it's absurd

There’s a certain absurdity in my work life. I sit at my desk and take phone calls where people tell me everything I would need to steal their identities. They’re just trying to pay a bill. I mean, they don’t tell me their socials, but… everything else. Birthdays, credit card numbers – expiration dates and cvvs and billing zip codes. Medical stuff even. And they trust me. And they should. I mean they would if they knew me because I’m actually a trustworthy person. Huh. Never really fully realized that before. I mean I thought it, but I didn’t have the life experiences to look back on and see that, yes, in fact I’ve shown that I’m actually as trustworthy as I think I am. And now I do. Anyway, my job is weird and I don’t know why people trust me. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they don’t expect a medical bill to come and when they get it they wonder if it’s a scam. And I explain that it isn’t a scam. Because it really isn’t. Sometimes we find out after they give me all their information and I look at their medical bills that they don’t actually owe the laboratory anything at all. The bill they got wasn’t a bill, it was an EOB and their insurance covered the whole thing. Or they already paid and they just forgot they paid it. I love when I can tell them their balance is zero and they don’t have to tell me their credit card numbers. Sometimes the balance is more than they thought it would be. That sucks. It bums me out.

It’s absurd though because I sit here at my desk, perched on the edge of my chair because my pug likes to sit behind me, squished between my ass and the back of my chair, and it’s absurd because I just sit here and print insurance claims and mail patient statements and answer the phone and take people’s sensitive information so that an insurance company can get more bloated and do less for their customers and it’s so goddamn tedious and I’m just painting the cogs in a horrible machine but I break it up by playing the tv in the background. I don’t even like watching tv, but I can’t sit in a silent house doing this job. This job would be mind-numbing if I let it get into my head. Instead I just dissociate from 8am to 4 pm while my phone is on. I’m functional and blank.

I’d rather be painting. Creating. Drawing. Writing. I’m writing right now with the tv on in the living room (angled so I can see it from my desk chair) while I’m perched on my chair and my pug is squeezed in behind me and I’m pausing the show to answer phone calls and sometimes, like right now, I take a break from doing my job and I try to remember how to think. How to feel.

This makes it sound like it’s all my job’s fault. It isn’t. I already had anhedonia before I ever started this job. That’s part of what makes me good at this. People get upset and I just don’t care. I care about them, because this is a bullshit system that 99% of us are getting fucked over by, but I don’t mind that they’re mad. If I could feel anything, I’d be mad too. Instead I’m just sitting here. Absurdly. Trying to fix their problems and taking their payments when I can’t, and at the end they thank me for at least trying because it’s so hard to get ahold of anyone who gives enough of a shit to explain their bill to them. But I’m just doing my literal job. And I’m just sitting here dutifully doing what I’m paid to do and feeling nothing.

And sometimes, like right now, all I can do is stare blankly at how stupid this all is.