worried

chapter 1

Sometimes I worry I'm not a good person. It's not really anything I do, per se. I'm not overly pushy. I don't care to partake in workplace gossip. I always separate my recyclables –– plastic, aluminum, glass... Hell, I even tip twenty-eight percent at every restaurant I go to, no matter what service I got. To the casual passerby, for all intents and purposes, I don't seem like I'm that bad at all. I might even seem nice.

But nice is not good, you see, and it's the latter of those two words that keeps tripping me up lately. Nice can be faked. Good can't. And good people don't get the sorts of dark, horror-movie thoughts that I've been getting lately. Or at least, the ones that do manage to fight them off. Yes, when good people get a thought like that, they dig in their heels, yell out, "NO!" and banish it right into oblivion.

Intrusive thoughts, I've heard them be called before in online forums. Brief, passing, debunkable flickers of the mind. Nothing to worry about. Doesn't make you bad. They're normal, even.

My own though could be categorized as intrusive, sure. That's an apt way to describe the manner of which they appear. But see, after they've managed to pick the lock, bust down the door in my head, I never seem to charge at them with a hot poker, screaming and swinging like I know I should. I don't dig my heels in. I don't say no. No –– I let them sit on the couch, give them a blanket, fix them a hot tea. I let the details emboss onto my brain and I indulge in all the varied, colorful multi-facets. And like a hydra's head, I can't seem to cut one off without two growing back in its place.

Enduring thoughts is what I call them now. Because no matter how hard I try, they always stick around.

Maybe they're not bad, and I'm not bad, but to be honest, it's hard not to feel that way. Especially when the only place I can get some sort of respite and understanding is a subcorner of Reddit that's harmless enough, sure –– but you feel like you ought to put your browser in Incognito mode to go there...

I blame Emma. Fucking Emma. I try to live my life in a very polite way, swearing as little as possible, reserving all judgements and shit, but shit. Emma really brings it out of me. I think it's because in the beginning, she was bearable. She was cool. She was my friend, my only equal in an office full of opposites.

See, I got the job at Our Company around a month or so after I graduated college. The transition was swift and unceremonious, as most in the pandemic were: an online graduation peppered with online alumni-hours, online interviews, and eventually, an online company orientation. I went from student to working adult from the comfort of my childhood bedroom, and I carried on in such a fashion for the first six months at the job.

Things were about as fine as they could be back then, given the circumstances, and I kept my head down and did my work under the pretense that it wouldn't be this way forever. At some point soon, life would begin. I would be in the office, living in the city, getting to know people... I wouldn't just be clocking in, and out, and eating dinner, and going to sleep. There'd be variety! It'd be like an episode of Friends or something. I was looking forward to it. I came in that first day to the office wearing yellow and orange.

After that, I only really wore black.

I cannot stress to you how awful my first week in-office, in-person, was. The accounting department, it would appear, is not the most burgeoning of avenues for young professionals. Since it's just our department in the annex, I was convinced I was about the only person under sixty in the whole place. The first few days it was fine enough, assisting my coworkers with all their tech issues, laughing whenever someone gasped at my age, but by the time Wednesday hit... Oh, it was getting to be too much.