I have adjusted my postings to every other day until the challenge is over. Today’s prompt is how negativity impacts my health. As a result of working from home, grieving my father’s death and adjusting to a return to office work, my physical health has declined.
At the start of the pandemic in 2019, I weighed 250lbs. By the fall of 2020, I had achieved a weight of 200lbs. Since the spring of 2021, I have gained back 80lbs. My current weight as of writing fluctuates between 275 and 280 lbs.
The reason for this weight gain is the sedentary nature of my job, daily awareness of alienation/depression when employed, the long grieving process over my father’s death and my apprehensiveness of returning to in-person employment. I will address how these issues continue to impact my physical health.
Sedentary Nature of Job
Throughout my twenties, when first trying to get into tech, I would covet remote positions. I am introverted due to the system of white supremacy but did not have the language, nor courage to state that truth. I had developed an inferiority complex from working food service and general labour. I hated what I did and couldn’t rely on interpersonal relationships to cope with working in a line or factory. Drinking was what I did to cope with the suffering in silence that I couldn’t express.
The jobs were always going to be wrong for me, but desperate people don’t get to be picky.
I had finished a contract as a refurbishment technician at a community charity. It was minimum wage and in a factory setting, but I was working in tech at least. After the first three months, I’d already mastered all I could do in this position. I was starting to feel the existential dread creep up again. During this time the omicron-variant was most prevalent in the world. Sure I was practicing social distancing, masking and sanitation, but I risked exposure every day.
We didn’t know where we were getting the donations from, nor were vaccines available to my demographic at the time. I was worried that I’d be stuck here as well. Fortunately, the job program that provided my certification prep also provided job networking opportunities. I managed to sit in one of the mass presentation events for an MSP after having my resume forwarded by the NPowerCanada Team.
In January of 2021, I started my contract as a remote help desk technician. I had finally landed a job in an industry I wanted with an arrangement that didn’t leave me at the mercy of public transit.
Alienation/Depression while Employed
It was an adjustment adapting to remote work. I honestly didn’t believe that I managed to land such a position with my lack of education, but here I was. My family was happy, for I had been sober for a year and could hold down a job that was more than part-time. I was happy, because I didn’t have to travel two hours by bus and didn’t have to leave the house to rent my time. The training was quite good, there was a learning platform I could use for additional certification.
It was the first time that employment didn’t feel tedious. During the lull in between calls, I was either reading an ebook, doing an upgrade course, journaling my thoughts or sketching out ideas. And yet, I felt off.
Unconsciously, I knew this wouldn’t last forever. Though I was part of an information technology contracting company, the contract I was assigned was supporting an extractive industry. I understand that I’m not the one actively participating in the resource extraction, but I felt as if I was complicit by just doing my job.
Most people have the ability to separate their feelings from the job they do, but I was not one of those people. By just doing my job, I was actively contributing to the destruction of our planet for faceless shareholders. This leads to severe demotivation and withdrawal. What’s the point if I just end up being part of the problem that immiserated people.
But I had to stay for my family’s sake, I was the only one receiving regular income. My parents retired just before the pandemic reached the worst outbreaks, my brother had been furloughed. If I left to seek another job, we’d be shit out of luck.
So I began to suffer in silence again. It was just like the kitchens and factories all over again. I was trapped.
I’m Still Grieving for My Dad
Dad had been getting worse since the beginning of May 2021. By this time, he had been on chemotherapy for two years to the month. He was responding well, but when he was diagnosed in May of 2019, he was already at stage four. We all knew it was terminal, but somehow we had hoped it wouldn’t be the end for him. We were used to Dad being sick. He suffered a pulmonary embolism when I was around nine. He was diagnosed with type-2 diabetes due to an allergic reaction to blood thinners, which resulted in the amputation of the majority of his toes due to gangrene.
Stopping to think about it, I think I have unresolved trauma from witnessing what had happened to him. For twenty years, we all quietly just kept to ourselves, tried to help one another and cover for his physical and mental deficits. This was a process that my mother, brother and I dealt with by ourselves for twenty years. There were arguments, tears, and broken furniture all because of what this incident had done to him.
It was terrifying watching waste away. Knowing he was in pain but not being able to do anything about it. Seeing him depressed because he thought he was a burden, even though we reassured him over and over that he was not. We were just glad to have him around. We would try to navigate this uncertainty together like we always did.
Dad died on May 29th, 2021 at 14:15 EST at Brampton Civic Hospital from complications arising from metastasized bowel cancer. He was only sixty-seven years old.
I’m still so fucking bitter about him being gone and worthless wretches of means have the audacity to still be alive while he is not.
It was after his death that I kind of stopped caring about anything. I know there is a possibility in this world, but I’m not yet at the point where I can act upon it. Further, knowing how the world is set up and aware of my racial caste, I find more anger than hope these days.
I still haven’t been able to draw to completion since his passing, but I know the urge is there. One day it will return, but not now.
I Fear In-Person Employment but have no choice
As of writing, it is my last day to work from home. I now have to find clothing that looks work appropriate and take the time to look presentable. Now I will have to set my alarm for five in the morning. I will have to get used to the crowded buses as everyone scrambles to reach the office on time.
Though I am getting a salary increase of sixty-six percent, I wonder how much of that will be eaten by inflation? This will be the first time that I will be earning a liveable wage, but what does that even mean?
I know this job will involve some higher technical skills, so perhaps I will have less interaction with end-users, but I don’t really know what I’m getting into. Perhaps now would be a good time to build the art habit again.
I don’t know what this contract holds or what the workload will be like, but I will continue to suffer in silence.
Conclusion
The examples listed above are all factors that contributed to my physical health turning into shit. I also feel like a shit writer who is unable to get his point across.
Only twelve more days to go, right?
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