She had been staring at the floor for the past twenty minutes or so, unaware that the car had stopped. Specks of grime and dirt, remnants of chewing gum that had been dredged and dragged over and over, scuffmarks that almost looked like an unfinished game of tic-tac-toe. Unappealing as it might be, she was determined to keep looking at them until the car hit 46th Street and she could crumble in the familiarity of her own home. Sunnyside, Queens, where the sun rarely shines and the queens fled a long time ago, probably to Manhattan.
She’d taken this exact same line a thousand times before, always preferring to sit in the far corner with her right side to the back of the car. This was a place she knew well, the line that connected her to the role that she occupied for over 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, 52 weeks a year. Roughly speaking, she’d ridden this exact same line for a little over 3120 days in her life.
Day 3121 was the one she’d remember in the years down the line.
It was the unfamiliarity that had surprised her at first, the fact that she’d sat down and not been able to recognize the touch of cold hard orange plastic. It’s almost as though her senses had been muted as her mind worked overtime to process the day’s events; it left little room for feeling much else. She understood what had happened on a purely cognitive level but emotionally, emotionally this was new territory. There were moments of clarity where it would all click into place and understanding would meet awareness, moments when she’d feel the bitter weight of disappointment and the sharp, cruel sting of failure, and then it would spin right back into chaos and confusion and she’d feel little to no more.
It was hard for her to look at those bright orange chairs for some reason, colors converging onto one another as they closed in on her, imprisoning her every five minutes or so in-between stops. They wrapped themselves around her like a uniform, turning her into a nameless other: employee number 10,351,001.
She resented the harshness of it all.
The car lurched to a stop, opening its doors to a new set of people. She didn’t have to remove her gaze in order to recognize the types of people that walked through. Mothers rushing to their kids, fathers rushing to the second job that pays the utilities bills, recent graduates and the newly employed who were either off to the nearest bar or headed home, and the unfaithful husbands and wives who were headed anywhere but. She felt like an impostor among them, despite the matching slacks and shirts and all, despite the fact that she’d been one of them until a little over an hour ago.
The cardboard box felt heavy on her lap and she found herself trying to cover it with her arms, arms that felt small and insignificant. She wasn’t ready to handle the pity in their eyes, the sympathetic smiles, well-intentioned gestures that are inevitably bound to fail.
The words kept repeating themselves in her head, followed by the swish of a guillotine, chopping away a part of her each time.
Soon there would be nothing left.
As she sat in that subway car she thought about the first time she’d tried to learn to swim. She was ten and there were about twenty other kids in the class. They’d each grabbed a spot by the sides, holding on for dear life as the instructors went through the basics one by one. She’d single handedly readjust her swim cap every now and then, partly trying to prevent it stopping her from hearing vital information, partly trying to stop her skull from caving in from all the pressure. It had always seemed a bit ominous to her, this giant 15x25 metre body of water in which it was almost impossible to see all the way through to the otherside. Her deepest fear was that there would be a shark at the other end of the pool, emerging from its lair to prey on unsuspecting swimmers before disappearing without anyone knowing. By the time you realized of its existence it’d already be too late.
The irony of it all, she realized, was that the shark did eventually get to her, albeit this one was dressed in a suit and spouted various legal jargon at her.
Maybe years down the line she’d see it differently. Maybe in future she’d talk about it as one of those pivotal moments in life that changes everything. Maybe in future these trivial “budget cuts” would contain some semblance of meaning for her, and not just the crippling sense of fury and shame.
She remembered a headline she’d read that morning just as the train lurched to a stop. “Senate Fails to Extend Benefits for Long-Term Unemployed”, it had said. The national rate these days was 6.6% , a whopping 10,351,000 who were without jobs. The weight on her chest settled in some more with painful realization that she was now one of them, as she left the platform and made her way home.
It wasn’t until she was fully inside the confines of her two-bedroom apartment that she allowed herself to crumble.
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