Dan Hagen

As I was driving home from work today, I saw a girl walking down the street. Didn’t think anything of it. My windows were rolled down though, and after a few moments I heard something strange. It sounded like a cat meowing. Turns out the girl was holding a distressed kitten in her hands.

I felt bad. The traffic was terrible. There was a girl walking along the cement barrier out in the summer heat, carrying an unhappy kitty. Normally I wouldn’t offer some random girl a ride, but I became determined to stop and do so anyway. Maybe my attempts would be futile. Maybe not. I tried anyway.

I saw her enter the 7-11 by the overpass. It was a good opportunity for me to stop. I parked with perfect timing, exited my car as she exited the convenience store. She had a small plastic cup of water so she could give the kitten a drink.

I told her that I saw her walking along the freeway overpass, with a small helpless pet in her hands. I offered her a ride. She graciously accepted. I took her to her home, which would have been a good two miles further for her to walk if I hadn’t picked her up.

She was nice. Apparently it was a kitten that she and her boyfriend rescued. During the drive, the kitten calmed down and appeared to be more at ease. As I dropped her off, I reminded her to take care of it, to feed it and water it. She was nice. I drove home feeling a little better.

I’m not writing well because I’m stressed. I have a lot of shit going on with work and family. I don’t give a shit. I didn’t give a shit about the girl either. But I wanted to make sure the kitten was in safe hands.

Occasionally I wonder whether or not I’m bipolar. All it takes is one small experience – or one little negative thought – and suddenly I’ll feel totally depressed. Shortly afterward, however, I may have one small good experience – or a little bit of my own reassurance – and only a moment later, I’ll feel great again.

I will not discount the fact that my emotional reactions are likely normal in such situations, and I will not discount that I probably have no real mental illnesses whatsoever. Frankly, despite AP Psychology, my knowledge of mental ailments is cloudy. The line between true bipolar disorder and regular mood changes escapes me. The worrying thing about my brief emotional shifts though is that they are actually quite extreme.

Technically there really isn’t anything for me to be depressed about. When I put my life in perspective, I am one of the most fortunate individuals in the world. I have everything I could ever need. I live extremely comfortably. I have a job. I have an education. I have a family who loves me. Even with these things, even with living much more nicely than a homeless Somalian teenager who must regularly scavenge for food, my emotional disposition tends to hit rock bottom at times.

Comparing your lifestyle to that of a third-world country’s is admittedly cliche… and to a greater extent, corny. I’m not claiming that as a first-world middle-class American citizen, I shouldn’t have any problems. Of course I have problems. Everybody has problems. Mine are particularly regarding my job (among other things). For example: Sometimes I’ll have a bad day at work. I’ll make a couple of mistakes. I’ll run into some impediments that that keep me from accomplishing what I need to accomplish, and the result is a very unproductive work day. I’ll feel bad about it – no, REALLY bad about it – and I’ll worry about what my boss thinks of me, what my coworkers think of me, I’ll even worry about job security. That’s how low I get.

Then, I’ll feel great, because my boss actually approached me and praised me for one thing or another. Everything is good again.

Then, as I’m driving home, I’ll wonder if I should buy gas or not, and I feel terrible again because I know I spend so much money on crap I don’t need. It sucks.

Then, at dinner, I’ll be eating a sandwich, and I’ll feel awesome. Because I’m eating a sandwich. A large, juicy, sandwich. A goddamn delicious sandwich.

And it just repeats itself.

I stayed up late last night playing Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a deep, visceral horror adventure title. Then I went to sleep and dreamed about a similar game. In the game I played a man on the run from someone, through a building, through industrious corridors. I found the high school library where I met a cute girl. We picked candy bars and snacks off the shelves and threw them at each other. The game had a physics engine. She talked to me and I talked to her. When I told her something, she responded realistically. I coughed and she listened. She laughed and conveyed emotion. Perhaps this is possible through some sort of speech-to-text algorithm. It was a surreal experience.

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I don’t think living with two family members should be that bad. My establishment is somewhat large as well, but in spite of this,  it’s actually easy to tell if someone else is home. The walls and the floors reverberate with various sounds and noises that are undeniably caused by loud family members. I can even distinguish both individuals apart from each other simply by the way they walk; on the Richter scale, my brother’s footsteps are about a 3.9, and my mother’s are a 4.3.

This wouldn’t be so bad if the same people who are loud weren’t also early-birds with a reckless disregard for people who are still sleeping.

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