Wednesday 7/31/24
What do people do to themselves over the weekends?
I find myself asking that question on Monday mornings as I run the stairs at City Hall, which I did around seven thirty on this past Monday. The sun shone brightly, and of course I pass many people on these stairs given where they are, and these stairs in particular are a thoroughfare for people on their way to work as they were then. I had already put in four hours of work myself before getting to the stairs.
I see these people, and so many of them look like they've just been brought back from the dead, but barely. Zombies low on gas. Eyes are swollen, faces look puffier than they normally might be, people looking very much the worse for wear.
What just went on over the last two days?
You know when I woke up to start work on Saturday? On Friday.
I work, I halt the work--formally, but also not really, because it continues in my head--to run stairs, and then I work some more. I work while everyone else is asleep, I work while they're awake. I grab some sleep here, I grab some there.
No matter what situation any of these people are in, they're not like the one I'm in. The idea of "the whole world has got me down" doesn't really fly, because there is no one else who would last a single week in my world as it is now and has been for a long time. So what gives? I am confident that I never look like most of these people look. Are they just mistreating their bodies for two days? Why? Because they're "free" and so they beat themselves up in another way to make up for the rest of the week?
Many people appear to be hungover, going by the looks of them. Like if you said "hello" too enthusiastically they'd wince as if they had a headache and you were being too loud, or as though anything was too loud, really. I do notice this more on Mondays, but it's not like it goes away over the course of the next four days. It's kind of this theme.
My thinking: People hate their lives more than ever. They often hate themselves. They are alone in the most significant ways, even when they are with someone or have people they are typically with. Many self-medicate and self-medicate to excess as a result, as if to fill the emptiness inside (and kill the time of life).
They increase their efforts in these matters over the two days and two nights--or, let's face it, three nights--of the weekend, in an attempt to get back some control via having say-so, and exercise what they view as a freedom, trying to get the most out of it that they can, creating instead what is tantamount to another form of imprisonment, this one in large part of their own making. People have always cut loose on weekends, obviously. But what they do now is different. The motivations are different.
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