Gas is $5 a gallon. Today, I need to drive 24 miles south to pick up my son from my ex-wife. He graduated kindergarten yesterday, and our summer custody schedule is soon to take into effect. I queue up music on my radio and begin the drive at 3:45 P.M. hoping to beat the traffic that is sure to ensue. The music rings in my ear like a symphony while I accelerate to the 70 MPH speed limit. Suddenly, I'm hit with a large ingest of traffic, and now I'm at a stop on the highway. “Typical, it's alright, it's bound to happen,” I think to myself as song after song passes, and I barely move. I jot a text to my ex-wife at 4:15: “Stuck in traffic btw.” My gas light rings on, but thankfully, I'm able to finish my journey and stop at the nearest gas station. There's a large sign from the road that says, “NOW HIRING $12 AN HOUR!” I walk in and tell the friendly cashier that's almost twice my age, “$12 on pump 3 please.” Our interaction takes less than 2 minutes, even with the card reader having a hiccup.
I arrive to pick up my son at 4:30 and loading him into the car goes surprisingly faster than normal. We hit the road with our curated tunes blaring. The smile on my son's face lights a joy in my heart nobody can take from me. I even take us on a special route home to avoid any more highway traffic. By the time I walk into my parent's house, it's 5:45, and my mom is just rousing from a nap. “Jeez, didn't I leave the house at like 3:30?” I casually make conversation to her. I've lived in her house since January, managing the debts from college, past rent, and credit cards to try and save my 10-year relationship with my ex-wife. The debt totals nearly $5,000. It crushes me daily, but working in the late winter and early spring gave me a little bit of my drive back after the divorce. I made $20 an hour on average doing food delivery, with the added perk of cashing out every day to use my money to work for me instead of waiting two weeks for a paycheck. Still, I watch the money drain from my account day after day while I pay down debt, and still (guiltily) invest a small portion in myself and making me happy.
My income is so low, I qualify for food stamps again after being off them for nearly 3 years. I push the thought out of my mind that COVID-19, my divorce, and going back to food stamps all happened in quick succession. I cook my son and I a small meal with snacks before we settle down for the night. Normally, I'll study, write music, or do chores while he plays, but tonight, I decide to play a video game online for the first time in about a month. They help me relax sometimes and thank about things in a more scientific way. The game chat is quickly flooded with conspiracy theory about the Earth being flat. All of their usernames have some sort of reference to Jesus, and they call on other users to renounce homosexuality in the name of repentance. I call my best friend and his brother over Discord explaining the situation to them. We laugh, and I throw in a statement with a touch of humility for good measure, “Of all my studies and all my anecdotal experiences, I'm quite sure gravity is real my friends.” My son overhears from the other room and shouts to me, “Of course gravity is real, Dad!”
Before long, just after midnight, everyone is asleep except myself and the conspiracy theorists. “How could the moon pull in the tide, but nothing else? It makes no sense,” a user types out to be burned into my mind. A wave of depression hits me reading such chat forcing me to get off the game. I walk down the stairs, and in a designated mail area for me, there's a conveniently placed ad for a local hiring fast food joint. “$14-16 an hour based on experience!” it reads. I roll my eyes knowing my parents placed it there because they want me to get a “real job” again. I sort of wince remembering other desperate times when I worked in a run down burger shack and can't help but feel it would be exactly the same. As 1 A.M. rolls around, I realize it is time to study because I want to be a doctor someday.
I find myself thinking about HIV and how it might infect someone. I watch various animations with great enthusiasm. I watch the integrase slice the host DNA in one of the most dastardly viral replications I've ever seen. I know before the presenter confirms my thought that this cell is now permanently infected. It almost brings a tear to my eye to think about cells, and I easily fixate on their complex structures. “Maybe I should be a microbiologist, that would be cool,” the thought leading me to a career search. They earn $79,000 a year, and it will require a bachelor's degree. Summer is just beginning, deliveries are crawling to a halt, and my bills are coming soon again. I'll be lucky to convince the college I want to attend to house me and start my education again despite my debts, but that's not until fall. 3 long months I will have until that.
Rage begins to build up inside me. All of the numbers from the day flash through my mind, especially the conveniently placed ad from my parents. What's the point of learning new things day in and day out if I'm ultimately to be reduced to a job for a teenager? Why does my resume continue to lead me nowhere despite updates to all my experience and skills? And, excuse my language, who the f*** is going to give me a REAL JOB for once? I can't help but feel that my potential is wasting away. All of my knowledge, all of my study, just so I can spend the summer asking people, “Sorry, you said no pickles on that 2nd sandwich right?”
I lay down on the couch at 4 A.M. My son will be up at 8. I'll be 27 this month, and I can't help but feel that I'm wasting away.