A man in his late twenties opened the door to his apartment, located on the second floor of a ten-story complex. When the man was searching for apartments five years prior to this dreary, stress-induced December day, he had enabled himself by restricting his list of potential apartments to only those that could accommodate a fat, sluggish oaf like himself. Locations that required climbing two flights of stairs or more were off limits, as were buildings without an elevator. The elevator was an inarguable necessity for those temple-massaging, tear-your-balding-hair-out days at The Office, where he would arrive home at an hour normally reserved for sleeping or, at the end of a busy week, a few drinks at a bar frequented by twenty-somethings located directly across the street. Today was an elevator day. And out of all the elevator days the man had experienced in his five years in The City, this one was unprecedented in its anxiety-ridden awfulness. In retrospect, the man had not minded the previous elevator days all that much. In fact, those long and grueling days gave the man a perverse sense of satisfaction, as indicated by the proud, self-aggrandizing manner in which he spoke of these long days at The Office to his buddies at dinner. The man entered his apartment and turned on the television, despite knowing that only infomercials and The 700 Club were on at this hour. He needed a distraction – anything that would prevent him from entering into the cyclical sequence of volatile thoughts that had plagued him throughout the day. Large cardboard boxes containing the man’s possessions cluttered the apartment, making it difficult to steer his way to the dingy kitchen area that housed a refrigerator, a stove, a cabinet containing a loaf of bread, and a toaster. Although the man had not eaten for several hours, his anxious thoughts had spread from his mind to his oversized stomach, which now felt knotted and compressed. His anxiety was a virus that had attached itself to his mind, its host. His virus laid dormant until it discovered a confidence-shattering, self-loathing thought to latch onto. Once the virus found its target it infected the self-deprecating thought by injecting validity and helplessness. The virus then proceeded to replicate the dangerous thought, thereby destroying the host and perpetuating the life of the virus. “Why didn’t I go into medicine? Or teaching? Or publishing? Or art? Or stocking shelves at a grocery store? Anything other than the monotony and long hours at this meaningless, superficially important, success-chasing career path I’ve chosen,” the man thought to himself as he cradled his head in his hands. He placed his hands in the pockets of his too-tight, expensive slacks and took a long, slow, deliberate breath. His head then rotated so that his red, glazed-over eyes were set on the glossy, black, fingerprint-ridden toaster. In the midst of the hurricane of thoughts that had ravaged his mind today, there were brief moments of clarity where the man would think only of this toaster and what he would do with it when he finally arrived home. The man suspected that tonight would be the last night he used this toaster. The toaster had personality. It had character. Which was more than the man could say of most of his seemingly cold and lifeless coworkers. “And yet,” the man thought to himself, “I assuredly appear just as dull and unfeeling to them as they do to me. If only they knew of the complex inner life I live…” The toaster only toasted a single side of the bread when inserted into its single, crumb-dusted slot. While considered a defect by most, the man had come to enjoy the taste and texture of the half-toasted bread it produced. The toaster would burn the bread to a crisp if the dial was turned past 3 but would not toast the bread at all if the dial was below 3. The man loved that he knew this. The man averted his gaze and walked swiftly, as if he was confined by a set of invisible rails, to the bathroom. As he had done countless times after days like this, he turned the faucet labeled “H” to the right and watched as the steaming hot water gushed from the spout. The tub quickly began to fill as the man sensed an oncoming attack from the virus that he could not shake from his crumbling mind. Without a thought, the man ran to the kitchen, unplugged the stark and ominous looking toaster from the yellowing wall outlet, and returned to the bathroom. The man, hands shaking, plugged the toaster into an outlet near the tub, as he had done countless times after days like this. And yet, this night was different. This would be the last night in The City. The last night in this apartment. And the last night in the bathtub with this toaster. He placed the toaster on a small, three-legged stool beside the bathtub and began to strip down to his naked, blubbery body. The man, beginning to hyperventilate, entered the tub with his right foot first and then his left. “I should’ve been a mailman. Or a dog walker. Or joined the Peace Corps. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I thought there was more to life than suits and blind ambition. When I was a kid, everything was a mean towards an end. Go to school, go to more school, get a job, make money, …? But there is no end. And all this time I thought the world was just holding out on me, That one day, someone, something would tell me what all of this is about. I am finite, insignificant, a slave to my irrational desires, and not such a great person. There is no right or wrong, no perfect truth, no eye in the sky. There’s just us. Just a bunch of greedy assholes who are too self-absorbed to realize that we are nothing.” The man made an effort to hold back oncoming tears. He had not cried since he was a child and would not break the streak tonight. He lifted his head and his eyes met the toaster, which looked considerably less ominous sitting in the bathroom’s fluorescent lighting. Out of all of the chaotic and disjointed series of thoughts that sapped all of the man’s mental powers a thought emerged like a shuttle escaping the pull of the Earth --- “I forgot the bread!!!” he exclaimed, in a state of disbelief. Lunging out of the tub, the man’s rolls flapped as he strode to the kitchen naked and retrieved the loaf of cinnamon raisin bread sitting in the cabinet. He re-entered the bathroom, hastily grabbed a slice of bread out of the plastic bag and inserted the slice into the toaster’s slot with the timer set precisely at 3. Within seconds, the room was filled with a delicious sticky-sweet aroma that, combined with the steam from the tub, created an atmosphere so comforting and untroubled that every damaging thought that plagued him seemed to melt away.
The man had developed this odd habit of eating toast in the bath shortly after he had started his Job in the City. On an anxiety-ridden day nearly five years ago, the man had discovered this magical coping mechanism. The bread needed to be the store brand at a grocery store two blocks from his apartment and the timer needed to be set exactly to 3. Only under such circumstances would his anxious thoughts be suffocated by the comfort and security of the tub and toast. The man was leaving tomorrow, which was the source of his stress and anxiety the past few days. He had accepted a promotion, which entailed leaving The City to go to The Other City, where there was more money to be made and more bullshit to weave through. He was leaving but the toaster had to stay. It had to. The man knew that this habit of his was childish, a sign of weakness, and could affect his career if anyone found out. And yet, whenever his mind was overrun by thoughts of doubt, uncertainty, and despair, he turned to the toaster. “Everything will be just fine,” the man thought to himself as he sank into the warm blanket of water that enveloped his body. A clunky, mechanical sounding pop indicated the toast was done. The man, his face serene, reached for the toast and took a bite. In that moment, the man did not question the meaning of life. He did not care that he would die one day or that he hated his job. The things that had worried him just moments ago now seemed petty, insignificant, and unimportant. His nagging self-awareness and his cold, logical thoughts were put on hold for this short period of irrational bliss. And it felt like enough meaning for a million lifetimes.
Submitted September 19, 2015 at 10:21PM by Pikpik07 http://ift.tt/1NKhmLV depression
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