The Pain

I went to my company's Christmas Party and had a wonderful time. I have a guilty pleasure in attending the party because I do so primarily to laugh, discreetly, at the various co-workers who become so inebriated they provide comic relief. I laugh also to chase away the knowledge that I know a lot of people that I work with are in seroius pain. So much so that they try to wash it away with the liquour provided them from an open bar. The free liquor provides a route to ecstasy that they may not be able to afford normally, or may not be able to do if affordable among people who will excuse it and not be judgemental, will help them home in a company- paid-for cab, and be office fodder the next day around the water cooler. The dalliance of being a drunk will be excused by some as an abnormality, and not indicitive of what many who are familiar with the drinking-to-kill-the-pain phenomenom saw exhibited at the party. I am one that is aware. And I wonder why those so in pain can not admit they are and stay away from the temptation. Many, who are of this ilk did not stay away, and it was disturbing to watch, and so I laughed at the absurdity of it all, knowing a price would be paid in the days to come.

One guy has been M.I.A. He was beyond drunk and fondeling girls young enough to be his daughters, telling anyone who would listen that, "They wanna have sex with me!!" And when it was retorted that he was living a fantasy, he replied, "No. they really do! They do." The party was on Thursday. He did not show up to work Friday, nor Saturday. He did not call nor e-mail to say he would be out, which is unacceptable. His wife called on Friday night to say the rent check bounced and she was deperated to talk to her husband. He had not called home since Thursday. They have two children, and she needed to speak to him because the landlord was upset about the non-sufficient funds in the account. What made matters worse is that this guy has his paycheck direct-deposited into his bank account, and pay day was the day after the party, Friday. Saturday he didn't report to work nor call, and we all worked the job and made no mention of him only to surmise that he was on a binge. I surmised he is in pain and trying to medicate it with things not good for him and his family.

So often in this society we try to quick fix the problems we encounter. If we want muscles, instead of working out with the hopes of achieving that feat, steroids are taken. We are depressed because of not understanding the complexities of life, and so we take illicit drugs, hoping to medicate the thoughts away, only to, when coming out of a drug induced haze, encountering again not only the problems that were not addressed before the ingestion of drugs, but other problems that have ensued because this drug usage. And so I laughed at the party at the spectacles I witnessed so that I would not cry, as I knew I was witnessing many, many people in pain. And the pain was manifest in the carousing, and its after effects of people showing up late to work the next day, red faced and irritable, or not showing up at all. I wish people in pain knew and practiced better ways to deal with it.