lifting my leaden eyelids
It's 8:36 PM and I'm finally back in my hotel room. It's been a long day of work, which started with getting to the office at 7:30 in the morning and and leaving dinner around 8 in the evening. I'm usually too tired to write after lifting leaden eyelids all day, but after a week away I want to keep greasing the groove, so here I am with Yunchan Lim's Rach 3, trying to squeeze a thousand more words out of my dry raisin brain.
I always feel particularly lonesome after spending time listening to coworkers talk amongst themselves and making small talk. I used to call my then girlfriend when I got back from work, and when I couldn't do that anymore I tried to fill the void by calling friends. Most rarely pick up, so I've largely weaned myself off the habit over the past few months. Getting sent to voicemail makes me feel far more lonesome than not having called at all.
I do have one friend in this town, a coworker. She's the accountant. I'm quite fond of her; we're pen pals and I used to hang out in her apartment after work. I haven't heard from her in weeks though, other than seeing her briefly around the office. From what I can gather (and what she tells me) she's severely depressed. I don't know how to best support her, because she almost never responds to my texts or calls during these episodes. Do I keep reaching out at the risk of piling more on her plate? Or do I leave her alone and run the chance of not being there for her when she needs it?
Once when we were in her room I spotted a photograph on her wall and asked if she had a sister. She did not; the photo was actually of her from when she was in college a few years, and she interpreted my inability to recognize her as implicit confirmation that I thought she'd gained a lot of weight. I was so dumbfounded by this unsubstantiated conclusion that I blustered out a garbled defense and walked on eggshells for the rest of the night. Even now, many months later, I try my absolute best not to say anything that could even remotely be construed as a reflection of her appearance, and policing everything I say can get very exhausting. I don't know where I'm going with this, but this memory's stuck with me as a reminder that the insecurities people carry and the defenses they put up to protect themselves from their demons can (and often do) end up hurting others too.