The Wharf Rat

A month in and still I sometimes feel the wharf rat feeding.

It’s like stage fright only much worse, that tied up in knots feeling in my belly, that just this side of wanting to puke until tears run down my face and I can’t breathe for gagging sensation.   I sleep badly and don’t dare to even think about eating anything.  My beloved Ghiradelli chocolates sit untouched on the kitchen counter and I rinse my mouth with last night’s now lukewarm Diet Coke but I’m scared to swallow.  What goes up must come down, but when you’re feeling the way I do, what goes down  will surely come up and it’s a prospect I can’t currently face. 

A diversion is required, I decide, something to evict, distract, and occupy my thoughts.  I pull on faded sweatpants and one of my at-home-only ragged t shirts, slip into my old Nikes and head for the door. A long walk, a healthy sweat, a cold shower when I get home, I think.   Exhaust the body and hope that the mind will follow, I think.   Whatever it takes to drive off this hovering feeling of sea sickness, I think.  It sits like lead in my gut, threatening, threatening, threatening, a small but powerful bad weather cloud of nervousness.   It would ease my mind to think I’m coming down with some brief but nasty intestinal thing but I’m not.  This is all a mind influencing body process and I’m doing it to myself.

I’ve mostly gotten over the anger and shame of being fired but facing the future is an entirely different matter.   A part of me wants to weep for it - for the retirement that will never come  - now replaced by a dreadful uncertainty, a fragile outlook at best.  I resolve (several times a day, now that you mention it) to “Stay in the Day” as the old AA slogan recommends and not look too far forward.  I remind myself (to the point of being dully repetitive and boring) that worry will solve nothing and only extend the life of the nasty little creature that’s gnawing and sawing in my belly.  I imagine it to be a sly little monster, the kind that might eventually grow up to become a wharf rat prowling  Boston’s harbor, the worst kind of emotional predator, with fang-y sharp teeth, yellow-ish eyes, a whipsaw tail and the patience of Job.  I even think about giving him a name so that when he rips into my insides, I can yell something like Whoa, Fred!  Back the hell off!  It’s a silly notion but for a moment or two it almost actually works and I conjure up an image of roadkill, stiff legged and decomposing by the curb of one Back Bay’s old cobblestone sidestreets.   Passersby cross the road to avoid it but some recognize it and a few avert their eyes while cheering on the inevitable but slow process of decay.  No one mourns the loss of a disease-carrying, nasty wharf rat, not even his own kind.

Things are not, of course, as bleak as the vicious and bad tempered little rodent would have me believe. My social security benefits arrive promptly every month and I’ve managed to find a part time job that will ease the burden.  If I’m careful and lucky, it will allow me to tread water for a time, keep the bill collectors from the door and the animals with me.   That’s the thought I try to hold onto.  It’s the  thought that keeps me from finding a high bridge over deep water.

There’s too much worry and weariness in the world, I think.  It makes us lose sight of and hope in the future, makes us forget that all trials and tribulations will end.  If it were just me, I might actually clear a little space  - no more than a lightless, unused corner, surely -  in my head for those dark thoughts that like to slither in and make themselves at home but the little ones are innocent and untouched by my state of mind or my fate.  I cannot, will not leave them anymore than I would entrust their care to someone else. More than anything else, they keep the wharf rat at bay.

Meanwhile, he must be exposed, must be driven out of the shadows  - first by admitting that he’s there, then by confronting him and daring him to come closer.  He will snap and snarl and seduce, flash those wicked little teeth and beckon with his claws.  And I will gather my little ones and hug them tightly, remind myself that tomorrow will be better, that life is too precious to live with worry and weariness, far too precious to give up without a fight.

Given sufficient time, I suspect I may see this as a good thing.  The steady income is gone but so is the anger and depression of being trapped in an environment that had turned toxic.   The future, uncertain as it may be, is better than the dark paralysis of being miserable and stuck.

So bring it on, wharf rat.  Because for right now, the kitchen’s closed.