best care for his kids; he just needed to get through this rough period and then he would start. Just finish the report, pay off the medical debt, get the Check Engine light looked at, and then he’d be able to eat a breakfast fully engaged with his kids. Besides, he knew tons of parents who are worse than him. Last week a coworker laughed about turning on a cartoon every time his kids gets on his nerves. Imagine being that negligent.

His wife came downstairs and smiled briefly at each of them, offering a faint “good morning, guys,” before pouring herself a cup of coffee. I wonder if the kids feel this tension? It was a surprise to discover that the longer they went without being intimate, the more he desired to have sex but the more it depressed and even repulsed him. Even little moments of affection made him increasingly uncomfortable, and her too, probably. They should talk about this, he thought. Maybe tonight we’ll break the trend. But before the thought was through, he felt the answer: I hope not. Why did it feel safer to not have sex with his wife? Why did he feel guilty or anxious when he thought of initiating sex with his wife and why was it so easy and pleasant to imagine himself with a coworker?

“Morning, love. Did you sleep well?” he asked.

“Not really. I think we might need to get a new bed. I know you don’t want to but it really messes with my back,” she said, reaching to her lower back to note the location of the ache. Well, that makes it easier. Her back will bother her all day and once the kids are in bed, she’ll tell me she just wants to stretch and go to sleep.

Immediately some of his anxiety lifted. One more night without the threat of intimacy. And yet he also felt bitter. Doesn’t she know I have needs? Blaming it on the bed. Maybe if I got a better job we could afford a nice mattress instead of a hand-me-down, is that what she thinks? Like I’m not already killing myself so she can have a gym membership and our son can have braces and we can buy that overpriced organic bread she insists on eating.

“Alright. Maybe we can look at some this weekend or you could read some Amazon reviews today and see what people recommend.”

“I heard this ad for a new mattress company on that science podcast I was telling you about—did you ever listen to it? I sent you the link. I think you’d really enjoy it. And it would be good for you to think about something besides work all the time. Anyway, I think they offer financing—”

“The podcast?”

“No, not the podcast. I’m talking about this new mattress. It’s supposed to be revolutionary. Totally disrupting the whole mattress market. Straight to consumer. Through the mail. Oh, and it’s really good for the environment.”

“How?”

“How what?” She said, with more than a hint of annoyance and a sharp glance at him over the rim of her coffee cup.

“How can a mattress be good for the environment. You sleep on it and once it stinks or hurts your back you take it to the dump, like everything else, where it sits for about a thousand years slowly decomposing, if we are lucky.”

“It just is, I don’t know how. I think the ad says it’s ‘ethically sourced.’”

“So the mattress wasn’t sourced from some toxic mine in a third world country by refugees enslaved by child soldiers. Good to know. That’s exactly the kind of mattress that could give me a good night’s sleep. Real peace of mind. Not one of those ‘Blood Mattresses’ you hear about in a Netflix Original documentary.”

“You know, I don’t have to find the mattress. If you’re going to be a pain about it you can find one yourself. I have plenty to do around here as it is.” He walked into that one, and he knew it. But it felt good to tease her. Sometimes sarcasm was as close as they got to sex. Women are attracted to funny men, he’d read that somewhere. It comforted him since unlike his wife, he never got to the gym. She insisted they both get a membership, but it was really just another thing to feel guilty about. If she loved him for his humor, at least he had that. He tried to imagine finding humor physically attractive, but he couldn’t. Did that study say women were physically attracted to funny men or just attracted? Maybe humor is like some value added. A funny husband makes life less stressful, but doesn’t exactly make the wife want to sleep with him.

He knew that he had been the one avoiding intimacy lately, but if she offered to do something sexy, maybe he’d feel up to it. And maybe she never offered because she’s not actually attracted to me, he considered. Maybe the gym membership was a passive aggressive hint that his middle-aged weight gain was a turn off. But just the thought of going to the gym after work, sitting on one of those sweaty machines, adjusting the weight down while no one was looking, and repetitively pushing and pulling like the one poorly functioning part of the machine while these well-defined young men grunted by the free weights and strutted around after setting a new personal-bests utterly depressed him. Once he got so far as to get dressed, drive to the gym, and park, and then he saw a friend walk in and he couldn’t stand the idea of someone he knew watching him workout. After that he drove home and snuck a cigarette after everyone else went to bed.

When he finished eating breakfast, he stood up from the table to take his dishes to the sink and heard a cracking sound as his shoe crushed something small and very plastic. Although his back was to his children, he knew they were all staring at him, at his foot, at whatever misplaced toy had just been destroyed by dad’s carelessness. Lifting his foot and turning around, he saw a small, pink unicorn ring his daughter had received in a party-favor bag from a birthday party that weekend.

“DAAAAAAD! My ring! It’s ruined! You broke my ring and now I don’t have one.”

For a moment he thought about kneeling down to explain things to her. How it was cheaply made, poorly designed, and destined to be trashed. How people in China worked in horrible conditions running machines that churned out plastic crap so that parents in America could spend far too much on birthday parties because of social expectations and so that every kid left the party with a toy, even though everyone in this sequence, except the child, knew that it was a piece of trash with a lifespan of less than a week before it took up its permanent residence in a landfill. And how most of the presents her friend received on Saturday were not much better than this crappy unicorn ring. The better of the toys would have a lifespan of a month before they were abandoned in a closet. But her parents and the parents of all her friends felt compelled to buy her these things because that’s just what we do. And so people overseas work mindless and meaningless jobs producing garbage which we buy with the money from our (sometimes) less mindless but usually no less meaningless jobs. And we pile up trash in our homes and kids flip out when they inevitably get broken, and there’s a massive floating island of plastic in the Pacific. And if we’re conscientious, we recycle the plastic, but that just sends it back to China where other people work in other horrible conditions running other machines that churned out other plastic. And all the adults are aware of this and all of them feel helpless to stop any of it. At least it’s stimulating the economy.

“I’m sorry honey. It was an accident. I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I’ll bring you something home from work today.” His wife looked up at him as if to say, “Apologize, but don’t bring home more toys.” But he just shrugged and left her to comfort the still-crying girl.

---

He texted his boss to remind him that he would be coming in late today. “Reminder: I have a dr apt this am. Will be in @ 12 latest.” He typed this while driving to his physician. Since the phone was already unlocked and in his hand, he looked around to make sure there weren’t any cop cars nearby and began scrolling through Twitter as he drove. This was illegal. He knew this. But the streets were nearly empty and it felt good to hold in his hand. The weight of it. The texture. The experience of sliding his thumb down to load new tweets. It all gave him a kind of satisfaction, a bit of peace. Everything is about tradeoffs. If I’m stressed, I’m going to drive angry and that’s dangerous, too. At least I’m good at reading and driving so I have some control over it.

At his physician’s he was asked to fill out some paperwork. “It’s a new year so we have to update our files. I know it’s annoying but please be thorough.” Four pages front and back. Boxes and boxes of diseases and conditions which he may have had or may have or his family may have had. Where does all this data go? Do they compile it somewhere to keep track of how health problems affect different generations? In the background a home improvement show was playing on a very large flatscreen TV. Between commercials, couples talked about their dream homes and the hosts made canned jokes. The cuts were quick. The music was upbeat. The producers managed to drum up some kind of drama over the timing of a bathroom remodel. Will the hosts remodel in time? It was like watching house porn. If he put his earbuds in, he could fill out the paperwork faster, but then he’d be cutting himself off from everyone else in the waiting room—effectively telling them, “I’m not a part of all of this.” But then again, the TV was doing that for him. Three people were watching the show, neither excited nor bored, although a man did chuckle at one of the canned jokes and looked over at his wife to see if she saw how funny it was, too. Two other people were on their phones.

He worried that he hadn’t filled out the paperwork accurately. At the end of the second page was a line for him to sign, stating that he filled out everything to the best of his knowledge, which was certainly true, but he couldn’t remember a whole lot. Did his father have heart disease? Did his grandfather get cancer? Didn’t everyone’s grandfather get cancer, eventually? Has he had any major surgeries done, if so where and by whom and why? At first he tried to get everything exact. On his phone he searched his email for anything that might remind him the date of his shoulder surgery, but he couldn’t find anything. He did, however, rediscover three emails that he was supposed to respond to last week. In the end he just started skimming the questions and making snap decisions. How can anyone even keep track of all the health problems they’ve had? The length of the list was a reminder of just how many things can go wrong with the body. What were the odds that he had one or more of these conditions without knowing it? He turned in the paperwork and joined the others in watching the home improvement program.

His doctor recommended some bloodwork and he agreed eagerly. Doctors were one of his weaknesses. Despite evidence to the contrary, he continued to view doctors as powerful and godlike authorities who could reveal and cure whatever ailed him. So when a doctor asked if he wanted to be tested for something, or if he wanted to try an antibiotic or some other medication, he, as a rule, always said yes. But the tests never revealed anything meaningful.

A part of him always hoped for a clear, indisputable and severe diagnosis. If he were diagnosed with some condition, preferably something that caused exhaustion and anxiety, then it would turn out that his life had been a tremendous success. It would be a great relief to know that he was not an average or below average man, but instead a heroic, long-suffering survivor. He briefly imagined coming home to tell his wife the news, or telling his boss that he had been working with a condition that forced most men onto disability. But they never found anything. Even when he came in with detectable symptoms they rarely could tell him anything: “There could be many causes,” the doctor would say, “There are just some things we don’t know. But I want you to try this antibiotic.”

Scenes like this should have shaken his faith in his implicit trust in doctors, but since they still seemed like the most reliable authority figures in his world, his disappointment in their inability to explain his every illness never lasted. He might drive home with a great sense of unease, preoccupied with the fear that if the doctors cannot say what is wrong with him maybe we don’t know anything, really. But such thoughts wouldn’t last. He’d take the antibiotics and find some work to do. Today, however, the doctor seemed more confident than usual.

“If your anxiety is disrupting your life that much, I think we need to consider an antidepressant.”

“You really think so?” He asked, longingly.

“Oh yes. This is very common. I prescribe these to people like you all the time. I’ve prescribed it for ten years for depression and anxiety. We’ll get you started on this right away and I think if you can just get a bit of exercise in, too, you’ll be feeling better in no time. And if not, come back in and we’ll try another medication. Sometimes it takes a little while to find the right medication, but we’ll get it.”

“Are there any side effects?”

“Of course. Anything we try is going to have some side effects. Weight gain, drowsiness, and sexual side effects are the most common.”

“But I want to lose weight as it is. And I already feel tired all the time and my wife, and I rarely are intimate anymore.”

“Well, everyone has to make this decision for themselves. But I will say that all of those are symptoms of depression. Weight gain. Lethargy. Weak libido. So you’re already suffering the side effects, in a way. Who knows. Maybe it will improve things. It’s hard to say.”

“Yeah”

“What I like to tell my patients is this. If you are barely functioning in your job and your relationships, maybe some side effects are worth it. Nobody wants to have trouble in bed, but if things get too bad we can always supplement with some other medications.”

“Others?”

“Yeah. There’s another medication that has been known to help some people on SSRIs who experience sexual side effects. And then there’s always more direct medications to address dysfunction.”

“Direct?”

“Viagra. That sort of thing.”

“I see. Well, if you think that’s the best option, I’d like to try that. But it kind of sounds like I’m trading off intimacy for being less anxious.”

“That’s one way of looking at it, yes. But remember, these side effects don’t affect everyone. You may be fine.”

“How does this SSRI help with anxiety exactly?”

“Well, we don’t know. You know, the mind is very complicated. But we know that serotonin plays a role in our mental wellbeing. And we know that SSRIs have helped people like you for years.”

“Ok. If you think it’s the best option.”

---

He drove straight to the pharmacy and tried to contain his expectations. The doctor told him it would be weeks if not months before the medication worked its way into his system, but he still hoped to feel something immediately. A slightly guilty excitement filled him.

“Do you have any questions for the pharmacist?” the pharmacist technician asked as he paid for his new pills. He thought that he might have some questions. When should I take these? Will they interact with my allergy medication? Why don’t you know how these pills work? But remembering the tone of the pharmacy technician, he decided that the question was just a formality. Probably a legal one. A regulation created to protect everyone in theory and no one in actuality. And no one expected or wanted him to hold up the line with questions. Plus, he could always Google it all later, although this thought gave him a slight spike in anxiety.

If he googled the medication, he knew he would find out things he didn’t want to know. Horror stories of side effects. Investigative journalism about how “Big Pharma” incentivized doctors to overprescribe. Articles skeptical that the pills were any better than placebos. What if he found out that there was greater empirical evidence for the side effects than the intended effect of the medication? This did not seem unlikely to him at all. Better not to know. Some things are just too complicated, and you just have to trust someone. I’ve decided to trust my doctor.

Back in his car he tore open the bag, took out two pills, and swallowed. The bottle said to take them with food, but he wanted to begin this new life. And he felt self-conscious about taking them at home in front of the kids.

Eventually he would have to explain it to them. “Daddy has a sick mind.” No, that sounds perverted. “Daddy brain isn’t feeling well”—that’s better—“and these pills help him feel better.” He thought about some of his son’s outbursts lately. He hated his school, and when he got dropped off, sometimes he’d just start screaming that he was sick or that he wanted to go home. And he’d repeat that over and over. “I want to go home. I want to go home.”

What’s the difference between my anxiety and his? he wondered. He would get hit with a wave of panic on his way to work some mornings. There was no one to grab him and force him into his office when his panic attacks happened. Except maybe his boss or his expectations. Some days he’d clock in and walk straight to the bathroom in the rear of the offices where he’d enter a stall and stand breathing and praying repetitively until he felt calm enough to go to his desk.

Why is my son’s anxiety labeled ‘immaturity’ but my anxiety is a medical condition treated with a pill? How come I’m not expected to regulate my emotions without the help of medication, but my five-year-old son is? Even the phrase “regulate emotions” unsettled him. Like the Feds had determined the safest parameters for emotions, or the mind was a machine that just had to be “well adjusted” through regulation of negative emotions.

A pang of regret hit him as he drove to work. That bloodwork is not going to show anything wrong with me and it’ll end up costing $100 or more. The last time he had medical testing done he didn’t receive the bill for three months. And when it showed up he tossed it, not recognizing the name of the organization. He was trying to be better about letting letters pile up on the kitchen table. With every letter he threw away he felt a little freer, a little more in control of his surroundings. But mistakes were made.

At first, he would open every letter that looked official. But he quickly discovered that letters that appeared official or important were usually junk mail and often the nondescript letters contained important documents. So he sorted the mail. And sometimes he sorted wrong. Sometimes he sorted legitimate bills into the trash. And the follow-up bills. And the warnings of delinquency. And then he got a call from a bill collector who politely informed him that if was willing to pay the entire amount today, over the phone, on a credit card, he could avoid a mark against his credit score. It had never been clear to him how the credit score was compiled, who oversaw it, how it was adjudicated, on what basis it was established, where it was held, or who had access to it, but he knew it was Important. Very Important. But he had also heard reports of scammers posing as collection agencies to steal credit card information.

“I’m sorry. What bills is this?”

“For Western Central Biomedical Testing.”

“I’ve never been there. I’ve never even heard of that place. How do I know this is real?”

“If this is your name, then it’s real, sir.”

“What is the date of the service? Who was the doctor?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I do not have that information. If you would like to call your insurance you could track down the specific bill, but to guarantee that you do not receive a mark against your credit, we’re going to need a full payment today, sir.”

Of course he paid. When he came home that evening he briefly thought about looking up “Western Central Biomedical Testing” or calling his insurance company to verify that he had not been scammed, but if it was a scam he didn’t want to know. And besides, it did seem plausible that the bill was his, although it had been six months since he had any testing done. This time he would remember to pay the bill first thing, as soon as it arrived.

---

After he had picked up his prescription it was lunch time, so he stopped for a burger and fries before heading to the office. He had not had time to pack a lunch. Last week he read an article on the “Art of Packing Your Lunch,” which wasn’t really an art at all. It was a method. But whenever people come up with a new method for making your life more efficient they love to call it an “art,” like the less beauty or prodigality something had the more you needed to call it “art.” The article simply explained how the most successful people avoid eating out. They always pack their lunch the night before. This gives them control over their diet and budget. There was a video covering all this. It quoted a study that said people who bring a lunch to work were three times more likely to report satisfaction with their body image. There was no citation information for the study, but it felt plausible enough.

Last Thursday night he intended to try the art of packing a lunch. But after the kids were in bed he found himself on the couch scrolling through the offerings on Netflix while his wife told him about her day. When they finally decided to rewatch one of their favorite sitcoms, he remembered his plan and felt bad for failing at another thing, but he didn’t get up. He didn’t feel like he could get up.

“I just need to get through the day,” he said aloud to himself has he pulled up to the drive thru window. He did want to eat healthier and be healthier and lose weight, but this was a big day, getting medication for his anxiety. And anyway, if he was going to gain weight as a side effect, he might as well take some pleasure out of food he enjoyed. Once he started eating he remembered that he didn’t actually get much pleasure out of the food. The burger made him feel groggy and it tasted salty and flat and reheated. The fries weren’t half bad. He ate all of them.

He arrived at his office ten minutes before most of his coworkers would return from lunch. If he could start working before they returned no one would have a chance to ask him why he was gone for the morning and if he was feeling okay. As an extra precaution, he put his earbuds in when he got out of the car and turned on a podcast. Setting his bag on his desk, he went to the break room to get some coffee. Is the medication already making me groggy? Or is that the burger? He hadn’t slept well, either. There was an uncomfortable sexual tension between him and his wife while they slept, or at least, he felt tension. She seemed to sleep fine. Except for her back. Maybe I should sit down and try googling “quality mattresses” before I start working on the report.

After he got the coffee he opened the laptop and stopped the podcast, turning on an album he had listened to a thousand times. His work email appeared in one browser tab along with the shared document his team was supposed to finish by the end of the week. For a moment he stared at the emails. The subject line of one email read: “How To Spend Your Lunch with God in 5 Minutes”—a spiritual newsletter he had subscribed to on accident and never bothered to unsubscribe. It would only take a minute to delete the spam and unsubscribe to the newsletters he signed up for but never read, but a couple of the emails in his inbox were marked Important. For some reason he felt like if he did anything with his inbox he’d have to commit to responding to the important emails. So he tabbed over to the shared document and left the inbox alone.

His team had to produce a report assessing the training sessions they provided for their last client, a steak house chain. Leadership training. “Perpetual assessment is a key to dynamic leadership,” read the Powerpoint they used to train fifteen managers from across the tristate area. And so they too were assessing. Assessing the assessment training. He looked at the assessment prompts for a few minutes and then opened a new tab. He couldn’t quite remember what he wanted to search for, but he knew there was something. Muscle memory took over and his fingers typed twitter.com. He needed to drink some more coffee before he could get any real work done, anyway. Might as well see what was going on. Following the news of the world felt meaningful. People who remained ignorant of the problems in the world would be unable to stop injustice.

It was the best he’d felt all day. A well-known YouTuber had tweeted out a ridiculous meme about the health benefits of drinking a teaspoon of olive oil every day and he’d responded with a witty and scathing tweet and a link debunking it. His response kept getting likes and retweets. He knew that the only reason people were sharing his tweet was that he happened to discover the YouTuber’s meme and respond faster than anyone else, but it still felt good. Here was an idiot with a massive following spreading nonsense that was bound to confuse people and he got to correct it. He might even get more likes than the original tweet. It was hard not to be satisfied knowing that he had stopped one instance of falsehood in the world. He felt a rush as the YouTuber responded with a video purporting to demonstrate the benefits of olive oil. It was a real argument, now. A back and forth. He plugged his earbuds into the laptop and started to watch the video when he sensed movement out of the corner of his eye. He pulled his right earbud out of his ear in time to hear his coworker greet him.

“There he is. We were wondering if you had left us to do the assessment by ourselves. As you can see we haven’t gotten very far. Hey, what are you watching?”

“Oh, nothing, Jim. Just some stupid video about oil.”

“Oil? Did you see that video with the girl and the motorcycle that I sent you? Pull it up. Here let me.” His coworker moved in between him and the laptop, pulling up a search for “girl motorcycle fall oops” before he knew what was happening.

“By the way, you got plans for the weekend? We’re taking the boat out. You should come with us.”

“Thanks, but you know how the kids are. I’d just spend the entire time keeping from drowning.”

“And that’s why we don’t have kids. It’s too late for you, but not for some of us. No driving to soccer practice. No obligation. No worrying about schools.”

“Yeah, well.”

“But also no child tax credit, so you guys are really winning on the deal. I’m basically subsidizing your kids. You’re welcome for that, by the way.”

“Thanks?”

“So you owe me. Leave the kids with the wife and come out with us. Tell her it’s a Work-Related Trip. Which would be true. It would be work related.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea. She’d ask questions and it would get ugly. It’s a parenting thing.”

“I get it. I won’t understand. I’m not a parent. That’s okay. That’s fine. But I am getting worried about you. I find you working at this desk too much. It’s not healthy. It’s not normal. What do you even do for fun?”

“I spend time with my kids.”

“Sounds very relaxing.”

“It can be.”

“You need some self-care. I really mean it. You need to stop focusing on all the things going on around you and focus on you. You’ll be a better dad and husband if you have time to center yourself and let go of all this crap.”

“Jim, I—”

“Fine. If you don’t want to go to the lake, get some ice cream and binge watch the new season of that crime drama you love. Go through the whole thing. Trust me. It’s surprisingly refreshing to clear your head. All this stuff, all these training sessions and assessments of training sessions can wear you down. You need to cut loose a little. I know you’re religious so you aren’t interested in cutting loose in the usual ways, but there’s still plenty you can do. And you really need it or you aren’t going to be any use to us at all. Hey. You know the statistics as well as I do. Employees with positive self-images and positive outlooks perform up to ten times better at cognitive tasks than the average employee. We teach this stuff all the time. I shouldn’t have to convince you.”

For a minute he just looked at Jim without saying a word until his coworker asked, “What? What is it?”

“Jim, do you think I’m neurotic? No, I’m serious. I worry about everything. But everyone tells me to worry about everything. Does that make it my fault? I just don’t see what the alternative is except pretending that none of this is real and nothing matters.”

“Do you think I think nothing matters?”

“That’s not what I meant. I’m just saying for me I would have to either believe that nothing matters or keep thinking like I do, which is kind of awful, to be honest.”

“No, I’m curious. Do you think I think nothing matters. Cause I care about things. I care about a lot of things. Who was the one who advocated for diversity, equality, and inclusion training here? I’m not bragging. I’m just telling how it—no, no, please let me finish, I’m just telling you, I care about all kinds of things.”

“. . . And you don’t worry about, I don’t know, everything all the time?”

“All that matters is that you’re a good person, and you are. So stop worrying.”

“But that’s just it. That’s my point. If you really think about how they tell you to be a good person, it is literally impossible.”

“You’re overthinking. This is what I’ve been trying to tell you. You need to get out more. And maybe see a therapist.”

“Yeah, I tried that already. Look, I’ll consider the lake, really I will. But we need to get to work on this assessment report. We’ve only got three days left.”

“Fine. I get it. I’ll feel better when this is over, too.”

“I just need to finish it, that’s all. Then I can do stuff. I just need to finish.” He had been catching himself repeating this phrase all the time, now, often without even meaning it. I just need to get the car checked. I just need to pray more. I just need to return that text. I just need to get in shape. I just need to take my wife on a date. I just need to apply for a better job. I just need to look up this candidate’s voting record. I just need to have this mole checked for cancer. I just…..

When Jim was gone, he realized that it had been the first time he had touched another human all day—when his coworker brushed against him to take control of the keyboard. That was it. How many people had he communicated with today? If he counted the argument with the YouTuber it had to be in the tens of thousands. But that little push was the only time he had felt another person all day? That can’t be right. The nurse who took his blood. She must have touched my arm. She definitely did. But she had latex gloves on. It’s not the same. I didn’t kiss my wife goodbye this morning. My kids didn’t ask for a hug. How is it possible to interact with thousands of other humans and touch no one? How is it possible to touch anyone?

---

Before he went home, he stopped by a party supply store and bought a bag of pink unicorn rings. He tossed them in the middle console and began to drive. He knew that when he got home his youngest daughter would be thrilled that he got her a new unicorn ring, and she would probably want to play with him. Or maybe read a book together. But he would be too tired. Was the new medication already making him tired? No, he felt this exhausted every day. Every day is this tiring. When he got home all he’d want to do is nap or mindlessly scroll on his phone.

He felt like Robin Williams in Hook.

If this is a cliché then why am I stuck in it? It’s a TV trope. I could look myself up on tv tropes dot org: Father suddenly realizes that he’s been focusing on all the wrong things while ignoring what’s really important right in front of him. Except TV is part of the problem. The trope doesn’t really ask you to reassess your values. It just walks you through the cathartic experience of reassessing your values so you can safely continue living like you always have. Because what’s the alternative, really? What’s the actual alternative to getting through the day, to survival? Is it death?

Every form of “flourishing” he could think of was at root really another form of the survival instinct or role playing. Organic living. Localism. Political activism. Art. Religion. They were ways of coping. Probably there were better and worse ways of coping with life, more and less efficient ways, but they were all reactions to an inhuman environment, ways to adapt to living as something other than human. Something alienated, something made totally efficient, something entertained, something with a data set, something overwhelmed, something desperate to exercise agency but given only trivial choices, something alone, something liberated from all obligations not chosen, something that chooses because it is obligated to.

I’m sick of choosing. For a minute he stared at the yellow lines in the road separating him from oncoming traffic, and then he let go of the wheel and closed his eyes. I’m done choosing. I’m done, I’m done. I’m done. Let it come. Let the crash come. I don’t care anymore. I’m done. He could feel the car drifting to the left, towards the oncoming traffic, and he held his breath and braced for impact when a pleasant ping sounded and the Driver Assist feature of his car took over. He opened his eyes to see the car right where it belonged. Frantically he tried to work through the car’s complicated menu system to shut off Driver Assist, but once he found the option it was grayed out on the screen and a warning popped up announcing that “This setting cannot be changed while the car is in motion.” Then looking up, as if with a premonition that something was wrong, he saw the cars in front of him had all stopped for a traffic light, and he closed his eyes once more, the car rushing forward. I’m done choosing.

But the car slowed itself to a stop. “No,” he yelled as he stomped his feet on the floor of the parked car, “No, no, no. Damn it why can’t you leave me alone.” He heard the crunch of plastic and looked down to see the bag of pink unicorn rings, smashed to bits. He took several breaths before reaching down to pick them up.

Cars were honking because the light had changed, but he didn’t care anymore. Had he ever cared? Would he ever care again? He pressed the ignition button and turned the car off. Let them honk. Immediately the dashboard read out a final score for his driving, assessing his acceleration, breaking, speed, and climate control settings: D-.

Read Part Two: Reassessment