I’m Good

People ask if you’re alright, and you just say “I’m good.” Isn’t that something?

Years ago I forgot my dufflebag on the train, under the seat. I had been working two jobs, was dead tired. It was full of Unexplainable Objects that I needed to get back.

It was early morning when I got home and realized what had happened. Around three AM. So I looked into it and apparently, the red line has a lost and found. I called the station where it was located immediately. A man said he’d give me a call if anything matching the description of my bag showed up.

He called early in the morning and let me know it was possibly found. So I made my way to the stop at the end of the line where my bag was that morning. After just a few hours of sleep.

I got a little lost looking for the place where lost things were kept. Left the station, circled around. Eventually found another entrance on the other side, figured it might be there, or I might find an employee to help. So I go inside, and there’s this guy there — he’s grabbing the arm of a young woman who’s trying to get past the barrier into the station where you swipe your train card. No employees manning the booth, nobody anywhere, just the three of us. The guy sees me and lets her go, and she runs to the stairs to get to the elevated platform.

Guy says to me that he has a .32 in his pocket and that I need to give him everything I have. The girl stopped on the stairs. I was just staring at the guy, didn’t know what to say or what to feel. I’ve always been good at dissociation. Muting everything, trying my best all my life not to feel pain. Pain is the only thing that never gets muted, though. You can get to a point where you can’t feel anything else, but pain will always be the thing that sticks — it can be muffled but it’s always there.

The girl on the stairs asks, “do you need help? Are you alright?” Because she’s in shock and doesn’t really know what to say. And I look at her and say, in my perfect expressionless monotone, “I’m good.” Because that’s the answer I’ve always defaulted to whenever anyone asks me how I’m doing or whatever. It’s a reflex. I wasn’t good.

She scurried up the stairs and then it was just me and the guy with the pocket .32, standing alone in the desolate morning hours in the train station.

I don’t know why I’m writing about this. I do this thing where if something Big is on my mind, I write about something tangential, something that made me feel the same but is less important to me. It’s an emotional shell game. Allows me to process things while keeping anyone from seeing me, I suppose.

I told a friend of many years that I had some amount of feelings for them, days ago. She reciprocated but. You know. Needs time to process. And I guess I feel like I did in that train station. Not afraid, exactly, but vulnerable and uncertain of what’s coming next.

…

Anywho! Programming microlesson for today:

In python, if you write the word “pass” after a conditional statement, it lets the program know to move on to the next condition if said condition is met.